Final Over The Edge: Open Reading of 2019 with Rachael Hegarty, Paul McCarrick, & Bern Butler

The December ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, December 19^th, 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.

Rachael Hegarty

Rachael Hegarty is a Dubliner. She is 7^th child of a 7^th 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.

May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering at The Kitchen @ The Museum

The May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering presents readings by Irish poets and fiction writers Paul Perry, Anne Irwin, Rachael Hegarty, James O’Toole, and visiting Australian poet Ross Donlon. Rachael Hegarty was the winner of the fiction section in the 2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition, judged by Eleanor Hooker, and will read her winning story. Over The Edge is currently taking entries for 2015 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year; this year the competition is judged by poet, fiction writer, and literary activist Dave Lordan, who edits The Bogman’s Cannon, by far the liveliest online literary publication in Ireland. For full details of the 2015 competition see here. 

The event will take place at The Kitchen @ The Museum, Spanish Arch, Galway on Friday, May 15^th, 8pm. All are welcome. There is no cover charge.

Rachael Hegarty is a fiction writer and poet from Finglas, Dublin. She is the seventh child of a seventh child and a Ph.D. candidate at the Seamus Heaney Centre, QUB. Widely published in anthologies, journals and newspapers, she performs at festivals, rock concerts and for radio broadcasts. This summer she plans to teach her kids bareback riding on Travellers’ ponies while her husband ain’t looking. Rachael won the fiction prize in the 2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition and will read her winning story, ‘Betty’.

Paul Perry is the author of five collections of poetry, including Gunpowder Valentine: New and Selected Poems (The Dedalus Press). Among his honours are The Hennessy New Irish Writer of The Year Award, The Listowel Prize for Poetry and The Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship which he was awarded this year. As Karen Perry, he has co-written the International Bestseller The Boy That Never Was. A second Karen Perry Novel appears in June entitled ONLY WE KNOW. He lives in Dublin.

Paul Perry

Anne Irwin lives in Galway. Her poetry has been published in many magazines including Skylight 47, ROPEs, Emerge, Irish Left Review, RNLI’s anthology The Sea and  shortlisted in the 2013 Over the Edge New Writer of The Year competition, & Galway University  Hospital Arts Trust’s 2015 Poems for Patience competition, and long listed for W.O.W 2013. competitions. She is a member of The Tuesday Knights whose anthology of poetry “Wayword Tuesday” was shortlisted for the Writers’ Circle Anthology Award 2013.

James O’Toole is a native Galwegian. His poetry has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Skylight 47, and also in literary magazines in the United States. James is currently a participant in the advanced poetry workshop at Galway Arts Centre and his work features in the group’s anthologies. He was highly commended in 2010 ‘Over the Edge’ New Writer of the Year competition and has been long listed four times. James O’Toole’s first collection of poems, The Street, which will be published in the autumn and launched at Charlie Byrne’s bookshop.  

Australian poet Ross Donlon thinks there might be family in the audience tonight, since Donlons seem to hail from Galway. Ross is a winner of a couple of international poetry prizes and spoken word events and has had a sequence of poems produced for national radio in Australia. He is widely published at home but has also had poems published in The Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg, The (sadly missed) SHOp  and Skylight 47. He has read at festivals across Australia and in Ireland and England. A frequent visitor  to Europe, his most recent book of poems, Sjovegen (The Sea Road) was launched in Norway this year and, as well as this reading in Galway, Ross will be reading from it in Romania and England before going home in August.

For further information contact 087-6431748.

All Welcome. No Cover charge.

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

Poetry Ireland, and Galway City Council. 

2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year: THE WINNERS

The fiction winner is Rachael Hegarty from Dublin for her short story 'Betty'. Rachael receives a cash prize of €300 and her short story manuscript will be read by Doire Press.

The poetry winner and 2014 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year is Ruth Quinlan, Galway for her poems 'The Passing', 'Home for the Holidays', and 'Painted Lady'. Ruth receives a cash prize of €700; her poetry manuscript will be read by Salmon Poetry; and she will be a Featured Reader at an Over The Edge: Open Reading during the first half of 2015. Ruth also receives a basket of books from Kenny’s Bookshop.

