It’s arrived! I had the great pleasure of Poetry Ireland Review (122), edited by Eavan Boland, landing on the mat with my poem ‘The Opposite Birds’ therein. I’m in great company with a host of poets that I admire – Moya Cannon, Enda Wyley and Nessa O’Mahony among them.

Very pleased to have had new poems (The Reckoning; The White Dove; Action; Healing) published in Poetry NI‘s FourXFour, (Issue 22 Summer 2017, which can be downloaded here). I’m in great company with Maura Johnston, Therese Kearney and Anita Gracey. Thanks to Colin Dardis, editor, for this honour.

The recent Belfast Book festival featured a recording for Lunar Poetry podcasts. I was delighted to be one of the poets recorded, with Anne McMaster, to showcase Women Aloud NI.

The episode also features an interview with the editors of Belfast’s new literary magazine, The Tangerine, and with poet Matthew Rice. Click HERE to hear us all.

I read recently published or soon-to-be published poems: The Road Back; 3 Letterboy Road; The Opposite Birds; and Feral. You can hear them from minute 37.

Delighted to have had my poem Post Mortem published in the latest edition of Cyphers.  Cyphers 83 also features a number of poems, articles and moving tributes to the much-missed Leland Bardwell, former editor. Thanks to the Macdara Woods, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (editors), and Joseph Woods, for the honour of being included in this issue.

Always great to get a local boost, especially in my native county, Fermanagh. The Spark, has published five new poems: Keeper of the Flame; Passage; The Trap; Feral; What you need you to do. With thanks to Dermot Maguire, editor.

I had a number of journal publications successes, including new poems published in: Cyphers (81); The Interpreter’s House (63); and Poetry Ireland Review (120).

I also had the honour of being one of the 100 Irish women poets included in the Arlen House anthology Washing Windows: Irish Women Write Poetry, which isn’t officially launched until 2017 but there have been sneak previews!

(photo: thanks to Nessa O’Mahony)

Three of my poems from my collections Black Wolf on a White Plain and Tribe  were  translated by Alla Raskina into Russian and have been published in the St Petersburg journal Вelles Lettres (изящная словесность) №1(27).
I met Alla (aka: Dr Valeria Mikhalevich) at the Science and Poetry III conference, in Trinity College Dublin in 2012. I am thrilled that she has allowed my poems to move into the language of Anna Akhmatova and so many other wonderful Russian poets. There also is something deeply confirming about my poems being translated by a poet-scientist. It reassures me that we can meet CP Snow’s challenge to the two cultures of the arts and the sciences. It is possible (stealing a line from Ali Smith) to be both. It certainly makes life interesting.
2016 saw me taking on more Creative Writing and Poetry tutoring and facilitation, which had taken a bit of a back seat while I completed my PhD in birdsong. I really enjoy this work. It gives me the opportunity to keep in touch with the tools of the writing trade and meet wonderful people to share the joys of the written word.