Friday, May 31, 2013

New Island invites you to the launch of 'The Skipper & her Mate' by Nicki Griffin








NEW ISLAND invites…
 Please join us to celebrate the launch of
The Skipper & her Mate
Ten Years on Irish Waters

By Nicki Griffin

at 5.00pm, Saturday 3rd August, at:
Waterways Ireland Building
The Harbour, Scariff, Co. Clare

Guest Speaker: Theo Dorgan

Adam White's 'Accurate Measurements', published by Doire Press, shortlisted for Forward Prize for Best First Collection

The shortlist for the £5,000 best first collection prize includes Dan O'Brien's War Reporter, inspired by interviews he conducted with a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. Also in the running are collections published by two tiny presses – Adam White's Accurate Measurements is published by Doire Press in Connemara, while Steve Ely's collection, Oswald's Book of Hours, is published by Smokestack Press in Middlesborough. They are pitted against three of the biggest publishers in UK poetry: Faber & Faber for Emily Berry's Dear Boy – a wittily disturbing soliloquy; Bloodaxe Books for Hannah Lowe's Chick; and Seren Books for She Inserts the Key, a collection that juxtaposes sparrowhawks and the Bank of England, crafted by former City solicitor Marianne Burton.

The chair of judges, Jeanette Winterson, hailed a "powerful year for poetry".

For more see today’s Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jul/08/forward-poetry-prize-shortlists-2013

Adam was a Featured Reader at the May 2012 Over The Edge: Open Reading. Big congratulations to him and to John Walsh and Lisa Frank of Doire Press.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

June Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering: Deirdre Hines, Anton McCabe, Lori Desrosiers & Jennifer Wong PLUS 'This Never Happened'


June Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering
at Galway City Library
presents readings by
Deirdre Hines, Anton McCabe,
Lori Desrosiers & Jennifer Wong
PLUS
A SHOWCASE READING
from This Never Happened II
Poems and Stories by participants in creative writing workshops at University Hospital Galway & Unit 5 of Merlin Park University Hospital (Edited by Kevin Higgins)
  Galway City Library, 
St. August Street, Galway 
Thursday, June 27th, 6.30-8pm.

The June  Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents readings by Deirdre Hines, Anton McCabe, Lori Desrosiers, Jennifer Wong and a Showcase Reading from This Never Happened II, a collection of poems and stories from writing workshops at Galway University Hospitals published earlier this year by Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust and launched at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature. The event will take place at Galway City Library, St. August Street, Galway on Thursday, June 27th, 6.30-8pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

The contributors to This Never Happened II are Niamh Ní Ghlaisne, Maeve Tonge,  Dr Oscar De Souza, Louis Hanly, Madeline Moloney, Brendan Duffy,  Fiona Falvey, Flish McCarthy,  Bridie Travers & Elizabeth Neville  

Deirdre Hines was born in Liverpool. She moved to Belfast shortly thereafter, and from there to Letterkenny in Co. Donegal, where she now lives. She has written several plays, of which “Howling Moons, Silent Sons” won the Stewart Parker Award fro Best New Play in 1992. Pigsback Theatre Company produced it. She went on to write “Ghost Acreage at Vixen Tine” for Passion Machine’s Songs of the Reaper Festival in 1994.Other plays include “A Moving Destiny”(1996) produced by Yew Theatre Company and “Dreamframe” produced for Fishamble’s “Y2K” Festival. She was short listed for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2010, and won the Listowel Poetry Collection in 2011. Her poetry collection The Language of Coats is recently published by New Island Press.

Anton McCabe is from Omagh, Co Tyrone. He is a freelance journalist who has contributed to a wide variety of print and broadcast outlets, in both English and Irish. He has written extensively on the history of the trade union movement in the north-west of Ireland, and has contributed to a number of books and journals on the subject. He is a member of the Irish Executive Committee of the National Union of Journalists. His non-fiction book The House that Disappeared on Tory Island was published last year by Drumkeen Press. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/book-tells-of-tory-island-disappeared-house-1.557667
 
Lori Desrosiers lives in Massachusetts, USA. He full-length poetry collection, The Philosopher’s Daughter, was published earlier this year by Salmon Poetry.  Her chapbook, "Three Vanities," a chronicle of three generations of women in her family, was published by Pudding House Press in 2009. In 2010, her poem “That Pomegranate Shine” won the Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts Award for New England Poets. She is the publisher and managing editor of Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry. She earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from New England College and teaches English at Westfield State College.

