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.

July Over The Edge Writers' Gathering with Eamon Grennan AND the best of Skylight 47

Eamon Grennan

July Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering

at Galway City Library

on Thursday, July 10^th

presents a rare reading by renowned poet

Eamon Grennan,

PLUS

Kernan Andrews, Eleanor Hooker & Drucilla Wall

share their favourite poems from the first three issues of Skylight 47

probably Ireland’s most interesting poetry publication

The July Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering which takes place at Galway City Library on Thursday, July 10^th, 6.30-8pm will feature a rare reading by renowned American-based, Irish poet Eamon Grennan and a reading by Kernan Andrews, Eleanor Hooker, and Drucilla Wall of their favourite poems from the first three issues of Skylight 47, probably Ireland’s most interesting poetry publication. Copies of the magazine will be on sale on the evening and can also be purchased online http://skylight47poetry.wordpress.com/buy-skylight-47/.

Skylight 47 is edited by Nicki Griffin, Susan Lindsay, Ruth Quinlan, Marie Cadden, and Bernie Crawford, participants in Poetry Workshops, facilitated by Kevin Higgins, at Galway Arts Centre.  

Eamon Grennan was born in Dublin in 1941 and educated at UCD, where he studied English and Italian, and Harvard, where he received his PhD in English. The Gallery Press has published his poetry collections Wildly For Days (1983), What Light There Is (1987), As If It Matters (1991), So It Goes (1995), Selected and New Poems (2000), Still Life with Waterfall (2001), The Quick of It (2004), Out of Breath (2007) and But the Body (2012). From 1974 he taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, until he retired as the Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English. He teaches in the graduate writing programmes of New York University and Columbia University. Eamon divides his time between the US and the west of Ireland.

Drucilla Wall was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She teaches poetry and essay writing, and Native American literature, at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has earned awards and fellowships for her work, including the Mari Sandoz Prairie Schooner Short Story Award, the Western Literature Association Willa Pilla Prize for Humor in Writing, and University of Nebraska Fling and Larson Fellowships. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and has spent summers with family and friends in Wexford and Galway, Ireland, since 1985. Her debut collection of poetry, The Geese at the Gates, was published in 2011 by Salmon Poetry and warmly reviewed in the Irish Times and elsewhere.

Eleanor Hooker lives in North Tipperary. She has an MPhil in Creative Writing (Distinction) from Trinity College, Dublin. She is a founding member and Vice-Chairperson of the Dromineer Literary Festival. She is a helm and Press Officer for the Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. In 2011: she was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. In February 2012, her debut collection of poetry, The Shadow Owner’s Companion was launched by The Dedalus Press. Eleanor Hooker is the judge for this year’s Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, the deadline for which is Wednesday, August 6^th. http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.ie/2013/08/2014-over-edge-new-writer-of-year-to-be.html

Kernan Andrews is from Galway and is the arts editor and political correspondent of the Galway Advertiser. He writes short stories in his spare time and has been published in The Galway Review and elsewhere. He has read his work at the Cúirt Festival in 2013 and 2014; as part of the launch for NUI Galway's theatre events in the Galway Fringe Festival 2013; and at numerous Over The Edge open mics. Kernan was a Featured Reader at the August 2013 Over The Edge: Open Reading.

All welcome. There is no entry fee.

Over the Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support 

of Galway City Council and the Arts Council.