Nick Laird

Driving from Durrus to Ballydehobto see for myself the family farmhousethey burned my grandmother out of

a hundred years ago the hedgerowon my right gives way to intermittentflashes of the lovely spangle of the bay

we leave behind to turn inland and eastfor the townland Lisheennacreagh,which means a little ringfort in a field.

                   ...

What do I have to report?He hands off his rucksack                as we exit the elevatorand plucks the key from my handto take off at a clip down the corridorswerving now                and then out of sheer joy.Even the way he eats I kind of find           ...

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In the midst of this lifelike grief I am stood at the cutlery drawer, and keep on standing here as if I might remember what I came in for, but then I think of something else, and head upstairs only to forget what that was and find myself

eyeing the unmade bed, the bookshelves, the snow still coming down outside and realise then, and lift a stack of printer paper and the safety scissors...

I took my daughter back to County Tyrone at the end of June to see my parents, and to spend some time with my sister and her children, who were also visiting. We did the usual: gorged on apple pancakes, spent a long time in Poundland, and trekked through Drum Manor Forest Park in the rain, dispensing bread to our children to feed the ducks, just like our parents used to do with us. And we...

Louis MacNeice’s influence is everywhere in contemporary poetry, in its forms and in its forms of engagement. Certain strands in his work – questions of identity, nationality, responsibility – became, with the advent of the Troubles, critically important to a celebrated generation of Northern Irish poets, poets like Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and Muldoon. These writers...