What others
have written
about the work
I did not set out to be written about. The poems went out, men started sending them to each other, and the questions followed — about the diagnosis, the army, and why any of it ends up in verse.
Interviews, readings and comment on men’s mental health, grief, and life after a cancer diagnosis.
Press enquiriesA journey to healing
through poetry
Movember asked me to lend them a poem for their November campaign, and we ended up talking about the whole of it — the diagnosis, the years of not saying anything, and the 22A: a veterans’ community named for the twenty-two men lost to suicide every day.
We brought the “Bro Check” out of the army with us — a habit of asking, plainly, whether a man is alright. “Gaming offers us a space to unwind, connect, and support each other.”
You’re a good man, they say,Watch the poem →
and I hope you believe it one day.
Elsewhere in print
Publisher & catalogueBeen written about somewhere I’ve missed? Send it on and it goes up here.
The short version
James Mooney — The Wandering Paddy — is an Irish poet, author and voiceover artist from Dublin. A former soldier and a cancer survivor, he began writing after a diagnosis and now writes about love, loss and grief in plain words. The Book of Truths was published by Black & White Publishing in October 2024; Love as Existence, Not Decoration follows in November 2026.