Like buses: new poetry and fiction.

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.

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The Folly

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...

Sweeney as a Girl: New Poetry Collection

My debut collection of poems, "Sweeney as a Girl", was published last year by Dedalus Press. Due to a cycling accident, in which I managed to break my wrist, I have really only been able to promote the collection more recently. I read at the Cork International Poetry Fesival last year and have just read at the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, both great events. Now fully recovered and lifting weights (thank God!) I am hoping to read in the UK later this year, too. While the book is a "debut collection", it includes work written over the past decade or so, and includes a few poems that have won awards or were shortlisted or nominated for them. The medieval Irish myth Bhuile Suibhne, about Suibhne mac Colmáin, king of the Dál nAraidi, or King Sweeney, who was banished and changed into a bird then travelled all over Ireland, has inspired many writers, from Flann O’Brien to Seamus Heaney. The story begins in County Down and in Heaney’s Sweeney Astray ...

Belfast Girls tours Ireland!

Since I last posted here about my play Belfast Girls, it has been staged in Germany, in New York twice, in Australia again and in Ireland! It returned to Ireland this Autumn and is currently touring. Presented again by Quintessance Theate, the play has a new cast and a new director in Rhiann Jeffrey. It is also a different production, and seems ready-made for its need now to be a portable, touring entity. The play previewed in Drogheda last week and is currently on in An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny. I will get to see it a few times during its 24-show tour and I'm looking forward to it. There are a few production shots of the Irish show below. Some of the reviews the play received in New York were wonderful. Such as: "Skillfully structured ... Five wonderful actors" New Yorker ★★★★ Front Row ★★★★ NY Stage Review ★★★★ Total Theater "One of the most ... considered portraits of the harm Ireland has done to women ... that I have ever seen" Irish Central ...

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