David Mohan was born and grew up in Dublin, Ireland. He completed an English BA and MA at the University of York and went on to do a PhD on Post-Colonial Writing in Trinity College, Dublin. He won the Irish Hennessy Writer of the Year award for his poetry, and was runner up in the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition. His poems and short stories have been widely published in literary magazines in Ireland, the UK and the US, including Agenda, Stand and Poetry Wales. He has won the Café Writers Open Poetry Competition, and in 2021, The Christopher Hewitt Award.
Wildfire is published by Against the Grain May 2023. ‘These finely crafted and deeply moving poems – ablaze with evocative images, intellect, and tenderness – invite readers (in the words of Oscar Wilde) to ‘walk from fire unto fire’ with a master poet as your guide.’ Terri Kirby Erickson.
The Blood Husband
That first time we knew
by the three spots of blood
left in the snow
outside your apartment,
the style of night sky
up above us…
Drunk, we wanted wolf song,
we wanted the rush
of the hunt, the scent
of a kill in the air,
a hint of winter,
in every touch.
Some sort of town fox,
you said, before our kiss,
the first, enough to be
smitten by, to swear oaths for,
to see as a blood pact
by the time you’d finished.
Indoors, you were
less mythic, another
traveller, someone
to keep warm with
for a night. Your wristwatch
became a moon at our bedside.
David Mohan
This poem won the the 2021 Christopher Hewitt Award
Against the Grain Poetry Press 