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.