Coming Up To Oxford

The cancelled ferry booking hit him hard.
Hard for a man who took such things for signs.
An omen of the shape of things to come ?
On deck the Stranraer wind had left him numb.

And shown his rooms, exhausted he'd dismissed
the practiced airs and first impressions now.
So much concerned to keep his native pride,
dignity returned with sleep denied.

Unpacking, something slowly made him smile.
A sense of Cavehill, ironed and neatly piled.
For tea, a 'Big Mac' 'mongst the spires and domes,
as far away from Brideshead as from home.

^

Biography

Paul Burgess was born in Shankill Road, Belfast in 1959. Much of his poems, song-writing and academic publication draw on his interest in the Protestant working class community of Northern Ireland and their cultural identity.

He worked in Short Brothers Aircraft manufacturers before leaving to pursue studies in English Literature at the University of Ulster, under the tutelage of the late James Simmons. He later attended Oxford University and University College Cork, where he was awarded a PhD.

He has spent periods, variously as schoolteacher; Community Relations Officer in local government in Northern Ireland; and researcher for The Opsahl Commission of Inquiry into political progress in Northern Ireland.

As a songwriter and performer with his band, Ruefrex, he released seven singles and two albums. Most notably perhaps, the scathing commentary on American funding for Republican violence, 'The Wild Colonial Boy' which reached the UK top thirty.

His first book, A Crisis of Conscience: - moral ambivalence and education in Northern Ireland is published by Avebury and his second, The Reconciliation Industry: - Community relations, community identity & social policy in N. Ireland. by The Edwin Mellen Press.

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