Terry McDonagh

A writer begins 'where all the ladders start' even if he doesn't know where he is going or what this journey is going to ask of him. It is an exciting, exacting journey, real and symbolic where the artist moves freely between the conscious world of daily grind and the semi-conscious, veiled world of the imagination. In special moments the veil is lifted and the two worlds become one.

But writing can be a chore - hard work - an endless maze of rejection slips and glimmers of hope: a poem gets published and all is forgiven; a book comes out and there's joy and hosanna all along the imaginary high streets. Terry McDonagh's literary life began to find expression in Hamburg in the early nineties when he came into contact with Olaf Hille Verlag. Prior to that it was a patchwork of unfinished and occasionally published poems.