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Mike Boyle
I am from Drummuck near Maghera. I attended Trench Belfast in the mid-1960s and Seamus Heaney was one of my teachers. I am now working on a new play about N.Ireland in 1956. Would you believe it that as a "nipper" I was a Christmas Rhymer in South Derry and that then a few years later I took part in the famous mummering tradition of Newfoundland?
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Counting
by Mike Boyle
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Willie came to Philadelphia from Mayogall
And he never went home at all.
He still imagined every day
That he was only a stone's throw from cow dung.
Part of him clung to the moss lane.
My uncle Barney told me of Willie's reading habits
He devoured the Coleraine Constitution for news of
Cattle prices in Kilrea , pig trade in Maghera .
How much lambs were in Draperstown?
Then he updated that final score sheet
With a smudgy biro Willie circled obituaries he knew.
In that North east Philly apartment room
A nail held fading yellowing paper sheets
His own spread sheet count. A list of names
Of all who had died in the parish since he had left.
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