My short story ‘The Road’ appears in Issue 117 of the New Welsh Review’s New Welsh Reader alongside fiction by Joao Morais, Mihangel Morgan and Anna Vaught.
This Belfast-set story is the opener to my Collection ‘A City Burning’ for which I’m seeking a publisher.
New story on Horla site
Gwyneth Lewis – Henaint / Old Age, a double pleasure in Welsh and English.
Pleasure despite excruciating pain. I find myself recommending a tormenting thrill. Gwyneth Lewis’s Welsh poem Henaint and her translation of it into English, Old Age are excellent examples of the wonderful double enjoyment that a poet working in two languages can offer. Continue reading Eborakon: Gwyneth Lewis – Henaint/Old Age
‘A dream unquestioned is a letter unopened’. Apparently. Do you agree?
Twenty years ago I was in the grip of prolonged and serious physical pain due to a then-undiagnosed condition. I couldn’t work as normal. I spent long periods confined to the house. Someone was very unkind to me and, as a way of acknowledging his fault without having to say it aloud, he handed me a book, saying I might find it of interest. I had plenty of time to read it thoroughly, footnotes and all and, in one of those, discovered a reference to a book that came to mind forcefully this morning.
I woke from a dream so vivid and engaging that I was able to write down the dialogue between the figures in it and to describe their outward and inward dispositions, partly because I had ‘been’ them all, inhabiting the action from their perspectives. This is not possible in waking life. At least not with the immediate and assured access a dream affords.
This morning’s scenes, I realised, in which I was both multiply participant and also the observer, opened up for me a way to go deeper into a character in the novel I’m writing.
I wonder how common it is for writers to take advantage of what dreams offer? Continue reading Dreams and the Writer: a skewed and fresh perspective?
Reflections on the British Council Peace and Beyond Conference, Belfast, April 2018
I like anything that delivers on its pitch and that was certainly the case with the Mairtín Crawford Award Workshop: Preparing Poetry For Submission, April15th at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast.
Continue reading Mairtín Crawford Poetry Award Workshop with Moyra Donaldson
The fourth research trip for my novel (6th – 17th April), coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, was necessarily a time of public reflection, assessment and forecasting about peace and conflict, in great depth and with many of the major actors back in the spotlight.
Continue reading Novel Research 4- Abandoned: Not Forgotten?
Easter edition Bangor Literary Journal. Download here
Easter
A rent in the year
Through which the cold news comes:
Even the best of us
Will be consumed by pain,
Abandoned undeservedly
And not know why
And asked to say to all this,
Yes,
Though he destroy me
Yet I trust in him.
Each of us shivers
In this gap,
Choosing to assent
Or not
To love’s defiance
Of anything other than itself.
Victory or vindication –
These it lets fall
(Aborted fruits),
Facing into the wind,
Arms wide.