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Poetry Upfront: A Note of Resignation

When I conceived of a poetry series in the summer of 2005, the motivation behind it was to create a space in which people interested in reading and writing poems would use as some kind of refuge. I knew there was an interest in poetry but little in the way of events catering for it in north County Dublin, and I felt I had the energy to provide an ongoing forum. Around the same time I became aware that Jane Carroll, unknown to me before then, had a similar idea, so we pooled our efforts to come up with a venture we called Poetry Upfront. In the (nearly) five years that have passed my priorities in terms of writing have shifted. Jane and I were never absolutely compatible in our poetics or our attitudes towards things such as the writing practice and editorial/curatorial input: but these differences energised our venture. As our sessions were coming and going the excitement first soared, then peaked and then began to wane. As far as I'm concerned we reached the peak around the middle