So another John Hewitt Summer School has sadly come to an end and what a jam packed week of interesting talks, inspiring interviews and a great workshop to boot. This Festival of Literature, Arts & Politics is the annual event run by the John Hewitt Society. The Society promotes literature, arts, and culture inspired by…
This is a short piece I wrote and read at the John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh in July 2023. I was one of three participants in the Memoir workshop, led by poet/memoirist Maureen Boyle, invited to read at the Creative Writing Showcase on the final day. I will write a post later about…
Absolutely thrilled to be one of 37 writers, from a total of nearly 300 applicants, to be awarded a place on the Irish Writers Centre’s National Mentoring Programme 2023. I’ve been plugging away at a CNF (creative non-fiction) book over the past year apart from a brief break for printmaking. I’m slowly making my merry…
This is a piece I wrote while doing the Sustaining Stories CNF workshop with Sylvia Cullen as part of the Gap Arts Festival. I also gave a reading but I can’t seem to find the video of the recording. You can read all the output from that course here. Zaventem From January to March 1993,…
So how do I account for the hiatus in blogging during the pandemic? Was I busy baking banana bread and binging boxsets? Absolutely not. I accidentally published a poetry archive I was in lockdown two weeks before the rest of the country because my son had managed to get out of Madrid the day they…
I’ve given myself an extension to Monday’s midnight deadline because I’ve been busy uploading your work for the past few months that I haven’t had much time for my own reflections. Don’t get me wrong, it was a privilege to read and share your work. I want to say a sincere thank you for all…
‘What do you miss most?’ I hear people ask. Families towns, counties, and countries away; Loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes without visitors since March; hugging a grieving friend or waking our dead; livelihoods lost overnight and the pressure to reinvent oneself online. Each as valid and heartbreaking as the next. I must have…
It’s a little like Christmas because It’s nearly lunchtime and I’m still not dressed I’m mindlessly eating chocolate before breakfast Getting dressed involves exchanging indoor slouch pants for hiking trousers I’m not going to bed before 2 am It’s like Christmas but The smell of smoked ham, cloved red cabbage and gingerbread isn’t filling…
Business as usual you say? Usual SLAs still stand I presume? Oh right. Meanwhile ….. We tune in for regular State of the Nation addresses We tear up and are proud of our leaders’ Together Apart rhetoric Even if Leo borrows some lines from the Terminator movies Meanwhile ….. There is an invisible serial killer…
I’ve designed a WhatsApp quiz A virtual table quiz And before you say it I know there are fancier tools like Teams, Hangouts and Zoom to see each other’s faces and more importantly to check nobody is cheating But my sister lives in Cuba, her internet is poor so we’re going semi analog. It’s all…
