My name is Clare, I have two great loves. Words and Energy Healing, and I find, there is no greater energy medium than the vibration of words. I don’t have great accolades to report in the literary world, but I love the endless syllable surgery and eternal jigsaw puzzles words provide us with, lucky creatures that we are.  I have a little poem called ‘Snatched’ published in Dream Catcher. Last year 2022 I received a commendation for a shortlisted submission ‘Mountain of Desire’ to ‘The Frances Browne Literary Festival’. I continue to submit and submit to the magic of poetry and keep on keeping on. Self- publication collections include: 

‘Snap Shots in Ink’ and ‘ Invisible’

Life on Our North Coast                                     

So bespoke in its sculpting, a birthing clawed out, 

as mammoth ice incisors sliced out the likes of 

Glenariff Glen, freed up ice bound muscle, boulders,

flung off with wild abandon. And there they lie, strewn,

from Larne to Waterfoot. On a coastline that still bears 

the stretch marks of a long labour. 



How often beauty is wrought in the arms of destruction.

This, the foreplay for the coming of our kind.

Creating today’s green slopes that cleave to the rockface.

Where neolithic farmers and modern farmers alike

tilled the land. Where cows lazily chew the cud where

sheep and wild goats roam the ramparts. Here, the seeds

 of civilization, bedding in our culture of, fishing and 

farming on, land and sea.



Elsewhere deep disturbance beneath a fragile crust erupted, 

spewing out wrath of gigantic proportions. Molten lava runs, 

cooling, cooling, cooling in some kind of scientific mystery, into, 

Towering hexagonal basalt columns. Forever drawing, the curious, 

the traveller, the scientist, the poet, the storyteller, the muse.

The coastal crags yielding up the undying evidence of a 

blood thirsty past in castles and ruins, times the bastion 

of hope and shelter, times the spoils of war. 



Now a picturesque magnificence, the picture-perfect photo.

The classroom revisiting these horrors, from a safe distance.

Children cutting out cardboard swords, wearing paint-stained tunics. 

All health and safety precautions kept with, painstaking adherence.  

Medieval times now played out in mock battles and pageantry.

 Attempts to kindle ancient kinship, in embers that die in bloodless cries.



Beaches draw you to a peace, long stretches of sand lapped,

by oceanic waves breaking through mind grime, whittling down,

the edges of hard times. Then and now, at the White Rocks 

Portstewart Strand, Benone Beach, or your own sacred spot 

that supports your gait. Where you step out of ordered time and, realign. 

Life on the North Coast, is steeped crown high in music, myth,

mystery, drawn from a golden thread pulled through, the refined

seeping’s of centuries. The spirit moving forward.



A dilatant expansive chemistry, guardian of the old pursuant of the new.

Through mayhem, madness, murder, magic, majesty and mighty resilience.

All melded together by a culture, a people who were born, or drawn to, 

Life on Our North Coast. No longer for conquering, But, held now,

 in gentle hands, to tend to care for, to honour. Warriors battling a new 

disarmed foe. Here on the home front, 21st Century style 

 We hold our peace. Harness our collective good. 



It is time to nurture our environment. Usher our precious 

North Antrim Coast into an unsure future.