CloudNine

I have a new poem in the current issue of Poetry Ireland Review , issue 104. This is a lovely issue (with a stunning picture of a red-eyed rooster on the cover) and also includes work from Miriam Gamble, Vona Groarke, Tom French and Thomas Kinsella. Fine company indeed. Also this month, the new issue of Irish Pages , a beautiful bi-annual journal of contemporary Irish writing, explores themes relating to 'Ireland in Crisis'. I have two new poems and a short story in this issue. That's the first time I will have had fiction and poetry published in the one journal. And then later this year I will have a poem in the wonderful Ambit . I always look forward to reading this UK journal as I think it publishes really cutting-edge stuff. I'm going to have to collect these poems, methinks. I'll have to start thinking about who to send them to.

    As I write this post I’m nursing an injured lower back (don’t ask, something to do with cycling) while listening to the Joe Duffy show on the radio. A woman in Tipperary is describing her eviction from her farm. She owes ACC bank 1.5 million euro. The bank has sent in a team of heavy vehicles and diggers manned by a small army of eleven henchmen. There is also a plough. The plough is – as I write – digging up this woman’s land so that no oil, gas, electricity or water supplies reach her farm, and so that she and her animals will be starved out. This is exactly why I wrote my play, Belfast Girls , why I went to the Great Famine as a subject. As early as 2009 I saw parallels between contemporary Irish society and the Famine: evictions and repossessions left, right and centre, Irish people being forced to emigrate and being left with no or little support from the people that run their society. During the Famine there was plenty of food and grain leaving Irish ports – this...