Moya Cannon to read at Galway City Museum

Moya Cannon

North Beach Poetry at Galway City Museum on Tuesday 9th December at 7 pm in association with Poetry Ireland & Over The Edge presents a reading with Moya Cannon, Alan McMonagle and John Walsh

Moya Cannon was born in Dunfanaghy, Co. Donegal in 1956 and has lived in Galway for over twenty years. She has published three collections of poems, Oar, The Parchment Boat and Carrying the Songs, New and Selected poems, (Carcanet Press 2007). She has been an editor of Poetry Ireland Review. A recipient of the Brendan Behan Award and of the Lawrence O Shaughnessy Award, she is a member of Aosdána.

Alan McMonagle was born in Longford, grew up in Sligo and now lives in Galway. In 2007 he received his MA in Writing from NUI, Galway. His work has appeared in Southword, Crannog, The Cuirt Annual and The Stinging Fly. He won second prize in the 2006 Sean O'Faolain short story contest and a subsequent invitation to read at the Frank O'Connor short story festival in Cork. His first collection of short stories, Liar Liar, was recently published by Wordsonthestreet.

John Walsh is from Derry. He has published two collections, Johnny Tell Them (Guildhall Press 2006) and Love’s Enterprise Zone (Doire Press 2007). He is the organizer of the North Beach Poetry Nights’ Slam in Galway, Ireland’s longest running Poetry Slam, and Director of the new poetry press, Doire Press. John is an engaging reader and performer of his work. Admission 5 Euro.

Footnote: The 2nd Annual North Beach Poetry Nights'Grand Slam featuring 15 poets/performers is on Monday 15th December in The Crane Bar on Sea Road.with guest performer: Lucy English (Bristol)

North Beach Poetry gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council, Poetry Ireland and Galway City Council.info: John Walsh @ 091-593290

Greek-Irish Literary Symposium

A Greek-Irish Literary Symposium will take place on Friday, 12 December 2008 at the Melina Merkouri Theatre, Ilion, Athens, with the participation of Greek poets Tassos Denegris, Nanos Valaoritis & Dimitris Lyacos and Irish poets Patrick Chapman, Kevin Higgins & Susan Millar DuMars. The symposium is sponsored by Culture Ireland, The Irish Embassy, Athens and The Office of the Mayor of Ilion. The symposium will also see the publication of Literary Ways 2: Greece – Ireland, in which poems by the participating Greek poets will be translated into English and poems by the three participating Irish poets will be translated into Greek. The poets will also read their work at the University of Athens at a reading organised by the Irish Embassy in Greece. For further details contact Dimtris Lyacos at lyacos@yahoo.co.uk or Caroline Phelan at Caroline.Phelan@dfa.ie


Tassos Denegris (Athens,1934) has published 7 collections of poetry and translated, among others, J.L.Borges, J.Cortasar ,O. Paz, John Dos Passos ,I. B. Singer. He has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Hungarian. Fellow at the International Writing Programme (Iowa,1975), invited guest at the Cambridge Poetry Festival(1983),he has also given readings in Belgrade, New Delhi, Strasbourg, Tuebingen, Colombia, Peru, USA, Spain, Nottingham. Tassos Denegris’ collected poems “The Wildboar Speaks”, was recently published by Ypsilon/books.

Nanos Valaoritis: Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1921. He studied Classics and Law at the University of Athens, English literature at London University, and followed a course of Mycenean Grammar with Michel Lejeune at the “Ecoles des Hautes Etudes” of the Sorbonne. From 1944 – 1953, in London he translated and presented, Modernist Greek poets of the thirties for the first time in Cyril Connolly’s “Horizon” 1946 & translations for John Lehmann’s “New Writing” 1944-1948. He met T.S Eliot, Stephen Spender, W.H Auden, Dylan Thomas and worked for Louis MacNeice in the BBC. In 1954 he moved to Paris, met Andre Breton, and participated in the activities and meetings of his Surrealist group until 1960. He returned to Greece, in 1960 and edited the avantgarde review “Pali” 1963-1967. He left Greece again in 1968, after the Junta came to power in 1967. Taught “Creative Writing and Comparative Literature“ at San Francisco State University, returned to Paris and Greece in 1976-78 and resumed teaching at SFSU 1978 until his retirement in 1993. Co-edited in Greece the literary review “Synteleia” ( End of Time), with poet Andreas Pagoulatos. Wrote a number of books of poetic prose, a novella, and four novels - among them, ”My Afterlife Guaranteed” in English (City Lights 1990) and in Greek (1995). Divides his time between Greece, France and California. Married to American Surrealist painter Marie Wilson.

