 He founded the acclaimed Irish music ensemble Samradh Music and played the tin whistle, the bodhran and was a flute player of distinction, music echoing in the themes and forms of his writing.In 1985, he moved to just off Green Lanes in Harringay, north London to join his partner and fellow musician, Maddy Paxman, whom he married in 2003; their son, Ruairi, was born in 1996.He joined the London poetry workshop, founded by the Belfast poet Robert Greacen and later chaired by Matthew Sweeney, whose members included Vicki Feaver, Ruth Padel, Jo Shapcott, Maurice Riordan, Eva Salzman and Don Paterson.