A York punk poet's first novel deals, it says on the back, with "postponed-

modern sacrilege". Yes, but what does it all mean? CHRIS TITLEY tries to find out.

HE has chosen a name that no one can pronounce. He has given his debut novel an aggressively unpleasant title. It is fair to say that Daithidh MacEochaidh and his book Like A Dog To Its Vomit are unlikely to storm the bestsellers lists.

But then commercial success has never been uppermost on this writer's mind. He is striving for a cult, rather than a popular, following.

Let's start with the name. Pronounced Dahee Macyockey, it is the Gaelic version of his given name, David James Keogh.

David took to using Daithidh after he had fallen in love with Donegal, Ireland, while studying the Irish language there. When his first piece of writing won a competition it was published under his Irish name. So he has stuck with it ever since.

As a performance poet, he confuses audiences before he starts. "I introduce myself in Irish and talk in broad Yorkshire. People think 'this guy's got a split personality'."

Daithidh was brought up in York, and only recently moved away from the city to settle with his girlfriend in Northumberland.

He returns to York regularly and loves its beauty, although he is not impressed by the modern city, criticising what he believes is its 'Ye Olde Yorke' Disneyfication. "I have been in and out of York most of my life," he says. "York, in a sense, is my home town."

He struggled at school for reasons that only later became clear. "I was a nuisance at school. I was almost illiterate. I had dyslexia and Tourette's syndrome. I was a disruptive little sod. I couldn't write at the time - I was more into art."

Considering the difficulties he had with words in his formative years, it is amazing that he grew to develop such a love of them. But those problems made him determined to be a writer.

"When I first began to read, and read fluently, I leapt from a reading age of six, when I was ten, to having an adult reading age when I was 11.

"I got hold of literature by the scruff of the neck and started trying to make sense of it. It gave me a love of words. When I mastered them, I read everything. I would be sitting at the breakfast table - I would have to read the cereal packet.

"I imagine if you were in a wheelchair and you could suddenly walk. You would run everywhere."

Daithidh's father was a VAT inspector with a fund of funny stories, including the time when he had to count the maggots on a maggot farm. Daithidh thinks he should have written his life story - It Shouldn't Happen To A Vat. His mother works in education.

Now their son is a poet, author and "fully paid up member of the underclass" with two degrees.

His poetry is about the experience of the underclass. "If people come up and expect insipid rhyming poetry about a rural idyll they have got another thing coming," he says. "It's the sort of stuff people don't want to know about."

Members of the audience have walked out during his readings. He is unrepentant. "You can't write for everybody."

Like A Dog To Its Vomit, his debut novel, is equally uncompromising and combative. Its title comes from the Bible and its anti-hero goes by the refreshingly straightforward name of Ron Smith.

Other than that, you'll have to find out for yourself. This is not an easy book to read or explain. The first line of the dust jacket summary gives you a flavour: "Somewhere between the text, the intertext and the testosterone find Ron Smith, illiterate book lover, philosopher of non-thought and the head honcho's left-arm man," it says. Got that?

Who is the book aimed at? "It's for people who want a challenging read, for people who like being in control, people who are interested in the avant garde."

Funnily enough Daithidh, whose polemic is dotted with words such as alienation, disillusionment and futility, does not come across as an angry young man. And his next book, he promises, will be an easier read, probably with a less belligerent title - but still written by the author with the unpronounceable name.

u Like A Dog To Its Vomit is published by Route, price £6.95.