In The Poetry

The poet John Clare, I think, although his reputation has risen in recent years, but certainly for a long time it was much higher among Irish poets than it was among English poets. People know “Poor John Clare” is what he’s often called: an early success, and later madness, but I was reading [...]

When I was at school, sometimes the teachers used to point out examples of historical personages that perhaps we should try and emulate in our own lives. Well, one of these examples was David Livingstone, and it was only when, much later in life, I read his biography I discovered, for example, that when he [...]

This poem is about a young woman I worked with very closely. It’s called ‘Come the Morning’ and it goes to the tune of ‘The Trees they Do Grow High’.

As the trees lose all their leaves
evenings close round me
and I think on all the dreams that’s passed
since my young man I seen,
now I must [...]

This poem is called ‘From the Irish’. I was the eighth in my family – it was an Irish family – the first born in England, so I was the only one to that point who hadn’t been taught through the medium of Irish at school. So if my elder brothers and [...]

This poem is called ‘The Lammas Hireling’. It’s based on a story I heard when I was in Northern Ireland, out for a very late night walk, a local person pointed out a house he told me was where the local witches used to live, and in their tradition witches would change into hares, [...]