Poetry: 'The Last Spring of the World’, 2022; ‘Strabane', 2020; ‘The Work of a Winter’ , 2018 Arlen House. Writer & mentor IWC Dublin. Book pic
@baabennett
Today I brought my mum to the funeral of her best friend. Mum is almost 84, her friend 86. They knew each other for years but became firm friends when both were widowed within a short time. My mother went abroad for the first time when they headed off to Tenerife together. 1/
This is my soon-to-be 83 year-old Mum photographed by my neice at Rossnowlagh last week. She had a brilliant time surrounded by 21 of us having endured lockdown on her own.💙
A small tribute to one of the many mothers - this one incarcerated on the Ormeau Road -just a little way up the road from where I live.
#motherandbabyhomes
My final day in school after 28 years! Dominican colours in the balloons & my lovely Hermes scarf which I hope I can throw over my shoulder in Paris one day soon. Happy/sad day 💜😊🥲
This is non-fiction’s Milkman. Devastating, powerful, heartbreaking & breaking open the dark claustrophobia of Republican West Belfast. I’ve never read anything like it. A book can’t undo so much suffering but it is an amazing reclamation of agency. 💔
@HoZ_Books
@cahillbooks
@peterweirmla
Seriously? What limits children’s opportunities here is this outdated, unfair exam which should have been abolished years ago. All children need opportunity & care here not just those who can go to a Grammar School or have parents who can pay for tutors. Please work for that.
So sorry. Hope your daughter will be well & so sorry you have to worry about the cost. This is what is ahead of us with the slow destruction of our wonderful NHS.
@NHSMillion
💙
Her friend was semi-conscious but responded to my mum speaking to her & opened her eyes & smiled. Today was her funeral & the vicar paid tribute to their great friendship in his eulogy. RIP Marie. 1935-2021. 8/
Today is my last Monday as an English teacher, fittingly teaching ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ for a final time & yesterday’s walk on the beautiful Drumavoley Road in Ballycastle had me very much in a ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme grows….’ state of mind! 🧚♀️ 🧚♀️ 🧚♀️
This is the beautiful cover of my new book
#TheLastSpringOfTheWorld
. It is a painting called ‘Evasion’ by a Chilean artist Paulina Silva Chala who now lives in Madrid. Am so grateful to her for letting us use it for the book since it speaks so well to lots of the elements in it.
A small thread on writing. I’m not a ‘big’ writer so this isn t very important but ‘this is just to say’ … writing isn t easy even when you love it. It’s the thing I most like to do but it can be hard for me to fit it into the day. It involves making yourself vulnerable. 1/4
How gorgeous is this? This is my reitrement/birthday present to myself. I hardly know wether to wear or or frame it. The Banbha hand painted silk twill scarf by
@SaraONeillArt
which comes with a beautiful book explaining the significance of each of the motifs. Summer in a scarf!
Rupert Everett brilliantly articulate on the horrific effects of boarding schools -‘institutions of empire’ that cauterise or calcify the heart so that the imperial servants ‘would never be hurt so much again as by their parents’ abandonment’ .
@BBCRadio4
#desertislanddiscs
My brother has just left my mum to the funeral of her first boyfriend who would take her to the cinema & wanted to marry her when she was 15! He was 10 years older so was chased by her father He died at 96 but he’d still give her lifts from the town if she was carrying groceries!
PLEASE RETWEET -
#Poetry
Prize - RESULTS announced. Billy Collins has selected 10 poem for publication in the Fish Anthology 2021.
See if your poem is one of the winners, or if it is on the LONG or SHORT-LIST.
