Reading Tour of the US

Thanks to the ongoing support of Culture Ireland, my 6th US reading tour starts this week when I fly to Seattle to do some readings with Washington, award-winning, poet Susan Rich. First stop is Highline Community College in Des Moines, WA and then to Hyla Middle School in Bainbridge Island, arranged by sculptor Elllen Berdinner whom I met at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre last October.

On 4th March Susan and I read at the Elliot Bay Book Store in Seattle. Susan has been to Ireland on a number of occasions and read at Cuírt in 2004. She returns to Ireland this summer to facilitate a poetry workshop at Anam Cara Writers' Retreat in Co. Cork. My next stop is the University of Missouri, in St Louis, thanks to an invitation from poet and professor of Irish Studies there, Eamonn Wall. He and his wife Drucilla come to Galway every year and I am delighted to be meeting up with them again.

I fly to Connecticut on 9th to meet up with my friend and poetry collaborator Lisa C. Taylor. Lisa and I collaborated on a collection titled The Other Side of Longing published by Arlen House in 2011 and we continue that tour again with a reading at Eastern Connecticut State University and at Manchester Community College, on 15th March at the Misha-maya-gat Spoken Word and Music Series.

St Patrick's Day will be spent on Cape Cod where I have lots of great friends before I return to Ireland on 18th.

Song from an Unnamed Boy

This poem was written after I visited the cemetary at Letterfrack, Connemara in 2009 with friend and poet, Daniel Tobin. It is my attempt to give voice to all the young boys who died at the Industrial School due to neglect and abuse and are buried there. It is taken from my collaboration with Lisa C. Taylor titled The Other Side of Longing (Arlen House,2011)

Song from an Unnamed Boy
(Letterfrack Graveyard 2009)

When I was a child I ate fire for breakfast,
the dark was a lantern-shaped star
I pulled on a string with the moon bright behind me
through the world with its window ajar.

The clouds held onto the rain every morning,
the cows looked out to the edge of the sea,
until men told my father I only spelled trouble,
school was the place where my soul could run free.

That lie was a snake in the wall that was waiting.
When I rattled the loose stones, its venom fell out.
Bread that they baked held the sting of a scorpion,
eating their hypocrisy dressed up as devout.

My sorrow unmasked,they stamped on my laughter.
I was the lamb being dragged to the slaughter.