Dimitris Lyacos was born in Athens in 1966. He studied law at the University of Athens and philosophy at University College London. His trilogy Poena Damni (Z213: Exit, Nyctivoe, The First Death), written over the course of fifteen years, has been translated into English, Spanish, Italian and German and has been performed extensively across Europe and the USA. A sound and sculpture installation of Nyctivoe opened in London and toured Europe in 2004-2005. A contemporary theatre-dance version of the same book was showing in Greece in 2006-2007. Lyacos’ work has been the subject of lectures and research at various universities, including Miami, Amsterdam, Trieste and Oxford. Various extracts from the trilogy have appeared in literary journals around the world. Z213: Exit will be published in Greece next spring by Ypsilon/books. For more information on the author visit www.lyacos.net.

Patrick Chapman was born in 1968 and lives in Dublin, Ireland. His poetry collections are Jazztown (Raven Arts Press, 1991); The New Pornography (Salmon, 1996); Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights (Salmon, 2007); and A Shopping Mall on Mars (BlazeVOX, 2008). He has also written a collection of stories, The Wow Signal (Bluechrome, 2007) and an audio drama, Doctor Who: Fear of the Daleks (Big Finish, 2007). He wrote the multi-award-winning film, Burning the Bed (2003), adapting from his own short story. The film starred Gina McKee and Aidan Gillen. In 2003, he won first prize for a story in the Cinescape Genre Literary Awards. In 2006, he and Philip Casey founded the Irish Literary Revival website. His New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Salmon.

Leading Poet-critic, John Goodby, for November Over The Edge

John Goodby

The November Over The Edge: Open Reading will take place in Galway City Library, St. Augustine Street, Galway on Thursday, November 20th, 6.30-8pm. The Featured Readers are Elizabeth Power, Gordon Hewitt & John Goodby.

Elizabeth Power was born in East Cork but now calls Galway home. She completed an MA in Writing at NUIG in 2007. Her poetry has appeared in a wide variety of magazines, including Crannóg, Force 10 and Tribes ‘n Vibes. Elizabeth’s work also featured in the anthology Writers Seeking Lovers. Currently she works as a librarian and is writing a novel about a time travelling witch.

Gordon Hewitt initiated the Belfast Poets Touring Group, a group of performance poets who toured Ireland, the US, New Zealand and Australia in 2006 & 2007. The group, now known as Scream Blue Murmur, performed recently in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and at the Electric Picnic. Gordon is active in di-Verse (Poets against Racism) which oversees the annual Love Poetry Hate Racism event which is held in over 60 cities worldwide each April. Gordon’s style is a unique blend of spoken word, performance poetry, song and chant.

John Goodby is a poet and translator who lectures at the University of Swansea. His poetry has been described by Sean O'Brien as ‘bold and sensuous ... it reads like a chowder of names laced with methedrine ... at once lush and abrasive.’ John Goodby has translated Heine's Germany: A Winter’s Tale (2005), the contemporary Algerian poet Soleiman Adel Guemar, and is currently translating the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Among his latest publications are the first anthology of translations of Irish women poets into Spanish, No Soy Tu Musa and uncaged sea (2008), a cut-up version of the Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. He is the author of the influential Irish Poetry Since 1950: From Stillness Into History (Manchester University Press) and founder of Wales’s only poetry performance group, Boiled String.

As usual there will be an open-mic when the Featured Readers have finished. This is open to anyone who has a poem or story to share. New readers are always especially welcome. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the financial support of Galway City Council and The Arts Council