By now you've heard that Hilary Mantel has won the Booker Prize. I have long since enjoyed Mantel's column for the Guardian. She is always full of perceptiveness and originality. Her long novel Wolf Hall, is about Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell - which the judges, led by the broadcaster James Naughtie, describe as an "extraordinary piece of storytelling". I'm looking forward to reading it.
A new poem from me in response to the proposal to build on 98 acres of land surrounding Cuchulainn's Castle, Dundalk. It is written from the point of view of Laeg, Cuchulainn's companion and charioteer. The Folly Out from Tara, the widest road leads to a mount from where the sea can be seen beneath Mournes and Cooleys, at the edge of Ulster. This is Delga. Cú is needed for a battle today. Something about a bull and a mad queen from the West – who it seems is a friend of Ferdia. Láeg is here to deliver this troubling news. He sits in the centre of the mount, waiting for Cú to come from his shave and wash, thinks about which horses to take, for one is lame, when he is possessed by a strange fit. It is so black and dense, he thinks even a warp-spasm, the Ríastrad, could not unloose it. He sees the future: a conquest that causes his people to hide in the earth like moles, the building of a fortress around this place. The image burns in his mind the...
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