Currently based in London, Jennifer Wong is a Hong Kong-born poet and translator.  Her poems have appeared widely in poetry journals and anthologies, including the Oxfam anthology of Young British Poets by Todd Swift and Kim Lockwood (Cinnamon Press 2012), World Record: An Anthology edited by Neil Astley and Anna Selby (Bloodaxe Books 2012), Prairie Schooner online edition edited by Agnes Lam and Kwame Dawes (summer 2013) and Asian Poetry in English edited by Agnes Lam (Math Paper Press 2013). Jennifer studied English at Oxford and received an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She was the writer-in-residence at Lingnan University in 2012, and has worked for Magma Poetry. She has participated in Poetry Parnassus London and the Hong Kong Literary Festival 2012. Goldfish, her second poetry collection, is just published by Chameleon Press. 
 
There is no entrance fee.
For further information contact 087-6431748.
Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support
of the Arts Council and Galway City Council.

Susan Millar DuMars on the first ten years of Over The Edge

Quote from Susan Millar DuMars' essay about the first ten years of Over The Edge:

 "Our audiences were recently taken to task in a national newspaper for being gauche enough to clap after every poem. Such unbridled enthusiasm makes some people nervous. These people should feel free to stay at home. O[ver]T[he]E[dge] is not for them."  
  
You can read Susan's essay in full in the just  published special Irish issue 
of the Portland, Oregon based online literary magazine Penduline

THURSDAY Susan Millar DuMars launches 'The God Thing' in Dublin

Salmon Poetry invites you to the Dublin launch of poetry collections by Susan Millar DuMars, co-organiser of Over The Edge, Richard Halperin, Noel King & John W. Sexton. This Thursday, June 6th, 6.30pm @ The Irish Writers' Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1.

You can buy a copy of The God Thing here   
For details of all Salmon publications here  
http://www.salmonpoetry.com/  

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Thomas McCarthy, Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin & 2012 New Writer of The Year Seán Kenny for May Over The Edge: Open Reading

Thomas McCarthy 
The May ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, May 30th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Thomas McCarthy, Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin & Seán Kenny. Sean was the over-all winner of the 2012 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition and this reading is part of his prize. This is the final Over The Edge: Open Reading before the summer break.

Seán Kenny’s fiction has appeared in Crannóg, The Irish Times, New Irish Writing in The Irish Independent, Southword and Wordlegs. He won the 2012 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition and was shortlisted for a 2013 Hennessy Literary Award.

Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin grew up in the parish of Carna in the Connemara Gaeltacht. She lives and works in Galway city as a social worker and psychotherapist. She has been attending poetry workshops with Kevin Higgins this last two years. Eileen contributed towards a group poetry anthology Wayword Tuesdays in 2012. Her work has also been published by Emerge Literary Journal, The Burning Bush, Aperçus Quarterly, Boyne Berries, The Galway Review and Scissors & Spackle.

Thomas McCarthy was born in Co. Waterford in 1954 and educated at University College, Cork. He has published eight collections of poetry, two novels and a memoir. He has won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, the American-Irish Foundation’s Literary Award, and the O’Shaughnessy Prize for Poetry. He has worked for Cork City Libraries since 1987. He is a member of Aosdána. In a review Pat Cotter has said of him: “McCarthy is a poet primarily concerned with politics and family. His work's importance lies in its unremitting and detailed examination of the Republic's failures and successes as an independent state. Described by Eavan Boland as the first poet born into the Republic to write about it critically, McCarthy has done so from the perspective of a family dedicated and loyal to the state's most successful and powerful political party: Fianna Fail. But his poems are not eulogies to the party or apologies for its policies; they are more like an exploration of the party as an object of loyalty and devotion (like a lover objectified) with all the potential such an object has for empowerment and betrayal.”

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most 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 & The Arts Council.

Dead Good Poetry Competition WINNERS

The winners (first, second and third places) in Galway Rape Crisis Centre's DEAD GOOD POETRY COMPETITION (judged by Clare Daly T.D. & Kevin Higgins of Over The Edge) will be announced at the May Over The Edge: Open Reading at Galway City Library this coming Thursday, May 30th (6.30-8pm). http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.ie/2013/05/thomas-mccarthy-eileen-ni-shuilleabhain.html