J.H.I.S.S

At the John Hewitt summer school. Memory doesn’t flicker 

behind my eye but I feel the sense I was there, the sense of wonder 

meeting people like Pat mc Cabe, Cherry Smyth, Dermot Seymour 

and  Alice, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Billy Collins, etc. 

I’m not name-dropping, you know who you are? I miss you, 

I really had a wonderful life driving around the country setting up 

creative writing workshops. Megan Johnston this might be just a job 

for you but for me, it was a part-full-time vocation, you can sack me over 

and over for saying fuck you in an email to a friend, you will never get rid

Of me you didn’t sack me I fucked your triviality. I Know better.

Poetry like sunshine is free. My heart doesn’t belong to you, I was gonna say

‘BITCH’ but  I won't stoop, I’ll swoon. Thank you all for the magic, for a year

Or so I set up the verbal arts in Portyup not down. For a time I linked Derry-

Dublin to Craigavon, Eden-avon Magic through poetry you live on in me.