Fran glimpses Mac the Handsome for the last time from a packed 145 moving, in fits and starts, through traffic-choked Donnybrook. A Spring afternoon in 2009; it has just stopped drizzling & to avoid gawking at the passengers opposite him, Fran sleeves the human moisture from the window and, to see what he can see, […]

Read More THE ONLY REAL IRISH POET IN DUBLIN #truestory #MurderCase #irishwriters #irishpoets #irishspokenword

I’m going to be working on an opera! The Irish National Opera is going to create the world’s first ‘Virtual Reality Community Opera’, scripted by 14-18 year olds. I’m running four workshops as part of the project, which will generate the bedrock of writing from which a libretto will then be refined. Open to 14-18 […]

Read More OPERA WRITING WORKSHOPS FOR 14-18 yos

In the midst of the chaos my father and his friends decided to set up a roadblock at the entrance to the estate. After a quarter of an hour the police came along but they were fired at and they retreated in no time. They came back an  hour later with many reinforcements but my […]

Read More Street Party #socialcollapse #chaos #truestory

The motorcyclists were the first to attack, just as it was getting dark, just as the bats were beginning to whirl out of their daytime redoubts in the woods, diving and wheeling like Stukas in the grounds. Often, in the past, when things had been different, a bat had flown in through a window or […]

Read More THE WRITERS RETREAT #truestory #scandal

DEFINITION OF A RUNNER #truestory #irishtaliban #seizechurchproperty #motherandbabyhomes Do you know what A Runner is in Ireland, where I’m from, in the year that I was born? A Runner is what the other children call a child, a boy or a girl,who keeps trying to run awayfrom the institution where they are being held prisoner […]

Read More DEFINITION OF A RUNNER #churchabuse #catholictaliban

Please join me tmro evening at link below for a live online reading of poems on the theme of religious oppression in Ireland that I have written over the last 3 decades. https://fb.me/e/UDcM7UFA

Read More FOR THE TUAM BABIES #poetry

“If you cannot find your way& you live nowhere each dayDig your roots and culture man”Benjamin Zepheniah, Roots & Culture Following their comprehensive victory over the Spanish-Irish Alliance at Kinsale in 1601, assisted by the traitor Earl Donogh O Brien, the Crown forces wished to press home their advantage & turn rout into annihilation. They […]

Read More EXTERMINATE THE HARPERS AND THE BARDS – HEATHER HUMPHREYS’ NEW DECREE

“When the racist imperialist John Milton, who believed the Gaelic Irish to be subhuman, wrote in the introduction to his great blank verse poem Paradise Lost that ‘rhyme is the relic of a barbarous age’ he was inadvertently alerting us to the effect that formal elements of art are determined by the needs, structures, and […]

Read More Deep Dive into Creativity & Class!

Most Irish people of mine & preceding generations have an abiding love for Jack Charlton. In an era when we were, as a people, downtrodden & directionless & still very much under the heel of the bishop & the gombeen, he gave the ordinary people of Ireland pride & fighting spirit & something unambigously heroic […]

Read More THE BEATINGS #jackcharlton #memories

As rulers & media, motivated by profit over people, continue efforts to downplay & distract from covid19 & brainwash us all into crowded shops, pubs, restaurants, public transport, schools & workplaces, it’s important that the rest of us take stock of the real & developing situation with the disease. 1) The spread of Covid19 is […]

Read More NOW IS THE WRONG TIME TO TRUST OUR RULERS – NOW IS THE TIME FOR MUTINY

Goldman Sachs, the investment bankers/pirates, released a report yesterday showing that mandatory mask-wearing in the US would save at least 5% of US GDP because of the huge effect it would have on preventing transmission of Covid19. 5 per cent of GDP is a significant figure – it could make the difference between a total […]

Read More US RULING CLASS THROWING FAR-RIGHT ALLIES OVERBOARD SO THEY CAN STAY AFLOAT?

Congratulations to my friend & comrade Eileen Ní Fhloinn on her appointment to the Seanad. It is long overdue that a Traveller held such a position in national politics. I know that Eileen will not only be a strong & fearless voice in representing Travellers, but on behalf of all the oppressed & exploited in […]

Read More GO ON EILEEN!!!!

