Spark in the Dark / 25 February 2020

HOZIER, FATHER TED AND ME

Many moons ago, when I was gigging more frequently and reciting poems and performing sketches, I was lucky enough to be part of a regular night called the Monthly General Meeting, which was a showcase for the most inventive and willdy wonderful creative minds in Ireland. On one of the particular shows, I was on […]

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Inspiration / 1 January 2020

Begin

A new day, a new year, a new decade begins. Grateful for a remarkable year with it’s share of ups and downs, but always an amazing journey, where I have done things I have never dreamed possible, and met people who have shaped my life immeasurably. Thanks to you all for every moment shared. Let’s […]

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Inspiration / 31 December 2019

At the end of the year

Farewell 2019. Here is a beautiful poem I came across again recently that says everything more eloquently than I can. At the end of the yearJohn O’Donohue The particular mind of the oceanFilling the coastlineā€™s longingWith such brief harvestOf elegant, vanishing wavesIs like the mind of timeOpening us shapes of days. As this year draws […]

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Artchive / 14 November 2019

A handful of haikus

Many years ago I received the wonderful book The Haiku Year as a gift. It is a collection of non-traditional haikus from 7 friends (including Michael Stipe of REM) all of whom decided to write a haiku every day for a year. It is a beautiful and sometimes surprising collection of short poems that I […]

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Inspiration / 18 October 2018

Rutger Hauer and how poetry makes us human

Rutger Hauer is a cool dude and, as an actor, is probably most well known for his role as the replicant Batty in the sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner. I was recently reading an old interview he gave to the AV Club (the wonderful pop-culture and media magazine operated by The Onion) and spoke about some […]

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Artchive / 11 June 2018

URBAN FUTURE COWBOY

Over the years I recorded my father, Tony Ryan, reading a host of different poems and written passages of mine. I still have hours of footage that I intend to create a longform piece with, but here was a quick assembly of one such recording I made, using some timelapse footage I shot from the […]

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Creation Station / 11 April 2018

The Sentence – a poem

I love words. It is the world I am most happy in. And poetry is my favourite written form. Some years ago I was asked to perform some poetry at a spoken word night in Dublin and I decided to play with the very idea of writing itself, and the end result was this poem […]

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Spark in the Dark / 12 March 2018

The Hole There In The Floor – a poem

This is a poem I started writing when I lived in New York and was starting to forge a really keen interest in poetry, and specifically performance poetry. The poem was supposed to be a snapshot of the punters I saw in a bar in Manhattan called Tom & Jerry’s. But the original draft was […]

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