There is a statue of James Joyce in Dublin, Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize, and Frank McCourt got the Pulitzer. None of those great Irish writers, however, won a tour group bus limerick contest on the Emerald Isle.
No, it was this Irish-American from Utah who captured that particular literary distinction. Although I have always enjoyed writing prose, Ireland’s whitewashed cottages, thousand shades of green, and Guinness-on-tap brought out the poet in me.
Ancestry.com says I am 97% Irish, and our children are named Erin Kathleen, Megan Mary, and Daniel Patrick. Thus, we were in Ireland to see the auld sod, but also to visit good friends from Omagh, in Northern Ireland, whom we met through the Utah Ulster Project, an international peace project.