If you do listen to the RTE Arena special on Radio 1 on Bank Holiday Monday evening that was recorded last night in Dublin Castle you might hear Sean Rocks asking me about the one poem I’ve ever written that escaped into the real world…

I had been asked to paint the giant egg above for a charity auction the Jack & Jill Foundation were running last year. With no artistic training (or aptitude!) whatsoever I spray painted it gold and then thought it looked a little dull.

So, I took one of the many, many poems that I’ve written in scattered notebooks over the years and asked my wife (who has lovely handwriting unlike my own) to scroll it around the egg. Eventually it sold for €1200 and sits in the foyer of the Golden Irish Egg company in Monaghan.

On the show, Sean then asks me could I recite any of it and, of course, could I remember even the first line? No.

To be honest, even if I’d had it to hand would I have read it on Radio 1’s arts show flanked by 2 of Ireland’s best known contemporary poets? Not on your nelly.

Well, in case you were interested, this is what’s on the egg…

 

Phoenix

She is the summer sun,

Falling blue, gently but relentlessly

Against eternal sandstone,

She is the reason dead green shutters have undone,

Flung everything within them to the day,

She makes ruins glow,

Folds shadows under waiting stone,

Even, unbeknownst to her, from half a world away.