Over The Edge Celebrates Thirteenth Birthday with Readings by Stephen De
Burca, Nuala Keher, Vona Groarke who will Launch issue six of Skylight 47 (possibly Ireland’s most
interesting poetry publication)
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| Vona Groarke |
Over The Edge presents
the first ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ of 2016 at Galway City Library on
Thursday, January 21st, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Vona Groarke, Nuala Keher, & Stephen DeDurca. The centre piece of the evening will be the launch of issue number six of
Skylight 47, the exciting bi-annual
poetry paper from the Skylight Poets, which will be on sale on the evening. The
publication will be launched on the evening by Vona Groarke. Skylight 47 is
based in Galway and publishes poems by poets from all around the globe; all
poets are welcome to submit poems for consideration for future issues. For details on how to take out a subscription to Skylight 47 see here
Stephen De Burca is a 24 year old
writer from Galway City. Currently a philosophy and English student at NUI
Galway, Stephen was highly commended in the Over The Edge New Writer of the
Year competition 2015. His writing has taken him to an art residency in Iceland
in the summer of 2015 and he will be attending art residencies in France as
well as the Netherlands this summer.
Nuala Keher is a
native of Galway and works as Academic Director of EQUAL Ireland, a
not-for-profit charitable trust. Nuala is a strong advocate for social
change both in Ireland and abroad. She has been a key member of the SIPTU trade
union movement and spent a year in South Sudan with the Ministry for Education.
She is joint author with Eddie Higgins of the non-fiction book ‘Your Rights at
Work’ (1998) published by the Institute of Public Administration, Dublin. Nuala
also writes fiction and is a participant in Susan Millar DuMars’ Advanced
Fiction Writing class. She has been published in Ireland’s Own and was
long listed in the 2015 Over the Edge New Writer of The Year competition.
Vona Groarke was born in the Irish
Midlands in 1964. She attended Trinity College, Dublin and University College,
Cork. She has lived in Dublin, Cork and Dundalk and has been
writer-in-residence at NUI Galway and Maynooth. Her collections published by
The Gallery Press include Shale (1994), Other People’s Houses
(1999), Flight (2002),
shortlisted for the Forward Prize (UK) in 2002 and winner of the Michael
Hartnett Award in 2003, Juniper Street
(2006) and Spindrift
(2009) and X (2014),
both Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her poetry prizes include the
Hennessy Award, the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize, the Michael Hartnett Award,
Strokestown International Poetry Award, the Stand Magazine Poetry Prize,
and runner-up in the Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition
(2003). In 2008, her version of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s eighteenth-century
Irish poem was published as Lament for Art
O’Leary. She has been Writer-in-Residence with the National
University at Galway and at Maynooth, and was co-holder of the Heimbold Chair
in Irish Studies at Villanova University (Spring 2004). She now lives in
Manchester where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at the University of
Manchester. Vona Groarke is a member of Aosdána and is currently editor of Poetry Ireland Review. As well as reading her own work, Vona
Groarke will launch the new issue of Skylight 47.
As usual there will be an
open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. Contributors to the new
issue of Skylight 47 are particularly
welcome to read their Skylight 47 poems
at the open-mic; those wishing to take part should get to Galway City Library
by 6.20pm, at the latest, and give their names to Kevin Higgins, who The MC for
the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748.
Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing
financial support of Galway City Council, Poetry Ireland, & The Arts
Council.
