September Over The Edge Open Reading with Helen Mort, Rob Childers, Lorraine Kelly, & LAUNCH of new SKYLIGHT 47

British poet Helen Mort

Rob Childers & Lorraine Kelly to read with acclaimed British poet Helen Mort at September Over The Edge: Open Reading and LAUNCH of issue 4 of Skylight 47 poetry newspaper.  

The September ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, September 25^th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Helen Mort, Lorraine Kelly & Rob Childers. The evening will also see the launch of the latest issue (no. 4) of Skylight 47 poetry newspaper, probably Ireland’s most interesting poetry publication, and the announcement of the shortlist for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition, judged by poet Eleanor Hooker. 

Rob Childers is a retired elementary school teacher from Alaska who now migrates annually between Alaska, New Zealand and Clifden, Connemara. He is a member of the Clifden Writer’s Group and has attended Kevin Higgins’s poetry workshops for the past year. He has read his work on RTE radio and has had poems published in Skylight 47, and The Tule Review. Rob is longlisted for his poetry in this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition.

Lorraine Kelly graduated from NUIG in 1989 with a Bachelor Of Arts in English Literature and became an accountant: the how and the why remains a mystery to this day. Not one to jump ship easily, she remained in the wonderful world of Finance for 25 years, until she came across a beginners creative writing class with Susan Millar DuMars; the dormant seed began to grow. She was longlisted for her short stories in the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition in 2013 and is also longlisted in this year’s competition.

Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985. Her debut collection Division Street is published by Chatto & Windus and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Prize. She has published two pamphlets with tall-lighthouse press, 'the shape of every box' and 'a pint for the ghost', a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2010. Five-times winner of the Foyle Young Poets award, she received an Eric Gregory Award from The Society of Authors in 2007 and won the Manchester Young Writer Prize in 2008. In 2010, she became the youngest ever poet in residence at The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere. Helen is the new Derbyshire Poet Laureate. The Daily Telegraph has described her as “the new star of British poetry”.

After the Featured Readers have finished some contributors to Skylight 47 will read their poems from the new issue. COPIES OF THE NEW ISSUE OF SKYLIGHT 47 WILL BE ON SALE BEFORE, AFTER AND DURING THE READING. 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.