I am busy editing my poetry manuscript. I want a book of about 40 poems which will amount to some 80 pages or so.
There is a certain difficulty lies in deciding which poems to include, and which to leave out. For me, in the end it comes down to a feeling of which like each others company. They were written over the past eight years.
I have a series of some seventeen or so - The Invisible Series - written about my response to my father's struggle with stomach cancer during 2007. Another poem is about the birth of my grandson, Michael; my welcoming him to the world. Other poems in the collection are elegies to relatives and neighbours here in my village in Ireland. And some are childhood poems.
There is much about loss and memory in this collection, I think because I have now lost almost all my relations from that generation before me - parents, aunts, uncles, as well as grandparents. One becomes more and more orphaned with time. But writing can help retain that connection, if only through spirit.
There are other poems that don't fit into any category. These I regard as the fun poems, some are plays on words, such as those titled, 'Pig Ignorant', 'Blue Plums and Stilts', and 'Look The Other Way'.
A number of poems have featured in both writing group and county anthologies and many have been read at various venues round the county, (mostly for charity), notably 'Hailing The Oystercatcher', 'Old Acquaintance', 'Belonging', and 'Elegy to The San Nicholas Prodanelli'.
One poem in the collection is about The Celtic Tiger, another about saving turf, another about a young man who wandered into the Alaskan wilderness alone and died.

The title will be 'The Ordinary Miracle'. Just what I need at the moment. It will be launched this year on Achill Island, most likely in July/August.
Tight lines.