Update

While I am receiving submissions of work to be published on here, I will keep the content coming by posting my own practice work and poems written by family members in the past...

My grandmother, Eileen McGough was a truly individual working-class writer who continued to battle for success despite major disability, loss and illness. She dedicated her life to her family and always kept her sense of ambition despite difficult times. She was fiercely intelligent and stoically tough. She died during the early impact of COVID-19 last year and is sadly missed. Her wisdom and spirit lives on and we are lucky to have some of her writing to look back at too. 

AN OLD MAN DIES by Eileen McGough

He lived to ninety years but the cancer was eating

his gut and in the dark of the night he cried

'I don't want to die'.

'He's had a good life', they said.

In the light of the day in morphia dreams he fell to the 

depths of a cave; it was dark and strange; he cried

'I don't want to die'.

'He's had a good life', they said.

His past flickered by, peopled by ghosts stretching

their arms for his soul; he cried

'I don't want to die'.

'He's had a good life', they said.

His daughter tidied his rumpled bed and mopped his

sweating brow, bent close and he whispered

'I don't want to die'.

'He's had a good life', they said.

They buried him on a winter's day and coldly shone

the sun; his daughter murmured through her tears

'He didn't want to die'.

'He had a good life', they said.