Sometimes it feels like no-one is listening, no-one cares if you have written a poem or not; and then you sit in a room, listen to the work of other poets, read some of your own, and it all feels worthwhile. Full disclosure: I haven’t written a poem in ages. My weekly Substack posts are my entire current writing output, and have been for some time, apart from the notebook-writing that never meets the world, or might do so in a different form a long time later. I am taking a week off posting on Substack while I recover from a minor operation, and have vowed to work up some poems, yet here I am posting on my website instead.
Left to right: Charlotte Ansell, Rosie Johnston and Maria C. McCarthy at Faversham Literary Festival 2026.
A few days ago, I joined Charlotte Ansell and Rosie Johnston to read from Learning to be Irish at the Poetry Hub, Faversham Literary Festival. I wasn’t quite the full Maria, weary and sore after my op three days before, but I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. What wonderful company to be in, and I was also pleased to catch Mat Riches’ set on arrival at the Guildhall. Mat kindly writes:
We stayed on to see the day’s excellent compere, Rosie Johnston, sandwiched between Charlotte Ansell and Maria McCarthy. While it’s fair to say each set came with a content warning all three delivered sets of incredible power, all were deeply moving, and more importantly fine poetry…You don’t always get all three.
You can read the full post here. Mat Riches says he lost money on the gig, and we poets often do. My own big box of books for sale remained untouched. As someone once wrote, ‘There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s poetry in money’. Though I do remember the Simon Armitage poem, ‘Ten Pence Story‘.
It’s hard, promoting a book by an indie press, as many of us were last Saturday. I don’t venture far from the Medway Towns for such events, either as a participant or as a reader. I am hoping to go further, if I can find some reading opportunities.
I sent Ian Duhig a copy of Learning to be Irish, and he kindly posted this comment (see pic) on Instagram, about my poem ‘Villanelle at the Falls Hotel’.
I guess if I am ‘adept in a demanding technical form’, as Ian Duhig writes, and ‘a particularly fine poet’, as John O’Donoghue states on the back of my book, I ought to get off this website and on with drafting some new poems.
You can order my book direct from this website, or the usual online booksellers: Learning to be Irish
Please do contact me if you would like to invite me to any events: maria(at)medwaymaria.co.uk
