Work in Progress

At present  I have two major works in progress. I am seeking a literary agent to represent me on these.

I’m working on a book of essays on sport: what it means, especially to me. The book, provisionally titled A Place Beyond Words is part memoir, part cultural study, exploring of one of the world’s main consumer products. Chapters (Essays) on the following, in relation to sport and my experiences of it: Emotion, Communion, Identity, The Collective, Family, Magic/Immortality, Forever, Religion, Not War, Moments, For Everyone, Loss, Heroic, Dreaming, Memory, Art (Story), Tension, Beauty, Toxic Masculinity, Time, A Language of Its Own, Meritocracy, Transcendence, Escape, Sport as Sport, Opium of The Masses, Sport is Nothing, Sport is Everything,

I also address the question why sport is so under-represented in fiction in Ireland – of all countries, with our love of story and our obsession with sport.

The title of the book comes from this incredible quote by Joyce Carol Oates on boxing:

The text [in boxing] is improvised in action; the language a dialogue between the boxers of the most refined sort (one might say as much neurological as psychological: a dialogue of split-second reflexes) in a joint response to the mysterious will of the audience which is always that the fight will be a worthy one … something profound is happening, and it is happening in a place beyond words.

I am also working on the early stages of a literary novel at present, provisionally entitled: The Window. This is partly a coming-of-age novel set in an Irish University in the 1980s, and partly the story of a dying man coming to terms with facing his end, in a hospice in London, with the help of two young volunteers.