March Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering launches poetry collections by Katherine Noone & Jean Folan

MC for evening Kevin Higgins

The March Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents an exciting variety of poetry, including the Galway launch of new poetry collections by Katherine Noone and Jean Folan.  There will also be readings by prominent British performance poet and literary activist Steve Pottinger and renowned Mayo poet and short story writer Ger Reidy. The event will take place at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, March 10^th, 8pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Katherine Noon pictured centre

Katherine Noone’s poems  have  appeared  in  Boyne  Berries, Crannóg, The  Galway Review, Linnets Wings, Orbis , Skylight 47. She was shortlisted  for the Vallum (Canada) poetry competition in 2012 and Poem  for  Patience 2015. She attends Kevin Higgins advanced poetry workshop in Galway. Katherine’s debut poetry collection, Keeping Watch, is just published by Lapwing Publications and will be launched on the evening. 

Jean Folan was born in Galway in 1951. She lives in Inishcrone, Co Sligo and is a graduate of the MA in Writing at NUI Galway.  Her first collection of poems Between Time was published by Lapwing in 2013. Jean Folan was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2007, and the Over the Edge Cúirt Showcase 2008, and was a featured reader at Over the Edge in 2007. She was the winner of the Impromptu Haiku, Culture Night 2010, Ballina Arts Centre, Co. Mayo and runner-up at Culture Night 2012, Kenny’s Bookshop, Galway. Confluence of Wakes, Jean’s second collection of poetry, was recently published by Lapwing Publications and will have its Galway launch on the evening.

Steve Pottinger is a British performance poet and author based in Wolverhampton. He has gigged all over the UK in pubs, clubs, and at festivals. He wrote a letter to Cafè Nero about their tax avoidance which went viral, and has co-written the autobiographies of two punk legends. His volume of poems 'more bees, bigger bonnets' was chosen by campaigning economist Richard Murphy as one of his books of the year in the TES. He’s currently collaborating with two other West Midlands poets on some exciting projects, plotting his fifth volume of poetry, working on another punk biography, and being inspired by the imagination, resilience, and determination of people in the face of greed and injustice.

Ger Reidy was born near Westport, Co. Mayo. He has won several national poetry competitions and has been the recipient of a number of bursaries and residencies sponsored by the Arts Council and Mayo County Council. Dedalus Press published his debut collection, Pictures from a Reservation, in 1998 and his second collection, Drifting Under the Moon, in 2010. His third collection, Before Rain, was published by Arlen House in 2015 and was shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize at Listowel Writers' Week. His poetry has been published in many literary journals, both at home and abroad and he has read at numerous literary festivals. Since 2012 Ger has judged the Westport Arts Festival poetry competition. His debut short fiction collection. Jobs for a Wet Day, was published in 2015 and was long listed for the Edge Hill Prize 2016.

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

Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council.

2014 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase at Nuns Island Theatre

The 2014 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase featuring Stephen Murray, Terry McDonagh, Elaine Feeney, Adam White, Michelle O’Sullivan, the New Planet Cabaret anthology, Nicki Griffin, Noel Duffy, the Adventure Hat anthology, Patrick Stack, Jean Folan, the Artistic Atlas of Galway, Emily Cullen, Susan Lindsay & the anthology  Watching My Hands At Work: A Festschrift For Adrian Frazier, will take place at Galway Arts Centre’s Nuns’ Island Theatre on Friday, February, 7^th at 8pm. 

In this annual retrospective of the year just past, Galway-based poets, who published a new collection of poems during 2013, are invited to read three poems from the collection in question. There will also be short readings from the anthologies Adventure Hat (NUI Galway MA in Writing class of 2013), the Artistic Atlas of Galway (Edited by Liam Duffy), Watching My Hands At Work: A Festschrift For Adrian Frazier (Edited by Megan Buckley, Eva Bourke &; Louis de Paor, published by Salmon) & New Planet Cabaret (Edited by Dave Lordan, published by New Island).

All welcome. There is no cover charge. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of The Arts Council and Galway City Council.

