Postcard from Dún Laoghaire’s West Pier
A fat seal drags itself up the harbour To gnaw on fishbones. In my dreams jaws clamp Round my skull, bring brittle bits of me back Down towards the seaweed, sludge and slime. I see it as I feel it. Troops expected France but spilled out of ships Here, at what was then Kingstown, To […]
Battered Bodhrán
I worked at the Battered Bodhrán on Hackney Road. Six days a week, I’d come in at 7pm and leave shortly after we closed at one in the morning. They paid me seven pounds per hour, which added up to roughly a thousand a month, or nine-fifty after National Insurance. Of that, seven-fifty went on [&h
A structure of stones, a structure of stories
In the shadow of Camlough Mountain, there stands a hill. It rises out of the deep-set vale—a crease amid the furrows of rolling fields and verdant meadows sprawled out like a patchwork quilt. Proudly yet gently it brushes the sky and looms over the village below. Atop this hill, which goes by the
