Doughnuts and cigarettes or blindfold, earmuffs and earplugs? Writers can have odd ways of getting ready for their working day – or night. Gavin Corbett, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Henrietta McKervey, Thomas Morris and Paul Murray take us into their creative worlds

The countdown is on to find Ireland’s favourite Irish poem, so we’ve asked a selection of writers and readers to tell us their favourite few lines of verse, and to nominate which poem they think is best from RTÉ’s A Poem for Ireland shortlist

Contemporary Irish poetry is doing well, as the breadth of work up for the Irish Times Poetry Now award demonstrates