The March Over
The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents
an exciting variety of poetry, including readings by Vietnam war veteran Jack Grady, award-winning Australian
poet Joel Deane, & Galway’s Sighle Meehan. There will also be a showcasing of the
exciting new Galway-based online literary magazine Dodging
The Rain
(edited by graduates of the MA in Writing Programme at NUI Galway) with readings
by three of the publication’s contributors: Seanín
Hughes,
Eamon Doggett,
and Sheila McHugh. The event will take place at The
Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, March 9th, 8pm.
All are welcome. There is no cover charge.
Joel Deane is
poet, novelist, journalist and speechwriter. Deane started out as a
copyboy at the Sun News-Pictorial in Melbourne. Since
then he has worked in Melbourne and San Francisco as a journalist (including a
stint as a producer on the Emmy Award-winning MSNBC technology news show The
Site), lectured widely on the use of public language, penned reviews
and essays for Australian Book Review, and written speeches for Labor
politicians such as Bill Shorten, Chris Bowen, Steve Bracks and John
Brumby. Deane has published one non-fiction book, Catch and Kill:
The Politics of Power (2015); two novels, The
Norseman's Song (2010) and Another (2004); three
collections of poetry, Year of the Wasp
(2016), Magisterium (2008) and
Subterranean Radio Songs (2005); and a chapbook, £10 Poems
(2008). His poetry features in the anthologies Thirty
Australian Poets (2011), Best Australian Poems 2008, Best Australian
Poems 2016 and Australian Poetry Anthology 2016. In
2017, he won the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. Deane has also been a finalist
and shortlisted for several other literary awards, including the 2018 John Bray
Poetry Award, the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Award, the 2016 Judith
Wright Calanthe Award, the 2015 Walkley Award, the 2009 Melbourne
Prize for Literature and the 2006 Anne Elder Award. Joel Deane lives in
Melbourne with his wife and three children.
American-born
Jack Grady, a war veteran and a
former winner of the Worcester County (Massachusetts) Poetry Contest, is a
founder member of the Ox Mountain Poets, based in Ballina, County Mayo. He considers himself to be a sort of Rip Van
Winkle of poets in the sense that he returned to writing poetry after a ‘long
sleep’, that is, a hiatus of many years, eleven of which were passed working in
the Middle East. Since his return to
poetry in 2014, his work has been widely published and has appeared, online or
in print, in Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France,
Indonesia, and Portugal. He was invited to represent Ireland in Morocco at the
3rd annual Festival
International Poésie Marrakech, where he read in April, 2016,
and at the Poesia a Sul festival on
Olhão, Portugal, in November 2017. His collection Resurrection
was published in Belfast by Lapwing Publications and launched in Ballina,
County Mayo, in October 2017.
Sighle Meehan
lives in Galway and began writing poems in 2011. She is a participant in the advanced
poetry workshop at Galway Arts Centre. Sighle has been shortlisted in the Over
The Edge New Writer of the Year competition and she was the winner of the 2014
Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust poetry competition. Her poems have been
published widely in journals such as The
Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, and,
most recently, Poetry Ireland Review.
Sighle is currently working on her much anticipated debut collection of poems.
Seanín Hughes is
an emerging poet from County Tyrone who will shortly commence study of BA Hons
English with Ulster University as a mature student. Seanín was first published
on Poethead in July 2017 and was selected for the Crescent Arts Centre's Poetry
Jukebox, launched in October 2017. She has work published or forthcoming both
online and in print, including Banshee: A Literary Journal, The Blue Nib, A New
Ulster and NI Community Arts Partnership's Poetry In Motion anthology. Seanín
is a longlistee for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, 2018. Her
work has featured in Dodging The Rain.
Eamon Doggett is
from Bettystown, Co. Meath. He is currently working as a digital sports reporter
in Dublin. He holds a master’s degree in Writing from NUI Galway and recently
won the Irish Times Hennessy New Irish Writing competition. He has also been
published in Dodging the Rain and Prick of the Spindle. His work has featured
in Dodging The Rain.
Sheila
McHugh is a graduate of the MA in Writing programme at NUIG. She is from Achill
Island, and having wandered for a time, she is now living back there. It is the
place that nurtures her soul and inspires her writing. She lectures in GMIT in
the area of religion and culture, predominantly. Sheila has addressed
conferences in Ireland and Germany on the life and work of the German writer
and Nobel Laureate, Heinrich Böll whose former home on Achill Island is now an
artist residence. She writes mostly non-fiction but has been known to dabble in
poetry and short story also. She has been published in The
Galway Review and has an essay entitled Only the Danger of the Poor
Can Widen the Vision of the Rulers in Something About Home: New
Writing on Migration and Belonging, published in 2017. Her work has
featured in Dodging The Rain.
Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing
financial support of the Arts Council,
Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.
