Jim Ward is published in various publications for poetry and stories in English and Irish. His play Just Guff won an award at Galway Fringe Festival, 2017 and has toured nationally. His poem 2016 Proclamation was runner-up in the Galway Bay FM/Thoor Ballylee Yeats Poetry Challenge, 2017. A second play Three Quarks was performed live via Zoom on Joyce’s birthday last by The James Joyce Centre in Dublin. His memoir piece Begging from Beggars is in The 32, edited by Paul McVeigh, 2021. He finished a first novel during the first lockdown and is a published cartoonist. His  Orange Sunset came 3rd in the Bobby Sands Creative Writing Contest, 2021.

Black Pudding

For some reason, it’s thought of as breakfast – in among the sausages and rashers,
though we ate it for our tea.
In the days before dinner got moved to evening time.
Black and rich and filling.
The trace of violence in it – like blood rare steak
satisfying some primordial instinct still with us.
‘From pig’s blood’ I once explained to a visitor
who seemed unshaken. American of course,
not squeamish to hunting or to ‘manning up’ for the kill.
Although reviled by some people sensitive to cruelty,
in some places a delicacy – special guilds dedicated to making it.
Nice eaten washed down with something – strong tea or perhaps a wheaty beer
like the Germans enjoy their würst.
Better, even, after a hungry ramble in winter sunlight for a couple of hours
when hunger is earned and –
like tae drunk on the bog – ‘good sauce’.