The Beginning Back in January of 2015, while I was wrapped around a mug of extra-strong coffee in Sandino’s Bar  in Derry, the bar’s owner (and long-time supporter of local...

Am I a writer? I think so. Most mornings I read the paper and within a couple of articles find myself reaching for the laptop to write a letter to...

This is not the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears, finding chairs and eating porridge. It is about poetry, sustenance of a different kind, at this year’s Mountains to...

There comes a time for every poet when they reach a point were they have written all the childhood poems, all the where I come from poems, all the this...

‘Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.’ Don Marquis Emerging poets often bring out a poetry pamphlet or...

There’s a conversation on Linked In about the lack of comedy or light-heartedness in poetry at the moment. (Why does it seem poets are reluctant to whimsy and frivolity these...

It took 7 years to make Keeping Bees. And a broken heart.  And some guts.  A lot of guts. I won’t go back to the beginning – to the broken...

Poetry is irrelevant or has elitist language you find patronisingly offensive? It’s archaic. You don’t understand poetry and contemporary poems just aren’t poetry at all, they don’t even rhyme… The...

I think pretty well all of us are poets at heart – it’s just that most of us don’t dare to ‘come out,’ fearful that our ramblings would be embarrassing...

Recently, I set myself a challenge: to write 100 poems in only 30 days. I had previous seen on Facebook a few other people set themselves writing rencounters, and wanted...