The December
‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, December 19th,
6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Rachael
Hegarty, Paul McCarrick, &
Bern Butler. There
will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished which
this month will include, among others, poets from the MA in Writing at NUI
Galway. New readers are especially
welcome. The Over The Edge end of year celebration will take place afterwards.
Bern Butler was born and raised
in Shantalla in Galway city. She is a writer of prose and poetry, has been
short and long-listed in the Fish,
Over the Edge and Listowel writing competitions and
published in Force 10, The Grey Castle, ROPES and The Galway Review. She
has an extensive background in adult education, specifically Prison Education
where she co-edited the first ever Irish Anthology of Prison Writing, Another
Place. She was the Co-ordinator of the Writers in Prisons Scheme for ten
years, wrote, directed and produced prison dramatic productions, liaised with
the Cuirt Festival of Literature, and the Arts Council of Ireland to bring
writers into prisons, and was lucky enough to have worked on several major
drama and publishing projects in Castlerea prison with the writer, Dermot
Healy. She facilitated writing workshops in Corrundulla Community Library for
several consecutive years and edited a collection of participants’ writings, Burning
to Tell. In 2019 she was awarded an MA in Writing from NUIG and is now
working toward a first poetry collection.
Paul McCarrick’s poetry has been
published in The Blue Nib, Crannóg, Skylight 47, The
Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland
Review, and elsewhere. He was selected by Martina Evans to take part in the
2019 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. He has also received an Arts Bursary
Grant from the Westmeath County Council Arts Office in 2019. He lives in
Athlone, Co. Westmeath, where he is completing his first collection.
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| Rachael Hegarty |
Rachael Hegarty is a Dubliner.
She is 7th child of a 7th child. She was educated by Holy Faith nuns in
Finglas, the U. Mass. Bostonians, the Trinity MPhil in Creative Writing and the
PhD poetry magicians at Queens University
Belfast. Her poetry is widely published and broadcast. Her kids say she uses
the 3 F- words too much: Finglas, feminism and feckin’ poetry. Her debut
collection, Flight Paths Over Finglas
won the Shine Strong Award in 2018. Her second collection, May Day 1974, has received critical acclaim for the unique
representation of 33 docu-sonnets and 33 ballads for the people who died on the
single worst day the Troubles. Her next collection, Dancing on the Dementia Ward explores the adverse, and sometimes bizarrely
liberating, effects of dementia on an individual and a family.
Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council, Poetry Ireland, & The Arts Council.