Category craic

Life’s a funny old game. A few years ago I found myself sitting down for a pint with Steve Ignorant, front man of punk legends Crass, and wondering how to answer his suggestion that I worked with him on writing…

Dear IDS, things can’t be easy right now. But then, when were they ever? You’ve spent your whole life grafting away, and what have you got to show for it? Nothing. You’ve been the nearly man so often, and that’s…

I know it probably seems as if everything’s gone quiet here, as if there’s been nothing but virtual tumbleweed blowing across this little corner of cyber-world. And I’m very aware that in a world of 24/7 social media and endless…

I’ve a gig in Bristol on March 1st – do come along if you live nearby – and I’m looking forward to it immensely. It’s a little different from your average poetry night. Yes, I get to do the usual,…

So after a wee bit of a fit of can’t-be-arsed earlier in the month, I’ve now hit the ground running. Or at least stumbling in the right direction. Emails fired off to poetry nights and festivals, begging for gigs throughout…

Poets. Moody buggers at the best of times. I was really looking forward to 2013 – there’s gigs lined up (one in London next week, for starters), the Youtube video has garnered well over 1000 hits (more than I ever…

Corporate tax evasion. It bugs the living bejesus out of me. I know the big transnationals like to call it tax minimisation, as if it’s utterly harmless, as if it’s as near as dammit a good thing, just a tiny…

So my third book of poetry, ‘Island Songs’, was officially published by Ignite Books yesterday. I’ve been selling copies for a few weeks already, at gigs and readings, and via the Ignite website, but now it’s official you can also…

Poetry has an image problem. Really, it does. In the popular imagination, poets are loners who skulk in bedsits. They’re self-obsessed and melancholic, socially inept and badly dressed, and their work is so clod-hoppingly awful that the mere threat they’ll…

So here it is. Craic. The new kid on this particular website’s block. For some months now I’ve been meaning to set up some kind of blog, a page where I can get up on my hind legs and spout…