Thursday, October 9, 2014

Reading, but not seeing

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This Banksy mural was in the news this week after the local council at Clacton-on-Sea in Essex had it removed because of  “offensive and r...
Sunday, October 5, 2014

Some tips for writing poetry

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I have amassed a sizable collection of notes and files from various workshops/creative writing classes I've given. Here are five tip...
Saturday, October 4, 2014

Death and the Student

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My grandmother and I were  the best of friends. However when her final illness dragged on, I, a student at the time, didn't have the ti...
Friday, October 3, 2014

Private Companies Looking After Us?

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I clearly remember the politicians stating that speed cameras would be located at accident-prone locations on the roads; their function bein...
Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The brink

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Once the wrong word said, I’m gone crazy ─ my smile snapped; her ribbons & wheel & steel in my head whirring, whirlicue; ...
Friday, September 26, 2014

Spiritual Growth

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Women, meat, all jaws, Hughie feared; Church-fed fear. Pruned Hughie rattling inside himself, no rattling outside, but bloated s...
Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Old Houses, Children Gone

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A Stranger In The Townland. In Autumn the farmhouse with the sun-folded field beneath its chin, traps the daylight in its spectacles,...
Sunday, September 21, 2014

Pre-digital childhood

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Remembering a pre-digital childhood; the, now, quaint pleasures of Autumn: orchards weighed down with ripe apples........ ripe for robbing, ...
Tuesday, September 16, 2014

from Above Ground, Below Ground

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The  series of  poems for my collaboration with artist Elaine Leigh, Above Ground Below Ground, is getting its  final brush up. This poem...
Saturday, September 13, 2014

A Dream Song.....Sort of

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A number of years ago, I knew a man who drank too much, aged very rapidly, and died prematurely. It  was suggested to me that it all resulte...
Thursday, September 11, 2014

Opening minds

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      A hugely inspirational talk by Sir Ken Robinson on an form of education that would elicit the very best from our children. List...
Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Getting to hell away

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It's not often I'd feel happy that I got a poem the way it was intended; I was pleased with this. It gets what I wanted: a mean spir...
Friday, September 5, 2014

Readings of Dream Songs and Competition News

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There will be a reading from the new anthology of dream songs, Berryman’s Fate: A Centenary Celebration , edited by Philip Coleman and pub...
Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A death

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Struggling for each breath - mouthfuls of air for god’s sake -, I said “stop working so hard; take it easy, Mam”   Dying,...
Friday, August 29, 2014

When all the world was young

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             Oh for the days of childhood, when the sun was always in the sky, ice-creams came in wafers, we skated on the pond all winter...