“There is always something of a thrill when you discover a secret, and out there in the wider world John is pretty much that. His work rattles around in the deep interior, is not invested in handrails. Moriarty is speaking to a wiser, stranger part of ourselves. A dimension we may barely register. He circumnavigates small talk and escorts us from the shopping mall and out under a hundred thousand stars.”

Martin Shaw on John Moriarty, in The Honest Ulsterman

“Working nightly into his Christian visioning excavated something in my own heart. A powerful, almost pagan Jesus announced himself. Not reassuring, troubling not easy, as if I was standing at the doorway of a new life.”—Martin Shaw on editing the new collection of John Moriarty’s writings

Martin Shaw: On Editing A Hut at the Edge of the Village