The original phony war was a period of relative calm & peace at the outbreak of WW11, between September 1939 & May 1940, when very little fighting was done.  The impact of being at war was not felt by most people. Most people thought a peace deal would be worked out pretty soon & everything […]

Read More The Phony War Will Soon Be Over

A new paper in Nature, written by a team of Irish based archaeologists using latest methods, has added immensely to our understanding of the monumental period in Irish pre-history. In Newgrange, built around 3200 years ago was buried a God-king, son of an incestous union, & member of a small elite which ruled Ireland for […]

Read More NEWGRANGE DISCOVERIES REWRITE LITERARY HISTORY TOO

Back by popular demand, the legendary Words Allowed workshop for teenage writers returns to the festival in 2020 for the tenth year in a row. Please note that participants must be aged between 14 and 17 at the time of the workshop.Designed to build the creative confidence and expressive ability of teenagers with an interest […]

Read More ONLINE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS FOR TEENAGERS for €65

The Arts are not considered important enough to have their own section in the programme for government. Instead they are included alongside Justice, Online Safety, & Sport in a section entitled ‘Mission: Building Stronger & Safer Communities’.  Most artists, I presume, will be surprised that FFGREEN consider them in the same category as Judges, Prison […]

Read More GASLIGHTING FOR BEGINNERS – Some Remarks on the ARTS in The Programme For Government.

For 15 million years or so the role of the Primate/Hominid Genus, of which Homo Sapiens is the latest & possibly last iteration, had one job to do on Planet Earth – to defecate often and widely. In the interlocking system that is the earthly biosphere, we & ancestors were meant to be a simple […]

Read More Poetry, Shit, & The Metabolic Rift

In America, as in so many other countries, police stations are sanctuaries for the worst kind of criminals, including a huge ammount of serially violent & serial-killer cops. In Ireland, for example, the main job of the Gardai for many decades was to kidnap the infants & children of the poor & of Travellers & […]

Read More THE AMERICAN RISING IS JUST AND ITS SUCCESS IS OUR SUCCESS

Here’s my contribution to last nights campaigning meeting on the Arts hosted by People Before Profit, also featuring Emmett Kirwan, Jesse Jones, Alana Daly Mulligan, Bressie & others. Watch it at https://www.facebook.com/peopleb4profit/videos/1121761028216906/?vh=e&d=n

Read More STAND UP FOR THE ARTS

Lost Tribe of The Wicklow Mountains #1798 This week marks the 222nd anniversary of the great rising of the United Irishmen against the cruel & barbarous British Empire. This poem was inspired by events in the aftermath of our defeat, when a small group of Partisans took to the Wicklow Mountains to continue the struggle. […]

Read More Lost Tribe of The Wicklow Mountains #1798

Read More GET DRUNK, by Baudelaire

Read More The Harper’s Song From The Tomb of King Intef #yolo #exploringpoetry

Read More The Fable of The Mermaid & The Drunks, by Pablo Neruda #exploringpoetry

Read More Try To Praise The Mutilated World #exploringpoetry

Read More Exploring Poetry

It has taken Sinn Feīn 13 years to repent for a slur cast by a senior party official against a youngster who was beaten to death by a gang of bloodthirsty thugs. On the other leg, it has taken the FFG party, by way of their propaganda department in RTE, 13 years to uncover the […]

Read More No-one is smelling of roses. Everyone is smelling of corpses.

The Black & Tans were part of an international phenomenon of right-wing and fascist governments using irregular & paramilitary forces against left wing people’s revolts all over Europe. In Italy these became Mussolini’s blackshirts. In Germany they became Hitler’s Brownshirts. They locked up the commies, the jews, the gays, the artists… The descendants of the […]

Read More HOW NOT TO BE A BLACK AND TAN TODAY

Christy Moore’s sung version of my poem Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains, first released on the album Lily in 2016, features on the soundtrack of the new sports documentary- Coming Home – Ag Teacht Abhaile. “Paddy O’Leary was raised on a dairy farm in County Wexford, Ireland, and grew up playing on the local […]

Read More SOUNDTRACK OF THE WICKLOW MOUNTAINS

Above is the sad tale of two irish ‘natives’, long-ago broken into warring little pieces by poverty and oppression, verbally assaulting and inciting hatred against a person of colour going about their job. The bulk of the 150 or so strong fascist mob at the Dail last week was made up of people like these. […]

Read More THE IVORY COAST FREEDOM PARTY AT IT AGAIN

There were fairies in Ireland then, & I grew up there, thinking that fairy life was something that was inseparable from Irish life. Fairy stories would be told that were to me & to those around me as much realities of Irish life as are the stories that I now read in books called “Realities […]

Read More SHIPWRECKS, SEASHELLS & THE MOTHER OF GOD – The Dead Friends Part 3 #memoir #90s #westcork

