2021 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase takes place on Zoom in association with Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

The 2021 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase, featuring Aoife Reilly, John D. Kelly, Rita Ann Higgins, Attracta Fahy, Vinny Glynn-Steed, Danielle Holian, Christine Valters Paintner, Mary Turley McGrath, Jessamine O’Connor, John W. Sexton, Marion Kilcoyne, Hilary Wakeman, Denis Mockler, Eileen Sheehan, Peadar O’Donoghue, Kevin Higgins, and the anthologies The Shop: An Anthology of Poetry (Liffey Press, edited by Hilary Wakeman & Hilary Elick) & Galway Then, Galway Now – The Crannóg 2020 Anthology (Wordsonthestreet) will take place on Zoom on Friday, February, 12^th starting at 6.30pm (Galway local time - GMT). The event will be jointly MCed by Kate Ennals and Kevin Higgins.

In this annual retrospective of the most peculiar year just past, poets based in the West of Ireland, who published a new collection of poems during 2020, are invited to read three poems from the collection in question. There will also be readings from the anthologies The Shop: An Anthology of Poetry & Galway Then, Galway Now – The Crannóg 2020 Anthology, to which several Galway-based poets contributed.

 

Over The Edge is inviting you to the 2021 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase Reading on Zoom. Friday, February 12^th, 6.30-8pm.

Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

 

All welcome. There is no cover charge. For further details phone 087-6431748.

 

All of the poetry books showcased at this event will be available for purchase via Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop https://charliebyrne.ie/product/silver-spoon/

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of The Arts Council, Poetry Ireland and Galway City Council.

January Over The Edge: Open Reading as Over The Edge Celebrates 18th Birthday on Zoom with Ciaran O’Rourke, Kathryn Slattery, & Stephen McNulty

The January ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place on Zoom on Thursday, January 21^st  at the usual Over The Edge time 6.30-8.00pm (local Galway time). The Featured Readers are Stephen McNulty, Kathryn Slattery, & Ciaran O’Rourke. There will, as always at Over The Edge: Open Readings, be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. Anyone interested in taking part in the open-mic should text Kevin Higgins on 087-6431748 or email over-the-edge-openreadings@hotmail.com between 6pm and 6.30pm on the evening of the reading. This reading celebrates the eighteenth anniversary of the first Over The Edge reading in Galway City Library and there will be an online birthday party throughout, even possibly a birthday cake to celebrate the fact that Over The Edge is now old enough to legally drink alcohol.  The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars.

Stephen McNulty is a radiographer at Galway University Hospital. Stephen scribbles poetry whenever he is not forcing a member of the public into a CT scanner. A regular attendee of the Galway Arts Centre poetry workshops, his poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, Drawn to the Light, ROPES and Vox Galvia. He is, for his many sins in both this life and his past lives, an avid Mayo GAA fan. 

Kathryn Slattery was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up just across the state line in Mississippi. A graduate of Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, she now lives in the West of Ireland with her husband and an ever-increasing amount of rescue pets. Her poetry and prose have been published in Ropes Literary Journal, Nightingale and Sparrow, The Siren’s Call, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Planet in Peril Anthology, The Blue Nib, Impspired, The Wellington Street Review, Analogies and Allegories, and Streetcake. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Nightingale and Sparrow Chapbook Competition and has was longlisted for the 2018 and 2019 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year. Most recently she received a special mention in the 2020 Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition. Her debut poetry collection will be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in September 2021. 

 

Ciaran O’Rourke has won the Cúirt New Irish Writing Award, the Westport Poetry Prize, and the Fish Poetry Prize. His first collection, The Buried Breath, was published by Irish Pages Press in 2018 to considerable acclaim, and his second collection is due in 2021. He lives in County Leitrim.

Over The Edge is inviting you to the January Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, January 21^st, 6.30-8pm

 

Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

 As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always particularly welcome. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council, Poetry Ireland & The Arts Council.

New Year Beginners & Intermediate Online Creative Writing Classes via Galway Technical Institute BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW

Creative Writing for Beginners with Kevin Higgins takes place one evening per week (Monday) from 7-9.30pm (12 weeks) with a mid-term break. It commences on Monday, January 18^th, 2021. Advance booking is essential. Places cost €175. Kevin Higgins will provide writing exercises for, and give gentle critical feedback to, those interested in trying their hand at writing stories, poems, or memoir.

To book a place, go to https://www.gti.ie/parttime/courses/detail/4863

 

Intermediate Creative Writing with Susan Millar DuMars takes place one evening per week (Tuesday) from 7-9.30pm (6 weeks) with a mid-term break. It commences on Tuesday, January 19th, 2021. Advance booking is essential. Places cost €90. This class is suitable for those who’ve participated in creative writing classes before or begun to have work published in magazines. Flexible exercises and work-shopping of assignments, together with the study of the works of published writers, will help each class member to find their own writing voice.