May Over The Edge Writers' Gathering: Jean Folan, Dave Lordan, Fiona Smith, Kevin Doyle & Jo Hemmant

May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering

at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

presents

readings by Fiona Smith & Kevin Doyle,

the LAUNCH of

Jean Folan’s debut poetry collection Between Time

plus The Galway Launches

of The Light Knows Tricks by Jo Hemmant

& The First Book Of Frags by Dave Lordan

The May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents readings by Fiona Smith and Kevin Doyle and the Galway launch of Between Time by Jean Folan, The Light Knows Tricks by Jo Hemmant & The First Book of Frags by Dave Lordan. The The event will take place at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Middle Street, Galway on Friday, May 17th, 6.30pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Fiona Smith is a freelance journalist and translator. She has published a wide range of journalistic work in both Irish and international publications. She currently writes on Irish topics for the German Press Agency dpa and translates from Scandinavian languages into English. She has published poetry in Southword and in the Hennessy New Irish Writing page in the Irish Independent. She won the poetry section of the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition in 2012 with the poem 'At Letterfrack'. She is currently working on a first collection.

Kevin Doyle is from Cork. His short stories have been published in Cork Literary Review, Stinging Fly, Southwords, Burning Bush, Cúirt Journal, Duality, Liblit and Sunday Tribune. His work has also been included in anthologies such as Irish Writers Against War (Dublin, 2003), Pulse Fiction (London, 1998) and Snapshots (London, 1999) as well as Cork millennium collection, An Gob Saor. He has been shortlisted for many prizes (including Over The Edge, 2010) and has won top placings in the Ian St James Short Story Award, Kilkenny Prize, Tipperary Short Story Weekend Prize and the Highlands and Islands Short Story Award. His work was described by the late Patrick Galvin as ‘terse and original’. He blogs regularly at on Irish and radical politics from an anarchist perspective (http://kfdoyle.wordpress.com).

Jean Folan was born in Galway in 1951. She lives in Inishcrone, Co Sligo and is enrolled on the MA in Writing in NUI Galway. Between Time is her first collection of poems and is published by Lapwing. Jean Folan was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2007, and the Over the Edge Showcase 2008, and was a featured reader at Over the Edge 2007. She was the winner of the Impromptu Haiku, Culture Night 2010, Ballina Arts Centre, Co. Mayo and runner-up at Culture Night 2012, Kenny’s Bookshop, Galway.

Jo Hemmant was born in Manchester in 1967, and this was to be the first of many places she has lived, including Sicily, Holland and Hong Kong. She has always worked with words—after brief stints teaching English as a foreign language and writing PR puffs, she moved into journalism and editing. This experience in publishing prompted her to set up Pindrop, a boutique poetry press, in 2010, which has published twelve titles to date. She now lives in the Kent countryside with her husband and two sons and is involved in local poetry, acting as Secretary of The Kent and Sussex Poetry Society and running creative writing workshops. Her poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies, such as Magma, Iota, Dream Catcher, Jericho (Cinnamon Press, 2012) and nothing left to burn (Ragged Raven Press, 2011) and she has won prizes in several competitions, including first prize in The New Writer Poetry and Prose Competition 2011(collection category), second prize in the Torriano Poetry Competition in 2011 and runner-up in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2012. Her poetry collection, The Light Knows Tricks, is just published by Doire Press.

Dave Lordan is the first writer to win Ireland’s three national prizes for young poets. He is the current holder of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award and previous winner of both the Patrick Kavanagh and Strong Awards for poetry. He has won wide acclaim for his writing and is a renowned performer of his own work, with the Irish Times calling him ‘as brilliant on the page as he is in performance’. He has read his work by invitation at festivals and venues across Europe and North America. His collections are The Boy in The Ring (2007) & Invitation to a Sacrifice (2010), both published by Salmon Poetry. His poems are regularly broadcast on Irish national radio and he reviews for the flagship Arts show Arena, as well as many publications including Ireland’s leading literary magazine, The Stinging Fly, of which he was a guest editor for summer 2012. He teaches contemporary critical theory and poetic practice on the MA in poetry studies in Dublin City University and he teaches creative writing at primary, secondary, third, and adult education levels. Dave’s debut collection of short stories First Books of Frags is just published by Wurm Press.

There is no entrance fee.

For further information contact 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of

the Arts Council and Galway City Council.