I’ll never forget the night she got back & my mum sitting with her open suitcase full of life & stories & saying she wished she had known how wonderful this was & had done it earlier & talking about how beautiful Garda was. 3/
Reading in the beautiful garden at
@Thesecretbooks1
on a lovely summer's afternoon! Thanks to all who came and to Jo and Chris - if you've not been there treat yourself - it's a lovely bookshop! 💙🙏🏻📚
Celebrating my mum today who has been so brave since this year, managing alone with occasional visits from us in caring role. She is always cheerful & looking out for everyone. Here she is with my Dad when they were courting & in August in Donegal.♥️
#InternationalWomensDay
Pics of my study because it is momentarily tidy! I need to declutter 30 years of teaching materials as well as a lot else! Tidying means moving papers around! Advice from minimalists welcome. 🤭
God the difference in the register & feel of Varadkar’s discourse compared to Johnson’s! Happy to be ‘cocooned’ in Ireland as opposed to ‘culled’ in Britain!
#leovaradkar
#StPatricksDay
Found a beautiful linen table cloth in Mum’s hot press for the Christmas table & then realised it was from the Connaught Hotel Mayfair! Now trying to work out how it came to be in mum’s hot press!
And then with Covid her friend spent almost a year in her care home room on her own & they could hardly speak by phone since both had hearing loss. And then we heard her friend was dying & Mum got to see her on Monday for the first time in two years. 7/
These gorgeous tiny books arrived yesterday & I'm incredibly moved by them. Something in how delicately made they are chimes with Ann More's lost voice. Thanks to
@ChairOfPoetry
for Travel Bursary; to
@poetryireland
for publication; to
@PoetryProgRTE
& especially to
@MariaIzaB1
🙏
Delighted that one of my poems. 'Winter Weddings' - about two family weddings in Tyrone at Christmas time, seperated by half a century - will be read during the programme. Thank-you
@PoetryProgRTE
Because she d never been away before I waited for a phone call to say everything was OK but none came do after a few days I rang their hotel to get a message back that they were having a great time & all was well. 2/
Thank-you to all who give these little moments of encouragement & hoping I can do the same. That’s all. Be kind. We’re all in the same business -there are enough others to be cruel. 4/4
They had gone to Venice for a day but walked the feet off themselves since they begrudged having to buy a coffee in order to sit down! And this began a series of lovely trips they took together. 4/
My father’s dead 12 years but still missed especially at this time of year when he’d spent hours in the garden & come in browned from the sun smelling of soil. Love this pic of him as a young headmaster in the Glebe!
#HappyFathersDay2020
Imagine this being your first ever poetry reading! I was fifteen! The booklet would have been worth something except in those days I annotated things with flowers! 🤭
Delighted to have my poem ‘Setting Out’ up on the
@Mary_Evans
Picture Library site with Anita Schiffer’s brilliant pic from 1998 to mark nine years since Seamus Heaney’s death. The pic captures him perfectly & that mischievous smile. Hard to believe it is so long. 🖤
Since we're all missing Armagh and dreaming of Uluru, the Marketplace and
@The_JHS
Summer School - here is a memory from a few years ago - taken by
@JohnJBaucher
and not one we used for publicity!
Jesus! ‘Her Majesty’s Government will ease the cost of living’ says a man dripping in gold with no sense of what money worries could mean. Surely time to end the monarchy.
Lilacs from the garden. I grow them for their gorgeous scent but the tree has grown so high I can hardly reach the blossoms. Had to use an umbrella to wrestle these down! 🌂 💜
Having gone to this event for years, can't quite believe I'm part of it this year - delighted to be and looking forward to meeting all of these writers.
All welcome to
#ShineStrong2019
at .
@BoyleMo
- The Work of a Winter,
@johnkellytweets
-Notions, Neil McCarthy - Stopgap Grace, Laurence O'Dwyer - Tractography, Jane Robinson -Journey to the Sleeping Whale, Moya Roddy -Out of the Ordinary.
#WorldPoetryDay
And then Mum s friend became less able to travel & moved faraway to a nursing home. We would take mum to see her & leave them together to catch up. They both loved their style. 6/
@janky_jane
I wore a poncho in the 70s I’d made myself by cutting a hole in a beautiful blanket & was shouted at in Strabane about being ‘on the blanket’ ! 🤭