I’m delighted to be reading at the Hay Festival in Kells on the 25th June. The festival looks absolutely brilliant and well worth a look on their web site: Hay Festival Kells. I have a whole hour to myself. I’m under no illusions that reading poetry for an hour would be torture for anyone so I’m […]
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In the Nationalist
I was delighted to have my launch featured in the Carlow Nationalist. Text is below the photograph A BOOK of poetry about a generation of Jews who emigrated to Ireland from Lithuania during the late 19th century was the inspiration behind a new book of poetry by Simon Lewis. Simon, who founded and is the […]
Belfast Book Festival
I had a great time in Belfast for the Belfast Book Festival where I read with Michael J Whelan and Stephanie Conn as part of a special Doire Press Poetry evening. We were introduced by the very talented Stephen Connolly and there were about 25 people in the audience. A special treat for me was […]
South Terrace Synagogue: March 2016
South Terrace Synagogue, the main synagogue in Cork, used by much of the community of Jewtown, closed its doors in February 2016. The building was deconsecrated before being handed over to the Church of the Seventh Day Adventists. While it is understandable that the building had to be gutted due to it being in terrible disrepair, it […]
Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas
The Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas is one of the highlights of my festival year. Rozz and I have never missed one since it opened 5 years ago. Emrys missed 3 of the 5 due to not being born but he’s had a 100% record since then. This year was extra special for me […]
In the media…
I’ve been in the newspapers a bit this week. Here are two articles where I’m mentioned: The Irish Times and The Carlow Nationalist. I believe the Carlow Nationalist is going to do a story on my launch next week so looking forward to that.
Looking forward to Borris
I’m looking forward to sharing the stage with Rachel Mennies at the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas. We will be appearing together at the Eason tent on Sunday 12th around 1:30pm. Rachel is an American poet from Philadelphia and teaches writing at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards […]
On Writing Jewtown
This article appeared in the Irish Times yesterday. Thanks to Martin Turner for publishing the article. – * – I became a poet by accident. When my wife, Rozz, and I moved to Carlow during the Celtic Tiger years, we knew nobody. Both of us dabbled in writing so we decided to join a local […]
Grace Wells’ Launch Speech
I was very lucky to have chosen such an inspiring person to launch my poetry collection. Grace Wells, very kindly, allowed me to publish the speech she made about Jewtown at the launch. Firstly I want to say how very honoured I feel to be launching Simon’s beautiful book: Jewtown. Honoured and moved. This isn’t […]
My pile
This is becoming a bit of a backlog. Got a pressie of Louise Gluck’s poems from Rozz for my launch as Gluck was the first poet that made me like poetry. It looks like it will be a while before I get to her!