The midlands poet, Jim Brennan, is a firm believer that poetry should be recited anywhere, at any time to whoever will listen.
The Daingean, Co Offaly-based poet can recall many occasions when one would have thought a poem would be a little bit out of place.
Like, for instance, on a building site where he was being teased by his work-mates about being a scribbler. When asked what he was writing he trotted out his poem.
"The lads were all prepared to laugh but the poem I had written was about the break-up of a friend's marriage. A couple of the guys who were listening were in the same situation themselves and the poem hit home.
"I don't think I was slagged about being a poet again by those lads either but I believe that's what you have to do when you are involved." Jim, who is 41, has read his poems in hot air balloons, pubs and - once - from the pulpit of a Protestant church when the congregation couldn't leave because of the bad rain outside.
"I met some people from the North when I was off down the country and they invited me to go to morning service with them. I did and it was the first time I had ever been in a Protestant church. When we were going it was raining too heavily to leave the building and I was reciting a poem I had written to my friends in the doorway," he said.
"They couldn't hear, because of the rain, but the vicar or rector invited me to go up into the pulpit and recite and I did." The poem he recited, At Morning Service, is included in his first book of poetry, which was launched last week in his native Daingean.
Over the High Bank is the title, inspired by the bog from which he takes much inspiration and of which he is so proud. Others seem to like it too because fewer than 10 days after the launch, the first print run has almost sold out and the presses are busily churning out new copies for Christmas.
A tall, spare man with a great sense of humour, Jim is also proud of his day job. He is a carpenter by trade and a poem in the book, entitled Measuring could have been written only by a craftsman.
Some of them I met
When I was young,
That generation who would
Cut and plane and measure out
With little folding timber rulers
Inches feet and yards
All down through the days
Of my father's time.
His craft has been acknowledged by other Irish poets, including his friend, Michael Coady, Michael Hartnett and Offaly's Writer-in-Residence, Rita Ann Higgins.
Since the launch Jim has been invited to the US and to England to read his poems to a wider audience and next week he travels to Cornwall for a reading.
His work is frequently published in the local papers and he marks major occasions in his home area with a poem. His best-known poem so far this year was a tribute to the Co Offaly hurling team.
His work has been heard on local radio and sometimes he travels with a local rock band called Rosehip and delivers his poems to the younger generation.
"It goes down very well when they get over the shock of hearing poetry during a break at a rock concert. You would be surprised at the response," he says.
He hopes to have a tape of his work on the market before Christmas.