Oíche Aréir

One night, wandering windswept and mental along the cliff edge of Corca Dhuibhne, grieving the Awful Truth of my mis-spent youth, i sat back against firm rock, waves crashing close. And surrendered. And wrote my first dán as Gaeilge. Now I wordsmith more with the more precious metal. Tis more difficult to work with, yes, but like all such things, the rewards are greater.

Irene Tanner is the film-maker, sister, visionary that she is put flesh on the bones. And Ealaín na Gaeltachta supported us.

who is you?

She that gives it up easy to the wrong kind of man

or she that surrenders only to the dirt of the land,

that rolls in the hay, with the hay, just the hay

bringing new meaning to the ‘the easy lay’

In 2018, 52 artists of the Dingle Peninsula created a chain of anonymous art works, each responding to the piece that went before. On the third week in January I came up with this...

Project 52: The Genius Daemon

I feel her arrive in the tips of my toes, in the gyrating hip and the click of my bones. She creeps from behind with a crick in my neck and she plays on my mind with her call and her beck.

Fan Lasmuigh

An Ode to the Outdoors

Film by Shane O'Ceallaigh Words by me

Mar tá an páiste beo lasmuigh go deo for the child is alive outside forever.

Funded by Ealaín na Gaeltachta

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On the Hill of Tara

On Summer Solstice 2021 after the longest hibernation in living memory, high as a kite and slightly out of breath i throttled out a transmission

Is it you that swallows what you are being fed?

By the lying bastards with no street cred.

Or is it you?

That recognises her own Kind

and knows her own Mind

sees through the veneer

and curls her lip in a sneer

at the tripe peddled as Truth

and the targetting of the Youth

that calls out the Brute

Is it you, who is at the mercy

of the banks and boss and a tertiary

economy that separates

the woman from the fruits

of her labour

with a creche and a disclaimer

Is it you who at the whim

who must sink or swim

in a storm not of your making

in another man’s creation

Or is you who commands the tempest

you are buffetted by,

who is steering the wheel

in this Drive By

who holds the Lia Fál

On the Hill of Tara

on your wedding day

poetry and protest

well you may call me fanatic and anti-democratic to question autocratic policies from politicians saying cheese, throwing me a bone to appease but i'm not wagging my tail at this success that will fail in the bigger picture where the rules are stricter between right and wrong, between winning and won