A poet, a veteran, a cancer survivor and a father — and those four things decide how everything here is written. Love, life, death, and the ordinary struggle in between, read in my own voice over the country I happen to be standing in.
The player runs the channel in order, so whatever went up this week is what plays first.
I never know which one will go. The ones below left the channel on their own — sent between strangers, read at services, printed and framed by people I will never meet.
Written for men who have been told they are coping. Movember asked me to lend it to their campaign, and it became the piece men send to each other instead of saying the thing out loud.
Do not mourn me. The funeral poem — read at wakes across the world, and the print people ask for most.
Watch →Written for survivors of domestic violence. The one I get letters about.
Watch →Fatherhood, and being followed about the place by two small people.
Watch →What it takes, and how long it actually takes, which is longer than anyone tells you.
Watch →A poem I hope nobody needs, written for the day somebody does.
Watch →I’ll see you when I see you. The shortest one here, and the one people quote back to me.
Watch →Poetry did not come first. It came after a diagnosis, when I had no way of putting down what I was carrying and no intention of saying it aloud to anyone. The channel is where the poems get said aloud anyway — filmed wherever I am, in whatever light Ireland is offering that day.
There is no schedule. A poem goes up when it is finished and not before.