Review of 2008

Well, not a bad year all told on the writing front.
The highlight for me was definitely winning the Strokestown International Political Satire Competition with "The Poverty Trap." Honestly it was like the Oscars and the shock when Margaret Hickey announced my name was only too genuine. I had a smile permanently attached to my face for a week after that!
This was followed closely by gaining second prize in the Boyne Writers' Swiftian Satire competition with "Global Warming? What Global Warming?" Earlier in the year I had the honour of having two entries in the shortlist of six for the Kilkenny Swift Satire Poetry competition - namely "Tattoos" and "In Defence of Texters."
The year was rounded off nicely with another shortlisting when "On Jackson's Bridge Lock" made the final ten in the inaugural Attleborough competition.
"Country Lane" was published in "Revival" and "Time's Joke" was published in "Boyne Berries IV" and two lighter pieces "On Knockmaroon Hill" and "The Cotton Man" came out in "Phoenix Ink 2."
I also wrote a couple of short stories and set them off but not much luck there, I'm afraid!
My Musings column continued in "The Community Voice," for whom I also write the Arts pages and do occasional articles. I also contributed poems and a serialised football love story "A Tolka Romance" to Shelbourne FC's matchday programme throughout the season which ended so cruelly in November.
I gave up on www.footballpoets.org during the year. Too time-consuming and one smart-arsed commentator's boorish remarks meant it was giving me no pleasure.
During the year I discovered villanelles, terzanelles and science-fiction poetry, which have led to some rather enjoyable experiments.
An advert for 5,000 authors wanted to be published for free on YouWriteOn.com led to my Complete Community Voice Musings (2003 - 2008) being published at the end of the year, though they neglected to tell me! Its out there on Amazon if anybody wants to order it, though as I haven't seen it myself yet, I can't recommend it!
I hope to self-publish my first book of verse shortly - tentatively titled "The Flash of Orange" with a foreword by John Creedon - and then begins the job of flogging it to make money to publish the next one!
And so we boldly go forth into 2009....