WRITING
Words and melody have never been separate for me. I always hear music in words, and always hear words in my music.
I spent the first seven years of my life partially deaf, care of some inner ear issues. This meant during my formative language development, I didn’t always hear words clearly, and instead learnt to understand the music of speech and the emotion in voices. What a blessing my dodgy eustachian tubes proved to be for my work.
Early in my career I wrote words and tunes together, performing as a folk-style singer/songwriter. As my style has developed in a more classical direction, I have continued to create libretto for my own music. More recently I have had the great pleasure of writing text for other composers, including the brilliant Australian choral and media composer Joseph Twist.
Alongside libretto I write poetry, which still feel to me like song lyrics, without the music written down. I have also been working on a rather cheeky play The Enchanted P*nis, which was recently staged in a victorious first reading.
Please do get in touch if you’re looking for a new libretto, or if you’d like to use some of my poetry or other writing. I’d love to hear from you.
Text And Music
I have written the libretto for many of my art songs, song cycles, chamber operas and choral works. My heritage is Irish, and I particularly enjoy creating works based on Irish myths and stories. Sometimes I write text to set to music, sometimes I set my existing poetry to music. Sometimes I adapt other writers’ poetry and prose. To create the libretto for my children’s opera of Beatrix Potter’s THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER, I rearranging and edited the words, but every word is Potter’s own. Sometimes I create a libretto from fragments of different writers, the way an artist might work with found objects to create a collage.
Soprano and harpist Emma Horwood’s beautiful recording of Swan Of Ire - the final song in my song cycle THE STORY OF BRIGID with the amazing video by Emlyn O’Regan.
I composed THE STORY OF BRIGID, a song cycle about mythical Irish goddess Brigid for Emma Horwood. In spring 2024 Emma came up, bringing Patrick her Celtic harp, and recorded the songs in the studio. THE STORY OF BRIGID is part of a larger work, chamber opera FIRE SONGS. The songs thread a narrative arc through the opera, but they also work beautifully as a stand alone cycle.
In conjunction with the recording, I created a companion book, with the lyrics, artwork, sheet music and my insights and reflections and background research. More…
Stunning South Australian soprano Sidonie Henbest and pianist Mark Sandon perform my setting of PRAYER FOR MOTHER, a meditation on psalm 23.
At dawn the last of her night stars steer my path.
Through the trees I see the way. When the sun is hot I rest in her green grass, I drink from her river. I am restored.
She lifts me high in her expectation. She holds me close when I am hurt. She talks me through my fears.
I have heard death’s low drum, But She knows the smallness of death in the vast universe and is not afraid.
She feeds me, she nurtures my body, she fortifies me. Like a child I surrender. I rest my head against her. She will bring sanctuary to my weary, weary soul.
For all of the days of my life.
Collaborations
It is a thrill to hear other composers create music with my text. I love thinking about the musical possibilities as I write the text, and I always test the words by making up on the spot melodies, before I send them off to the composer.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Australian composer Joe Twist on a number of projects.
LET ME SING THE WORLD
A beautiful choral piece composed by Joe Twist. We wrote the text together. to create an anthem for choristers on why we sing together.
WATTLE SKY
This stunning work was commissioned by Berlin choir Tonraumfünf10. Director Chris Bradley wanted a work about resilience and joy. Australia’s wattle which I see everywhere in Burra felt like a great choice to me. In 2026, South Australian children will sing this for the statewide Primary School Music Festival.
Co-writing Lullabies
In South Australia, Lullaby Project Australia runs song writing projects pairing composers with young families to create bespoke lullabies for their babies. This process is raw, emotional and very, very beautiful and I am proud to have been part of a number of special projects.
But sometimes it’s just fun. Here the producers of Sammy J’s radio show decided to make a lullaby for Sammy J as a joke, to lure him to sleep and thwart his fundraising 24 hour radioathon. My job in this was to collect the over 50 suggestions of lyrics that the producers collected via their talkback overnight show, and then in one day turn these into a song.
Poetry And Other Writing
Writing text as part of my music composition has always felt natural. But I have also written just-the-words: poetry, prose, teaching resources and recently an hour long play. I even worked briefly as a professional copy-writer many years ago.
For my writing on singing and developing musicianship visit here.
An online anthology of my poetry
Thoughts on textsetting. I am developing a resource for composers and librettists on working with text.
While living in Nashville, I was part of a cross art project between the production company OZ and the Nashville Writers’ Centre. Oz hosted FALLING OUT by Phantom Limb Company an extraordinary work incorporating dance, music, puppetry, and screened footage, exploring the tragic 2011 Japanese tsunami. My brief was to write a poem in response to this work. The Japanese dance style in the work is known as the ‘the dance of darkness’.
