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.
The Prorogation of Parliament
That day when the wedding guests exploded;
That day when I let a wee girl ricochet
From and towards her mother’s spew of blame;
That day I didn’t shelter
A railway worker from a racist shower …
Some close at hand, some far.
Kabul or Coleraine station, the same acid rain.
That day in Coleraine station when I witnessed
The airiness its architect enticed inside;
A guard whose smile kept all our doors ajar
And, in town, a window of bottles,
Wittily displayed — such light-filled things.
These close at hand. In far
Kabul or Coleraine station, the same inherent shine?
Today, when democracy exploded,
I was tread-milling for an email thrill
When I caught the acrid taste of tipping-point.
In the rank mulch of small misdeeds
The great ones grow. Wake up, wake up, my soul.
Some close at hand, some far.
Kabul, Coleraine, the Commons, I must reach those I can.
Two of my stories set by the sea:
Runner from the current issue of The Honest Ulsterman
Face To Face from Horla
ENJOY!
Any report whose first word is ‘Although’ is usually heading for a ‘Nevertheless’. ‘Although’ signals an intention to strike out beyond, or push ahead despite, some obstacle, towards a goal that requires a creative sense of the possibilities in a situation and not just the limits.
Hence the significance of the opening sentence of the report from the National Assembly’s Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee: The Big Picture: The Committee’s Initial Views on Broadcasting in Wales.
“Although most aspects of broadcasting and media policy are not devolved to Wales, the role of broadcasters and the media in Wales is of enormous cultural and political importance.”
This simple statement is evidence of an important stage in the maturation of the devolutionary process. Here are AMs, demonstrating, once again, a determination to inhabit as fully as possible the available terrain. Notably, this does not address the issue of the devolution of media policy. It works with present capacity, with what is possible now. Continue reading Big Ambitions in “The Big Picture”
Three screenwriters and two graphic designers got to grips with the principles of pitching in my Pitch Your Ideas workshop for CULT Cymru (Creative Unions Learning Together) on December 1st.
I’m taking a sabbatical till 1st September
The series DNA Cymru for S4C,which I produced for Green Bay Media along with Wynford Jones, has earned a Nomination in the Best Factual Series category of the Celtic Media Festival 20 -22 April.
I was a guest on ‘All Things Considered’, going out on BBC Radio Wales on Sunday 13th March at 9am here. The topic was Fear. Also in the discussion were Dr Richard Hain, a specialist in Paediatric Palliative Care; Shereen Williams, Director of the Henna Foundation and the Jesuit, Fr Roger Donovan, Director of St Beuno’s Ignatian Spirituality Centre. Continue reading Fear and Faith – Radio Wales
I never fail to be impressed by how well participants in this workshop grasp the pitching principles I offer. I am convinced that most people are aware of what it takes to make a good sales pitch but perhaps have not had the opportunity to pull what they know together and also to reach for the sales person hidden inside each of us. And it’s fun – as you can see in the photograph above – happy faces at the end of the workshop I delivered on 10th March! Continue reading Pitch Your Ideas Workshop