Blog

Panenka – Rónán Hession (Bluemoose Books, May 2021). A celebration of the things other novels often avoid – and all the better for it. A wise man recently told me there...

My story 'The Erection Specialists' was published in The Honest Ulsterman on 22nd September 2020 - and if you are interested you can read it here.   It is entirely...

Some of what I've been reading this year in no particular order: Tennis Lessons (Susannah Dickey - Doubleday): Equal parts funny and poignant, it chronicles a young...

With the U.K sitting in 18th position in the latest Pisa rankings, and the predictable furore about whether this is a justification or indictment of recent educational...

When Labour’s Angela Rayner announced she would scrap Ofsted, I was surprised she was met with such widespread opposition. I mean, I expected some dissenting voices...

One thing I’ve been asked regularly at readings and events (well, by ‘regularly’ I mean ‘more than once’) is how emerging poets can go about building up to getting...

What I was reading in  2019 (and what I'm looking forward to in 2020):   What I’m currently reading:  Minor Monuments (Ian Maleney)   (Most of) what I read in...

A list of what I’ve been reading over the last year or two (and I’m sure I’m missing a few) – I hope to review at least some of them soon if I get time: In the ‘to-read...

I have just started ‘Spill Summer Falter Wither’ and I must say it is very good so far. I am about 50 pages in – and nothing has happened, apart from a man has adopted...

Keeping with the theme of guidance for writing, I reckon you could do worse than follow some of Jack Undwerwood’s 20 poetry tenets, which I have pasted below. I had the...