Category Archives: Print

Best of the Books 2019 The Lonely Crowd

Poetry, Print, Prose, Uncategorized

I’ve recommended three poets in Part Two of this fascinating list of reading tips from Welsh journal The Lonely Crowd: Glyn Edwards, Glen Wilson and Jean Bleakney.

Books of the Year 2019 / Part Two

Damian Smyth of Arts Council of Northern Ireland notes writers from Ireland who feature in Parts One and Two of this exceptionally-useful series of bestofs … much here to pursue, purchase & read . These include Caitlin Newby and Scott McKendry.

Notice taken here of Eilís Ní Dhuibhne’s gripping memoir Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir of Love & Loss;  Ciaran Carson’s final collection Still Life and & Frank Ormsby’s The Rain Barrel.

Books of the Year 2019 / Part One

 

 

 

Poem in Black Bough #2

Blog, Online, Poetry, Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print

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.

A Telling Week: 50 Years On

Blog, Media, Poetry, Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print

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 →

Poetry: A Year’s Mentoring from Glen Wilson

Blog, Media, Poetry, Portfolio, PortfolioPrint, Print

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.

Words at the Seamus Heaney Home Place

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.