I have been known to write what I dare to term poetry and so I assume that this is as good a place as any to inflict it on the gullible passerby.

Never quite the consistent one, with anything, let alone writing, what I have written has come in fits and starts - rather like a bad love affair. Or a disease!

Anyway, what you see here is listed more or less chronologically, with sentence or two explanation. If you like it, good and well - please send me compliments, whiskey and money. If you don't like it, do relieve your self elsewhere.

 1. 20th March 2003, untitled.
One of the first I wrote as an adult. About a girl I have long since lost contact with. Quite sentimental, and in a vein not much in vogue in poetry these days, but I still regularly doubt if I will write anything quite as 'pure' as this ever again.

 2. The Eternal Dawn Bus Journey.
I wrote this in the same period as the one above, apparently on the 27th of October 2003. It was a frosty Monday morning, and I was on my way back to Dublin after having spent the weekend at home in Meath. It was one of those lovely bright, clear mornings, perhaps unique to the Royal county, where everything seems that little bit more vivid. I suspect I appreciated it a little bit more than the dozens of commuters who were crammed onto the bus with me.

 3. A Soul is a Hard Master.
In these days, I wrote a lot of sonnets. I suppose there was a lot of experimentation to it, and a lot of arrogance in trying to master the form. I did find, like Austin Clarke, that a strict metre can be difficult to escape. 

4. A desperate man.
I wrote this poem on the 19th of March 2006, apparently. It contains an obvious homage to Austin Clarke, and is mostly about me.

5. A little fireside tonight, some conversation.
Again, it seems like this was written on the 2nd of July, 2006. It's in a similar style and vein as the latter, but this one is essentially based on my relationship with my grandmother, my very best friend, who has taught me the art of conversation.

6. Getting slightly drunk on the Danube.
This is the most recent poem I've written, and I hope it doesn't betray an obvious lack of practice. I wrote it on a hydrofoil, travelling from Budapest to Bratislava, while it was at the lock in the Gabèíkovo-Nagymaros Dams, on Saturday, 25th July, 2009.

7. Stolen roses.
Can't believe I forgot about this one, perhaps because I can't remember writing it, perhaps because I wanted to forget. But August was a very, a very good month, a very good month this year, and this is only a small, small taste of the thorn. Someday I'll upload 'Seven sonnets for my darling', but not yet.