So we’ve made it to the end of 2024. Thanks for accompanying me. And many thanks to the small number of paid subscribers, each of whom have received or will receive a signed copy of Let the Dead. If you’ve been reading these posts you know what I’ve been up to so I won’t waste your time with a long read. Just some brief highlights. Seems like most of my activity was in the second half of the year. In July I read with Gustav Parker Hibbett and Jessica Traynor in Berlin at the Curious Fox bookshop. Since then Parker’s book has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Award. Fingers crossed for that in the new year. Read more here. I spent the month of September in A Coruña at the Residencia Literaria 1863. Many thanks to everyone involved with the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange, especially Keith Payne, Yolanda Castaño and Mon Rivas. During my stay in Galicia I was informed that Let the Dead had been longlisted for the Laurel Prize. Though it didn’t go any further than that I was honoured to be included alongside many great poets, see here. Ruin, Blossom by the late John Burnside, was a worthy winner. My ‘Materialist Couplets’ were published by Abridged as part of their Strangelets project and can be read for free here.
As we close the year, I have two texts in the new issue of Poetry Ireland Review: an essay on poetry and grief and a poem that complements the essay, probably the hardest poem to write… You can find out more here. Many thanks to editor Jessica Traynor.
If you would like to read new work for free, sign up for the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day project here. Campbell McGrath, January guest editor, chose one of my poems for inclusion in his January selection.
Many thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland. In October I received the happy news that I had been granted a Literature Bursary. This is a huge help to me as I continue to work on my third poetry book. I may also be working on some prose. But that’s still top secret.
Things to look out for in 2025: new books coming from Jessica Traynor, Keith Payne and Tim MacGabhann. As for me… Jonathan Brennan is putting the final touches on our film. Based on my poem ‘Tamaulipas Amergin’ and filmed entirely in northeastern Mexico, Amergin will be screened somewhere in 2025. I’ll keep you posted here.
Happy new year, all the best for 2025.