The title of this blog post should be said in a Belfast accent for full effect. This blog post is about some highlights in my week. It’s an indulgence under the guise of keeping it for memory. It’s two days since Alder and Gibb at The Royal Court Theatre. It has placed a trail of depth charges and timed them to go off at inappropriate moments. That’s a lot of bangs for my buck. Anyone who reads poetry on stage should see it and read the article Theatre of Reality written by Tim Crouch. Everyone should see it.
It’s been an exhibition week too. The final touches have been made to mine – “Superman was a Foundling” at The Foundling Museum. It’ll be launched on 24th June and I’m looking forward to seeing friends there. I visited an exhibition in Norwich to read at the first venue of The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition tour of a selection of photographic portraits of poets. 
I flew across to Verbal Arts Centre in Northern Ireland to work with young people for a WW1 writing commission called Blood. They used Derry Londonderry as source material which gave me opportunity to see the city through their eyes. This relates to WB Yeats An Irish Airman Forsees his Death. The student in the picture on the right showed his skills and his tattoo.
I attended Alder and Gibb, the play I mentioned earlier, with Becket actor and close friend Lisa Dwan. It’s tautology of a sort (or not “tautology of a sort” at all) but worth saying all the same: If “All the world’s a stage” where does the audience sit? You couldn’t do better than sit in the Royal Court to find out the answer to that question. You may question whether you are an audience or not. You will get closer to the action. Be thrilled.
That’s my week. Things are looking up. The work’s always there. It’s about my capacity to enjoy it. Things are looking up. It’s good to look up isn’t it, at things? The sky is never the same. Minute by minute it changes. It’s good to look up things too, like spelling and grammar. I find grammar challenging. It’s always changing like the sky. The play changes too. It doesn’t leave you. It evolves inside you like the poem each time it’s read. Evolution. The award winning journalist Mark McFadden said to me of Northern Ireland: “It’s evolving – from revolution to evolution”. That’s life.