To Mega Therion (and beyond!)

Where to begin? If I go right back to my very early teens I remember developing a great interest and fascination with Irish and Egyptian mythology. While the latter was more in the context of archaeological interest, the former held a deeper attraction for me. I was reading The Táin about the same time a

Ghost Days

So, yesterday was a bit of a ‘ghost day’ for me. Haunted. A past incident I was involved in unfolded around me. Encircling. Containing. Actuality dissolving into the early 1990s. The battleship grey of a Tangi landrover dully defying the sharp blue of the morning sky. Dark blast marks radiating out like teeth from where

The Shrapnel Podcast

‘Shrapnel is the podcast that looks at pieces of the past in Northern Ireland. Hosted by Sam McIlwaine and Gareth Mulvenna, we aim to bring you the voices and conversations that aren’t given a platform by the mainstream media.’



STRAY BULLETS EPISODE SEVEN The Gulf In The Eye Of The Other In this episode I recount a sniper attack upon a joint army / RUC foot patrol in West Belfast. To better relate the incident I have characterised both state and non-state actors. I have also used a narrative framework to provide a clearer

ALL LIFE IS NOISE

mind going backwards to the IED – the one by the path not the car not the firing-point not the one that took a soldier’s face so many – a mind made of sepia voices wrapped in newsprint washed away yesterdays red streams through barren field-dressings drown my mind. Politics is just noise in my

STRAY BULLETS PODCAST

I’ve started recording a podcast about my experiences during the Northern Ireland Troubles. From all the positive feedback I hope to have ‘hit my stride’ with the third episode – The Dialogue of Shadows.

Violet Street

We strode together once you and I along this same street aye side by side almost as if keeping stride yet in opposite directions  even as we faced the same horizon   separated by yards that stretched to eternity. free to wander our prisons of freedom free to wonder our charge of treason we try to

Heart of the Sun

Have you seen light stolen from the day veined by wire and shaped into a heart of clay by hands unhallowed couched in prayer to brutal gods they bring their heart into the mass who by its flare are broken into bread and pour their wine onto the street yearning for an end of days

Stygian Roads

Stygian Roads:

The Troubles’ haunted past

Renaming Old Wounds

Northern Ireland: contested name, contested soil, contested blood. The land Irish Republicanism sought to reduce to ash and bone. The land Unionism sought to stamp its dominance upon the throat of the Fenian and the usurper. Arise, the infant dead, the garroted, the bomb-blasted, the cripple, the widow, the orphan. Arise, arise into the lights