Belfast Child – Leontia Flynn’s Drives
I was standing at the counter of a Belfast tourist office watching as a biro was waved over a map. …
Tag Archives: Poetry
Howl, howl, howl! Paul Durcan’s Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being
You lash out at the strange and frightening; you lack the ability to control your bowels; you’re helpless and depend upon …
You’ll never walk alone – David Morley’s The Crowd
At midday, those expecting Ian Payne’s Sunday Review show on Radio 5 Live were thrown into David Morley’s The Crowd, …
Insult to Injury – Simon Armitage’s The Not Dead
An officer, fresh from Helmand, played us the mobile phone footage: the excited chatter and the puny rifle cracks were alien …
The Old Masters were never wrong about suffering – Olivia Byard’s Strange Horses
When I took my wife’s call, I thought she was trapped in the wreckage of a car. Her brain was …
No Gypsy Wedding – David Morley’s The Invisible Kings
Donkeys were still hitched to lamp-posts in County Limerick in the ’80s and our village was the sort of place …
Kissing a Saint’s Stomach Lining – Adam Thorpe’s Voluntary
The strangest thing I’ve kissed is a section of stomach lining belonging to the Blessed Ralph Sherwin. He’s an old …
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Matthew Stewart’s Inventing Truth
In the family album there’s a snap of a tiny boy pressing his gift of a Matchbox car into the …
Looking at the emperor’s new clothes – Glyn Maxwell’s On Poetry
Buy On Poetry from Oberon Books A school friend grasped counterpoint intuitively and had a penchant for writing fugues. He …
The trouble with poetry – how we get teaching it wrong
‘Would anyone care to join me / in flicking a few pebbles in the direction / of teachers who are …
Poor Rude Lines 