Wednesday, April 29, 2015

CanalaphonicTrad session in Grace's Pub

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Grace's on a Friday night is always a great session, one of the best in Dublin. Friday, May 8th, Canalaphonic Festival will be in fu...
Sunday, April 26, 2015

Religion embedded in the machinery of war

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I think  it was the late seventies. I turned on the  news one evening, and there was a report showing a priest, along with a minister of s...
Friday, April 24, 2015

In Mayo

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  The sky:               rags on bushes             in a wintry gale.   The barbed-wire fence:               a lunatic...
Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Reading at Strokestown International Poetry Festival

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  It’s almost May. It’s almost Strokestown Poetry Festival time. The festival is on from April 30 th to May 3 rd . This year featur...
Monday, April 20, 2015

Writer's Block

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i.e. the block on which a writer's head is severed. Writer’s block   Nothing lands on this plain; nothing moves but its s...
Sunday, April 19, 2015

At Sartre's Funeral

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This poem has little to do with Sartre or Simone de Beauvoir, but the image of her sitting in a chair above  his grave got me started. I did...
Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Another Perversion

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Man-made     One shot and the lights go out down the street, through the town, country, world; all that fits so easily i...
Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Trap

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I can't remember the circumstances in which this poem was written, and that's probably a  good thing.   Trap   I was in ...
Thursday, April 9, 2015

Where they lived

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        I’m always tempted to stop at derelict houses, old ruins, etc., sites where past generations have left their mark. T...
Monday, April 6, 2015

Following Human Disasters

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The barbarity of war is one thing, a less obvious barbarity comes next. I find it difficult to decide how I feel about media reportage o...
Friday, April 3, 2015

On The Beach

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When, at the end of the beach, I turned to face that gleaming scimitar of strand, the filigreed waves   racing to land, the geo...
Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Céilí and Trad at Canalaphonic, 8th and 9th May

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Canalaphonic is  going to feature a huge range of music from jazz to trad to whatever. Pubs from the Bernard Shaw and the Barge out to Mo...
Tuesday, March 31, 2015

"Death the leveller"

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Poem Beside Your Hospital Bed.                                                   Your face, that I loved, has changed so com...
Saturday, March 28, 2015

Scarecrows

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We are two scarecrows: rags and string; what the rain softens the wind picks clean.   We are two scarecrows: sticks and straw...
Thursday, March 26, 2015

The ballad of a life he lived too long

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    We found a pool of sphagnum glowing in a shaft of sunlight: an emerald pinned to the forest's heart.   She step...