SPRING Beginners & Intermediate Creative Writing Classes at Galway Technical Institute BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW

Susan Millar DuMars & Kevin Higgins

Creative Writing for Beginners with Kevin Higgins takes place one evening per week (Monday) from 7-9.30pm (8 weeks) with a mid-term break. It commences on Monday, April 9th, 2018. Advance booking is essential. Places cost €120. 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/course/detail/t/79/c/201804-005477

Intermediate Creative Writing with Susan Millar DuMars takes place one evening per week (Tuesday) from 7-9.30pm (8 weeks) with a mid-term break. It commences on Tuesday, April 10th, 2018. Advance booking is essential. Places cost €120. 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/course/detail/t/79/c/201804-005383
 

YOU CAN ALSO BOOK in person at Galway Technical Institute, Monday-Friday, (10am-4.30pm).

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  

Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust is seeking entries again for its exciting annual poetry competition

UPDATE March 1st 2018: Competition deadline EXTENDED to NEXT THURSDAY (March 8th) due to postal service being out of action today and tomorrow because of weather. Please spread the word.

Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust is seeking entries again for its exciting annual poetry competition. 

Previous winner Rachel Coventry

CRITERIA: poems entered in the competition should be no more than 32 lines long. They must be the original work of the entrant. Poems previously published in magazines or poetry collections are eligible. Multiple entries are accepted; poets can enter as many poems as they wish.

PRIZE

*the winner will have her or his poem published and displayed on the Arts Corridor of University Hospital Galway as part of the 2018 Poems For Patience. Poems For Patience is a long running series which over the past decade has featured poems by leading Irish and international poets such as Seamus Heaney, Philip Schultz, Jane Hirschfield, Michael Longley, Naomi Shihab Nye, Vona Groarke, Tess Gallagher and many more. The poems after exhibition on the Arts Corridor are then displayed in waiting areas throughout Galway University Hospitals.

*the winner will be invited to read his or her winning poem at the launch of the 2018 Poems For Patience at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature in April 2018.

*the winner will be provided with accommodation in Galway if travelling for one night during the 2018 Cúirt International Festival of Literature

*the winner will be given a copy of their poem printed and framed as a Poem for Patience poster

*the winner will be asked to submit six poems for consideration to be a Featured Reader at the Over The Edge: Open Reading series in Galway City Library.

Previous winner Sighle Meehan

ENTRY FEE: to enter one poem the fee is €10. If you enter two or more poems the entry fee is €7.50 per poem i.e. to enter two poems it costs €15, to enter three poems €22.50 and so on.

Payment should be made by cheque or postal order payable to Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust. Alternatively for online transfer contact the arts office. Details below.

Entries should be sent by post to Margaret Flannery, Arts Director, Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust, Galway University Hospitals, University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway. Do not put your name on the poems; please include your contact details on a separate sheet.

THE CLOSING DATE is Monday, March 5th 2018

THE JUDGE: The competition judge is Kevin Higgins. Kevin Higgins is Writer-in-Residence with Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust. He is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events, teaches poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre, Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute, and is Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway Summer School. He is poetry critic of The Galway Advertiser. His poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry and features in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed. Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed. Neil Astley, Bloodaxe, April 2014). Kevin’s poetry has been translated into Greek, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, 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 early 2016. A pamphlet of Kevin’s political poems The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed was published last December 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, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Times (UK), The Independent, The Daily Mirror, and on Tonight With Vincent Browne. The Stinging Fly magazine recently described Kevin as "likely the most read living poet in Ireland." Song of Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems was published earlier this year by Salmon and includes a substantial number of new poems as well as selections from his six previous poetry collections.

For further details: Tel: +353 (0)91 544979

Email: Margaret.Flannery@hse.ie 

Colette Bryce launching Poems for Patience

March Over The Edge Writers' Gathering at the Kitchen @ The Museum

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 9^th, 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 3^rd 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.

February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Eamonn McCann, Ruth Elwood, & John D. Kelly

The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, February 22^nd, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Eamonn McCann, John D. Kelly, & Ruth Elwood. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic.

Ruth Elwood is a Galway native and is a second year student of creative writing in the NUIG. Her poetry has been featured in the popular blog Poethead, The Rose online magazine and A New Ulster. Her work has also been featured internationally in NY literary magazine. She was also long listed for the Over the Edge new writer of the year poetry prize 2017.

John D. Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. Since he began writing creatively in 2011, his work has been commended in many competitions and published in various literary publications. He was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2016, awarded joint ‘Silver’ in the International Dermot Healy Poetry Competition in both 2015 and 2014, and won first prize in Hungry Hill ‘Poets Meet Painters’ 2014, amongst other awards.

Eamonn McCann

Eamonn McCann has been campaigning for social justice in Derry for more than 40 years.  As a young man he was one of the original organisers of the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC), a radical campaign group focusing on access to social housing. DHAC organised, in conjunction with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the second civil rights march in Northern Ireland. This march, which took place on 5 October 1968, is generally seen as the birth date of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement.  He currently writes for the Belfast Telegraph, The Irish Times and the Derry Journal. He has written a column for the Dublin based magazine, Hot Press, and is a frequent commentator on the BBC, RTÉ and other broadcast media. He worked as a journalist for the Sunday World newspaper and contributed to the original In Dublin magazine, among others.  His books include War and an Irish Town (1973), War and Peace in Northern Ireland (1999), and Dear God – The Price of Religion in Ireland (1999); and he has edited Bloody Sunday: What Really Happened (1992) and The Bloody Sunday Inquiry: The Families Speak Out (2005). He was elected a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Foyle constituency in 2016.

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.