My review of Paul Murphy’s autobiography appears in the Autumn/Winter edition of Current Affairs magazine the welsh agenda.
Baron Murphy of Torfaen is a Welshman with a particularly close connection to Northern Ireland. Continue reading the welsh agenda – Review of ‘Paul Murphy – Peacemaker’
I am thrilled to receive an award from the Support for Individual Artists Programme (SIAP) of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Lottery funds.
This will help to fund a project on Place and Displacement. I will be working in poetry, memoir and fiction.
I appreciate this support very much in what will be a challenging undertaking.
Judge Rhiannon Hooson has chosen Elizabeth Wilson Davies’s poem ‘Heartland’ as the winner of this year’s poetry competition. My poem, ‘After Iconoclasm: The Jesse Tree Window’ and 19 other poems will be published in the Festival Anthology by Parthian Books.
Continue reading Finalist in PENfro Book Festival Poetry Competition
It was an inspiring theme from Matthew C. Smith, editor – the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing to be dealt with in no more than 10 lines in an imagistic style. I wrote Moon, Landing from the perspective of the moon coming to earth rather than humans going to the moon. See Broadside 5. Black Bough Poems
Moon, Landing 20th July 1969
I was moon-hungry, ten years old,
So I set a mirror on the beach
And lay in wait that night.
Moon landed there, looked up
And was a child! Like me, an only child,
Tentative and curious, hoping to play.
To have him as my friend, I saw
I’d have to let him go
And come at will. Chastened, I prayed
That all the astronauts would lose their appetites.
On the same theme I also wrote a poem in Ulster Scots which will be in #9 of The Bangor Literary Journal, launching August 18th and First Death of The Troubles, occurred 14th July 1969 about the context of the Moon Mission in Northern Ireland – this is on my website.
I’m delighted to have a poem in Issue 9 of The Bangor Literary Journal, launching as part of the Open House Festival 1pm Sunday 18th August, Bangor. Especially pleased that the poem, Re-entry, Ulster is in Ulster Scots, inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing.
https://www.openhousefestival.com/festival/
This is a week of momentous anniversaries, of the Moon Landing and also of a significant escalation of unrest in Northern Ireland, including two deaths in controversial circumstances.
The call-out for poetry for Issue 2 of Black Bough Poetry, for Imagist poems on the theme of the Apollo mission, prompted me to write three poems (one in Ulster Scots). One of these, ‘Moon, Landing’, is in the issue and another is here below. I wanted to consider the context in which I experienced the Moon Landing, and anniversaries which make us reflect on progress and also how we deal with memories, and with events, resolved or unresolved. Continue reading A Telling Week: 50 Years On
I am so thrilled that the poet, Glen Wilson has chosen to mentor me for a year. The aim is to compile a collection.
Glen’s collection An Experience on the Tongue has just come out from Doire Press. He won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing in 2017.
This amazingly generous initiative was sparked by Matthew C. Smith of Black Bough Poetry.
I’m particularly pleased that it is a poet from Northern Ireland and a poet from Wales who have been instrumental in giving me this wonderful gift as I have a project on Writing in Wales and Northern Ireland with the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations at the University of South Wales.
The amazing cake made for the launch of The Ogham Stone, 2019. My poem ‘Two Autumns’ is included in this year’s edition.
On June 9th, at the Belfast Book Festival, I had the great pleasure of reading at the Northern Irish launch of The North issue 61, devoted to contemporary Irish poets. It was edited by Nessa O’Mahony and Jane Clarke. I read my poem A Northern Irish Wife to a Northern Irish Catholic Priest. Continue reading Reading at the Belfast Book Festival
The Irish Literary Society hosted the London launch of issue 61 of The North magazine on February 25th. Published by The Poetry Business it is devoted to contemporary Irish poetry:
“119 poems by 106 fantastic poets”.
The Irish Literary Society is a child of the Irish Literary Revival of the late nineteenth century. Among its founders were WB Yeats and Douglas Hyde. Since 1892 it has championed and promoted Irish literature and facilitated discussion of and engagement with it. Continue reading The North at The Irish Literary Society