All I can recall about Timmy the night of the party in his gaff in Dunmanway is him sitting in the corner with a fag burning away in his mouth & a flagon on the dresser beside him, neither smiling nor frowning, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with what any of the rest of us were […]

Read More The Dead Friends – Part 2 – Chill Out Timmy #memoir #westcork #90s #suicide

Millions of good people are feeling gutted this morning at the unexpected size of the Tory victory, & the sharpness of the blow to the electoral hopes of socialists. We are right to keen and grieve. The immediate effect of the victory will see an increased assault by the Tories on the living and working […]

Read More WHAT CAN THE IRISH LEFT LEARN FROM THE CORYBYN DEFEAT?

The party happened in a second floor bedsit in Dunmanway, West Cork, above a chipper on Castle Street, on a Friday night in October 1993, getting on for halloween but not quite.  This was four years since the Berlin Wall & the concurrent outbreak of hope all over Europe that led to a record vote […]

Read More The Dead Friends (part 1 of 5) #memoir #westcork #90s

I had my grandfather’s mouth.In famine he was told to thrive on hunger.He wouldn’t swallow it.They cut his tongue out. I had my father’s eyebrows.They arced like blackbird’s wingsand nearly touched across his brow.He kept his head down. I had my mother’s lips.She sang true songs of long ago.Now my lips are blue,she sews her’s […]

Read More An Only Child. (i.m. 18yo Zhao Liu Tao murdered by racists in Dublin in January 2002.)

Ever hear of the village of Myrsina. No? It’s a dying village in Northern Greece with a rapidly declining, elderly, infirm, & utterly demoralised population of 263. If & when it becomes entirely derelict, nobody apart from those tiny few directly concerned will even notice. “In 2001, every literary fiction title written in English sold […]

Read More Population 263 – the twilight of literary fiction.

(for Denis O Driscoll) A skinny, gummy old guy selling bric-a-brac splayed out upon sagging porta-tables along a boarded-up stretch of the East Village. He sits to one side overseeing, half-sunk into a well-frayed leather seat, chewing nothing but spittle and air, chewing and watching and ruminating. He has been hawker and watcher and ruminator […]

Read More New York Impossible #elegy #non-fiction #deathofapoet

Lucheni, the world’s greatest artist-assassin, princess slaughterer, shock-inventor and philosopher of police has returned from the dead and been hired by the Becoming Polis to destroy Europe. He has also been granted a small allowance for a general assistant. These are his terms for hiring: Good English Essential. Romance languages an advantage. You must be […]

Read More BECOMING POLIS #prophecy #destructionofeurope

This weather we all have our own way of being born. Wiccan ceremonies. Underwater cameras. Strap-on midwives. Laughing gas in near space orbit. You name it, somebody has got to be online streaming it. Well, I am a child of disaster like the rest of you, and this is my being-born story. It happened in […]

Read More Christmas Cracker #demonativity #blackmass #cocainexmas

Fran glimpses Mac the Handsome for the last time from a packed 145 moving, in fits and starts, through traffic-choked Donnybrook. A Spring afternoon in 2009; it has just stopped drizzling & to avoid gawking at the passengers opposite him, Fran sleeves the human moisture from the window and, to see what he can see, […]

Read More The Only Real Irish Poet in Dublin #missing #murder?

BYE BYE TO THE BY-ELECTIONS Good luck to the socialist candidates at today’s counts. The fact that low turnout favours the big parties, together with a lack of a grassroots movements such as the water charges to inspire working class people to come out and vote for a left candidate, means we do not expect […]

Read More BYE BYE TO THE BY-ELECTIONS

I support the farmers 100%. I admire the militancy & determination of their protest. I call on all my friends and comrades to come out and publicly support them. A win for them will be a win for all grassroots movements – they are showing us all how it’s done. We have a lot to […]

Read More VICTORY TO THE REBEL FARMERS

Part 3 of a 3 part essay – read part 1 here, part 2 here. The ancient novelty of Working Class literature Working-class literature, that is literature produced chiefly by & for the working class, comes in  many forms & in many mediums, many informal & ephemeral, others not so, but all defined by their […]

Read More On Being An Irish Working Class Writer – Part 3

By Dave Lordan. Read Part 2 here, part three here On the same Easter Week of the 1916 rising, a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition was held in Dublin. Chaplin, well-known to be a socialist as well as the world’s leading entertainer at the time, had a mass following among the Dublin working classes. Truth be […]

Read More On Being An Irish Working Class Writer Part 1