I am writing this Post from a new home.

We have exchanged the woods and swooping Hills of Surrey for the heaths and lakes on the edge of the glorious South Downs.

New home. New School. Packing up. Moving on. Moving on up.

Actually 39 steps up.

Which seemed, when we first viewed the apartment, a good way to get the heart pumping and the blood pressure lowering each time those 39 steps were climbed.

But. But. Carrying 2200 books up those 39 steps proved a little more than a toning exercise.

Consider the equation.

2200 books times 39 steps equals one very tired hombre!

I’m not even contemplating the Vinyl issue.

I never have trouble sleeping.

But last night you’d have to measure the time between my head hitting the pillow and me lying in the arms of Morpheus in micro seconds.

A full fathom five sleep caressed by…

Two Thousand and Sixteen

2016 was a monumental year.

I married my soulmate, had the honeymoon of a lifetime in Paris and New York, bought a new home in a lovely part of Scotland, and moved in just in time for Christmas.

All in all, probably the best year of my life.

And although this blog (at certain points last year) was used as a means by which to focalize where I am, where I’ve been, my ups and downs, all that guff, everything has now settled; I feel happy, supported, balanced. In short, I’m burning to do some work.

Now, I’m aware I’ve had time off before and that I’ve used the phrase “I’m back” on a couple of occasions, but now really is the time for me. It’s been a long road I’ve trekked and everything in my life is now as it should be (and how I…

Afric McGlinchey – Four Poems…………………..Contemporary Irish Poetry Index

Afric McGlinchey

A ‘blow-back’ after growing up in Zimbabwe, Irish-born Afric McGlinchey’s début collection, The lucky star of hidden things (Salmon Poetry, 2012), was also published in Italian by l’Arcolaio. Her work has been translated into five languages. Winner of the 40th Hennessy poetry award among others, she was selected for the 2014 Italo-Irish Literature Exchange. Her work has been studied in the Irish Leaving Certificate and she has read at the Troubadour (London), Harare International Arts Festival (Zimbabwe), Iowa Book Festival (USA) and Poetry Africa (Durban, South Africa). Selected as one of Ireland’s ‘Rising Poets’ by Poetry Ireland Review, Afric was awarded an Arts bursary to write her Forward-nominated collection, Ghost of the Fisher Cat. She is a freelance editor and lives in West Cork, Ireland.

Afric’s website can be found at www.africmcglinchey.com

Ghost of the Fisher Cat

It’s been a funny year so far – in fact funny is probably the wrong word – dangerous might be better. Yes, it seems to be developing into my year of living dangerously! It began with a fall in late February when I was on my way to a work meeting. I was ambushed by a small variation in floor level and tripped and fell onto my left arm. When I looked up it was into the faces of four horrified students who promptly rescued me. I’d forgotten how humiliating it can feel to fall over in a public place, especially when you can’t immediately scramble to your feet and brush it off with a laugh. The students were lovely and I was eventually restored to a vertical position and taken to the medical centre and then sent for an x-ray.

What seemed at first to be a torn ligament…