I am haunted by an omen of crows. A pair have taken to the trees behind my house, waking me each morning with their coughs and caws. I can never spy their invisible antagoniser. It’s likely to be one of the many neighbourhood cats; maybe a camouflaged city fox. Or…

My washing machine threatens to rattle this house to the ground. There’s no escape. Wherever you go, its hum hunts you down. It nestles neatly into your ribs from far across the room. Transforms your voice into a soft tremble. Rocking mugs from the side-board to the floor, and shaking…

Hot sand sears my soles, as I dance across the growing desert between me and the sea. The tide’s on its way out, littering the beach with sticks and shells which loiter beneath the surface. Lying in wait. Only when my blundering feet fall from above do they strike, scratching…

Phantom bells toll, somewhere in the invisible distance. Their echoes mark the hour — the passing of another in an already fleeting day. On government-approved lockdown walks, I scour the skyline, searching for some sign of a bell tower or church. I find none. The bells ring from a distant…

My desk rattles with the sounds of infinite trinkets, crowding what is supposed to be my ‘writing space’. My mother would be disappointed, but I can’t help myself. Each small curiosity or icon is a reminder of life, propped up and displayed in an amateur ritual of remembrance. They are…

The river Po steadily flows; a laborious affair, driving eastward across northern Italy. It spits up from the Earth in the Cottian Alps and slowly descends, ending its life in the distant Adriatic sea. Its journey from creation to conclusion is long, drawn out by the life it encounters and…

(ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JULY 2020) Language has the power to determine how we perceive the world. Language is used to inform, inspire and empower, but can as easily be used to influence, control or repress. While the Covid-19 pandemic is undeniably a crisis of health, a crisis of language is looming…

A Summer Snapshot of the Aran Islands. I’m standing on an island, looking back, staring out over a series of smaller islands which lead inevitably back to the mainland. Behind and below me the wild Atlantic roars onto the rocks, untameable. But it’s peaceful — one of the most peaceful…

You’d do well to find yourself so lost that you end up in Kinnitty by mistake. Most who pass through use it as a waypoint; a marker by which they discern how far they are from their final destination. Even if you take the time to slow down, in the…