This is now the second year I have not had to put QUIT SMOKING on my New Year Resolutions list. Clean for 14 months and still counting.

Exercise/diet, however, is definitely there at the top of the list - yet again!

My writing resolutions include - getting a new agent (I haven't had one since my last agent retired in 2002), rewriting the children's novel which I finished last year and have not yet placed with a publisher, starting work on my poetry in performance how-to book, and actually writing some new poems towards my third collection!

That's more of a work schedule than a list of resolutions, I suppose, but with so many kids underfoot and now my second year of Greek with the Open University, time is at a premium, so making serious space for writing has become a sort of resolution thing.

Anyone else?

Cut down on my work as a rentboy

Start following Grainne Seoige, Glenda Gilson, Rosanna Davidson and Bono's wife around to get in the public eye

Kidnap Carol Malone and Ulrika Johnson to shut them up

Get off the booze and into crack-cocaine

Start dating Heather Mills

Lobby the Guardian to campaign for a National Saddam Hussein Day

Lobby the Sun to campaign for a change in Paul McCartney's hair dye specialist

Be a crowd member on a BB eviction night

Chop off my legs for profit

Turn myself into the police for a spate of unsloved murders

Commit a few more before I do, or just one big spectacular at the open mic in Balbriggan next week.

Hug the world

Find a million euro in my bank account

Have a threesome with Simon Armitage and Paul Farley

Win the Challenging Poverty Poetry Competition

the Billboard Bi-monthly

Rear of the Year

Mum of the Year

Make contact with beings from outer space

Fall in love with a heroin addict

Imagine from nine to five

Dream from 6 till ten

Get a job sleeping

Eat and exercise simultaeneously

Never leave my bedsit

~

Ho ha only joking. I'm useless at them. I'm still on the fags so my list to do rather than resolution is to see if my ongoing research into Irish mythology will lead me to link characters from the poetic pantheon to real life ones.

~

How's your greek coming on? I found the works of Horace the other day

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14020/14020...E_ART_OF_POETRY

and realised after reading his Ars Poetica, that Aristotle's Poetics is just gobbledegook in comparison. If Horace was around today his poetic philosophy would be comparable to Heaney's. Straightforward, clear, logical and with the ring of being "never more than an extension of practice" - as Charles Bernstein says. Written as a result of a knowing one having authentic experience of the act.

Aristotle would be more akin to Prynne or a very challenging "Avant-Garde" theorist spouting academic wankery. Another task on my list I hope to become proficient at.

But seriously though, my only resolution is to pray God allows me health, that I harm no one intentionally and try to stay happy.

Is it actually possible to chop off your legs for profit?

The Greek's not going too bad, thanks. I didn't exactly perform at my best in the first year OU exam and missed a first class pass by one miserable point! However, 2007 is another year and I'm just about to start Continuing Classical Greek with some vague hope of doing rather better.

Slightly worrying, though, that I still don't know my aorist from my elbow ...