March Over The Edge Writers' Gathering at the Kitchen @ The Museum

The March Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents an exciting variety of poetry, including readings by Vietnam war veteran Jack Grady, award-winning Australian poet Joel Deane, & Galway’s Sighle Meehan.  There will also be a showcasing of the exciting new Galway-based online literary magazine Dodging The Rain (edited by graduates of the MA in Writing Programme at NUI Galway) with readings by three of the publication’s contributors: Seanín Hughes, Eamon Doggett, and Sheila McHugh. The event will take place at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, March 9^th, 8pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Joel Deane is poet, novelist, journalist and speechwriter. Deane started out as a copyboy at the Sun News-Pictorial in Melbourne. Since then he has worked in Melbourne and San Francisco as a journalist (including a stint as a producer on the Emmy Award-winning MSNBC technology news show The Site), lectured widely on the use of public language, penned reviews and essays for Australian Book Review, and written speeches for Labor politicians such as Bill Shorten, Chris Bowen, Steve Bracks and John Brumby.  Deane has published one non-fiction book, Catch and Kill: The Politics of Power (2015); two novels, The Norseman's Song (2010) and Another (2004); three collections of poetry, Year of the Wasp (2016), Magisterium (2008) and Subterranean Radio Songs (2005); and a chapbook, £10 Poems (2008). His poetry features in the anthologies Thirty Australian Poets (2011), Best Australian Poems 2008, Best Australian Poems 2016 and Australian Poetry Anthology 2016. In 2017, he won the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. Deane has also been a finalist and shortlisted for several other literary awards, including the 2018 John Bray Poetry Award, the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Award, the 2016 Judith Wright Calanthe Award, the 2015 Walkley Award, the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature and the 2006 Anne Elder Award. Joel Deane lives in Melbourne with his wife and three children. 

American-born Jack Grady, a war veteran and a former winner of the Worcester County (Massachusetts) Poetry Contest, is a founder member of the Ox Mountain Poets, based in Ballina, County Mayo.  He considers himself to be a sort of Rip Van Winkle of poets in the sense that he returned to writing poetry after a ‘long sleep’, that is, a hiatus of many years, eleven of which were passed working in the Middle East.  Since his return to poetry in 2014, his work has been widely published and has appeared, online or in print, in Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Indonesia, and Portugal. He was invited to represent Ireland in Morocco at the 3^rd annual Festival International Poésie Marrakech, where he read in April, 2016, and at the Poesia a Sul festival on Olhão, Portugal, in November 2017.  His collection Resurrection was published in Belfast by Lapwing Publications and launched in Ballina, County Mayo, in October 2017.

Sighle Meehan lives in Galway and began writing poems in 2011. She is a participant in the advanced poetry workshop at Galway Arts Centre. Sighle has been shortlisted in the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition and she was the winner of the 2014 Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust poetry competition. Her poems have been published widely in journals such as The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, and, most recently, Poetry Ireland Review. Sighle is currently working on her much anticipated debut collection of poems.

Seanín Hughes is an emerging poet from County Tyrone who will shortly commence study of BA Hons English with Ulster University as a mature student. Seanín was first published on Poethead in July 2017 and was selected for the Crescent Arts Centre's Poetry Jukebox, launched in October 2017. She has work published or forthcoming both online and in print, including Banshee: A Literary Journal, The Blue Nib, A New Ulster and NI Community Arts Partnership's Poetry In Motion anthology. Seanín is a longlistee for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, 2018. Her work has featured in Dodging The Rain.

Eamon Doggett is from Bettystown, Co. Meath. He is currently working as a digital sports reporter in Dublin. He holds a master’s degree in Writing from NUI Galway and recently won the Irish Times Hennessy New Irish Writing competition. He has also been published in Dodging the Rain and Prick of the Spindle. His work has featured in Dodging The Rain.

Sheila McHugh is a graduate of the MA in Writing programme at NUIG. She is from Achill Island, and having wandered for a time, she is now living back there. It is the place that nurtures her soul and inspires her writing. She lectures in GMIT in the area of religion and culture, predominantly. Sheila has addressed conferences in Ireland and Germany on the life and work of the German writer and Nobel Laureate, Heinrich Böll whose former home on Achill Island is now an artist residence. She writes mostly non-fiction but has been known to dabble in poetry and short story also. She has been published in The Galway Review and has an essay entitled Only the Danger of the Poor Can Widen the Vision of the Rulers in Something About Home: New Writing on Migration and Belonging, published in 2017. Her work has featured in Dodging The Rain.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Arts Council,

Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.

February Over The Edge: Open Reading with Eamonn McCann, Ruth Elwood, & John D. Kelly

The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, February 22^nd, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Eamonn McCann, John D. Kelly, & Ruth Elwood. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic.

Ruth Elwood is a Galway native and is a second year student of creative writing in the NUIG. Her poetry has been featured in the popular blog Poethead, The Rose online magazine and A New Ulster. Her work has also been featured internationally in NY literary magazine. She was also long listed for the Over the Edge new writer of the year poetry prize 2017.

John D. Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. Since he began writing creatively in 2011, his work has been commended in many competitions and published in various literary publications. He was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2016, awarded joint ‘Silver’ in the International Dermot Healy Poetry Competition in both 2015 and 2014, and won first prize in Hungry Hill ‘Poets Meet Painters’ 2014, amongst other awards.

Eamonn McCann

Eamonn McCann has been campaigning for social justice in Derry for more than 40 years.  As a young man he was one of the original organisers of the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC), a radical campaign group focusing on access to social housing. DHAC organised, in conjunction with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the second civil rights march in Northern Ireland. This march, which took place on 5 October 1968, is generally seen as the birth date of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement.  He currently writes for the Belfast Telegraph, The Irish Times and the Derry Journal. He has written a column for the Dublin based magazine, Hot Press, and is a frequent commentator on the BBC, RTÉ and other broadcast media. He worked as a journalist for the Sunday World newspaper and contributed to the original In Dublin magazine, among others.  His books include War and an Irish Town (1973), War and Peace in Northern Ireland (1999), and Dear God – The Price of Religion in Ireland (1999); and he has edited Bloody Sunday: What Really Happened (1992) and The Bloody Sunday Inquiry: The Families Speak Out (2005). He was elected a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Foyle constituency in 2016.

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