Tom was born in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal in 1949. He was educated at Lurgan College and then at Trinity College Dublin. During the course of his career he was worked in Ireland, Australia and England. His jobs varied from being a Civil Servant, a Trade Union official and working with an undertaker.

He returned to Ireland in 2001 to live in Co. Mayo. It is here where he became involved with the local “Pen and Ink” creative writing group in Kiltimagh. His love of literature and a life time of writing convinced him to publish some of his work. Poetry publishers in Ireland are struggling, and can usually only publish the poets that are famous or easy to market. This is why Tom decided to self publish his work with us at Selfpublishbooks.ie.
He sent us in all the information he had, the file of the book, a picture and blurb for the cover. We did the rest from cover design to formatting to get the file print ready.

When asked what he thought of the self publishing process, he said that it was relatively painless. We were all delighted when he decided to drive down from Co. Mayo to our factory in Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork to pick up his books. He made a journey of it and made the most out of it. Tom is donating half of the books he printed to the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland and giving plenty to friends and family.
Honest and accessible, this poetry displays a love of the sound of the ordinary language, and a love of humanity.

I am not sure I have ever met quite the depth of seeing, and describing, the emotions we all experience at times, that I find in Tom’s work. He is powerful. This effect is partly achieved by the way Tom breaks the rules.

Margaret Wilson, “Empathy” magazine.