To book a place, go to https://www.gti.ie/parttime/courses/detail/4902

 

Both classes will be conducted via Zoom in the usual friendly supportive manner that have made Kevin and Susan’s regular in-person creative writing classes at Galway Technical Institute so popular. Participants shouldn't worry about the technology! Full details of precisely how the workshop will function online will be explained to participants during the first session.

For further information contact Galway Technical Institute, Father Griffin Road, Galway, phone 091-581342 or email gtiadulted@gretb.ie or see http://www.gti.ie 

New Year POETRY WORKSHOPS from GALWAY ARTS CENTRE

 

Starting in January, Galway Arts Centre is offering aspiring poets a choice of three online poetry workshops, all facilitated by poet Kevin Higgins, whose best-selling first collection, The Boy With No Face, published by Salmon Poetry, was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet. Kevin’s second collection of poems, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in 2008 by Salmon Poetry and his poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry. His third collection Frightening New Furniture was published in 2010 by Salmon. His work also appears in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed. Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe April 2014).  A collection of Kevin’s essays and book reviews, Mentioning The War, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012. Kevin’s poetry has been translated into Greek, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German, Serbian, Russian, & Portuguese. In 2014 Kevin's poetry was the subject of a paper 'The Case of Kevin Higgins, or, 'The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire' presented by David Wheatley at a Symposium on Satire at the University of Aberdeen.  He was Satirist-in-Residence at the Bogman’s Cannon (2015-16). '2016 - The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins' was published by NuaScéalta in 2016; a pamphlet of Kevin’s political poems The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed was published, also in 2016, by the Culture Matters imprint of the UK based Manifesto Press. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Times (UK), The Independent, The Daily Mirror, Hot Press magazine and on Tonight With Vincent Browne; and read aloud by the film director Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. In 2016 The Stinging Fly magazine described Kevin as "likely the most read living poet in Ireland." He has published six collections of poetry with Salmon, including Song of  Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems (2017).  Kevin has read his work at Arts Council and Culture Ireland supported poetry events in Kansas City, USA (2006), Los Angeles, USA (2007), London, UK (2007), New York, USA (2008), Athens, Greece (2008); St. Louis, USA (2008), Chicago, USA (2009), Denver, USA (2010), Washington D.C (2011), Huntington, West Virginia, USA (2011), Geelong, Australia (2011), Canberra, Australia (2011), St. Louis, USA (2013), Boston, Massachusetts, USA (2013),  Amherst, Massachusetts, USA (2013), & New Mexico, USA (2018). Kevin’s most recent poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, was published by Salmon Poetry (June 2019); one of the poems from which feature in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels. His poems have been broadcast on RTE Radio, Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 4. His book The Colour Yellow & The Number 19: Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly Retain His Sanity During 2020 is just published by Nuascealta. Kevin’s sixth full poetry collection, Ecstatic, will be published by Salmon next summer.

Each week Kevin will give participants a poetry writing exercise for the following week and will offer each participant constructive suggestions as to how her or his poem can become the best possible poem it can be.

Kevin is an experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. One of his workshop participants at Galway Arts Centre won the prestigious Hennessy Award for New Irish Poetry, two have won the Cúirt New Writing Prize, and yet another the Cúirt Poetry Grand Slam, while several have published collections of their poems; two being shortlisted for the Shine-Strong Award for Best First Collection of poems. In 2013 a group of his students set up the poetry newspaper Skylight 47, which publishes new poems, reviews of poetry books and opinion pieces about poetry related matters. Kevin teaches poetry on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme and is Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway Summer School. Kevin is also co-organiser of the successful Over The Edge reading series which specialises in promoting new writers.

The workshops will all commence the week of Monday January 25^th. They will be conducted via Zoom in the usual friendly supportive manner that have made Kevin's regular in-person poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre so popular. Participants shouldn't worry about the technology! Full details of precisely how the workshop will function online will be explained to participants during the first session.

They will take place on Tuesday evenings, 7-8.30pm (first class Tuesday, January 26th); on Thursday afternoons, 2-4pm (first class Thursday, January 28th) and on Friday afternoons, 2-3.30pm (first class Friday, January 29th).

The Tuesday evening and Friday afternoon workshops are open to both complete beginners as well as those who’ve been writing for some time. The Thursday afternoon workshop is an Advanced Poetry Workshop, suitable for those who’ve participated in poetry workshops before or had poems published in magazines. The cost to participants is €110.

Places must be paid for in advance. To reserve a place contact reception at Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, phone 091 565886, email info@galwayartscentre.ie, or go to https://www.galwayartscentre.ie/courses/249-poetry-with-kevin-higgins-evening-online-remote-course