🧑‍🎓✨ Congratulations to Professor Paul Perry, Director of the UCD Mary Lavin Centre for Creative Writing, whose new work, Pity About You, has been named the Irish Times Poem of the Week. Paul is an award-winning poet, novelist and screenwriter, winner of the Hennessy Prize for Irish Literature, and Professor of Creative Writing at UCD School of English, Drama and Film, where he directs the Creative Writing Programme. --- Pity about you, how the city lights look different now - Dublin, the rain falling like we’d forgotten it could. I think you said something, but I wasn’t listening, I keep thinking if I could just take it easy, let the hours unfold without this tug of knowing, I’d remember your laughter better, how it always came just when I needed it. The room is quiet now, but the sound of you is there. I think of the way you would smile when I asked, “Are we lost?” The way you’d look around; the answer just out of reach. No explanation needed. Just a glance. And I’d follow you. Now, it’s only me, walking through the silence of what used to be - the way the city holds its breath just beyond the noise I’m always trying to outrun. Like how you slip between the words I can’t quite find and the space you leave behind. --- ✍️ @PaulPerryWriter | @HumanitiesUCD irishtimes.com/culture/books…