It's seems years since I managed to set up this blogger account and a couple of people have pointed out the obvious that I haven't actually posted anything since my opening shot (across a critic's bows?) The main reason, of course, is that I keep forgetting my password. Now comes a missive from head office (one of the stately ships of Irish poetry, apparently) that we poets need to put it about more in cyberspace, so here goes with (very late) notice of an event that I'm involved in:

Tomorrow, Friday 29th Feb, I'm taking a leap year leap into the strange world of translation; At 6 pm in the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, there will be a Serata di Poesia (pronounced po-es-SEE-a, I'm told). It will feature 4 italian poets, Andrea Cortellessa, Antonella Anedda, Maria Attanasio and Riccardo Duranti, ably supported by poet/translators Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Jamie McKendick with a brief supplementary versioning of three Duranti poems by myself. I keep misremembering Mahon's line from the Last of The Fire Kings - something about "striking over the fields not knowing a word of the language". In truth Duranti is an excellent translator of his own work so I'm a bit nervous of what he will think of my versions. There probably should be the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, "do no harm". More to follow, if I survive....