Highly commended in Poetry:

Maurice Devitt for ‘The Man at the Shop’

Victoria Kennefick for ‘Shanagarry’, ‘Lighthouse’, & ‘Writer's Retreat’

Angela Carr for ‘Bone Yard’, ‘CAT Scan’, ‘July, a Storm’  

Highly commended in Fiction:

Rory Duffy for ‘Young Robbins Don't Have Red Breasts’

Edel Burke for ‘Fractured’

Averil Meehan for ‘Chapter One’

You can read the shortlist here.

We thank our judge Eleanor Hooker and our sponsors: Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop; ISupply Quay Street; Ward’s Hotel; Derek  Nolan TD; Clare Daly TD; and Kenny’s Bookshop & Gallery.

Citation by Judge, Eleanor Hooker

"It was a great honour to be asked to judge the 2014 Over the Edge, New Writer Competition. Thanks to Kevin and Susan for asking me.

Writing is a transformative act; a writer takes a blank page and scratches it with words that illustrate a world peopled by characters her/his reader get to know, come to care about, or even be repulsed by, but whom, if the writer has done her/his job, the reader will continue to wonder about, after the last full stop.

Often, what successful poems, short stories and novels, have in common, is an arresting first line, verse, paragraph. However, once the writer has caught the reader’s attention, it is her/his job to carry it through, to deliver the best story/poem for that piece of writing. All of the entries on the shortlist carried through on their promise.

Writing that comes across as an academic exercise in word arrangement, will cause the reader’s bullshit alarm to sound, and that alarm may means the reader will not follow the writer to their last full stop.

2014 Over the Edge Poetry Winner &  Overall winner – Poetry Ruth Quinlan, Galway. Poems - The passing, Home for the Holidays, Painted Lady
 

The three poems in this submission resonated with me immediately. The surprise is most definitely in the turn of image; whilst the poet’s language works on behalf of the idea. Leaving prosaic noisiness behind, the words, against the natural ego of language, allow themselves to serve.  Strong emotion writes quiet, and in these poems, it hushes, it allows air to ventilate a heavy heart, it allows space between the words, room for the reader to enter, to infer.

That’s what I want from a poem; the words to work associations, ideas, stories in my imagination, not draw me back to the page, to its own cleverness.

From Home for the Holidays (a home and a history, awaiting the return of a family long left, embraces them like the love from a parent)

…to gather

and ignore the chimed appeals

of our half-filled parish church

…then

stamp our feet and huff on fingers in the hallway,

scattering the playful ghosts of childhood selves

We fling open windows and doors,

airing the house in gulping draughts,

allowing it to breathe and break

the fragile seals woven by spiders

jealously squatting in our absense

Painted Lady is about the catastrophe of aging. Sentimentality is a heartless beast; this is not a sentimental poem, it is filled, however, with the relentless heartlessness of time on the Painted Lady.

Her face and hair, once Titianesque

in rosebud curves and auburn curls

have become the illustrations

of a tattered colouring book

2014 Over the Edge fiction winner is Rachael Hegarty, Dublin.

Story Entry - 'Betty'

Betty is an engaging story, and like the telling of history from below, it takes a character that might be as invisible in real life, as they are to most of the other characters in this short story. 

The telling is such that we willingly attach ourselves to Betty as she takes us on her road trip round the 8^th floor of the Central Bank, we want to help her when her trolley snags on the foyer rug (a lovely detail).

A writerly detail that caught my attention, is the movement in the story, there is some summary, (it’s nearly impossible to avoid, though we’re constantly told it should be avoided in a short story), but there is little of what James Woods call an aspic of arrest, Rachel Hegarty has Betty move and act, there is cause and effect.

Writing has a moral obligation, a character should not be debased, or introduced for the advancement of the story, (you may wonder), if they are created, it must be for themselves. I don’t believe Betty is a vehicle for the author’s agenda on class, but as a consequence of writing about Betty, we readers recognize attitudes to class.

I like that Betty is not depicted as a perfect human being, it makes her a perfect character. When she is humiliated, she acts, takes an ultimate and surprising action that absolves us of any pity we might otherwise be compelled to feel for her.

I am certain we will be hearing more of these two writers; I look forward to following their careers.

Highly commended in Poetry:

1. Maurice Devitt – Poem, The Man at the Shop

This poem is mysterious, beautiful, surreal, with echoes for me of Popa, Simic, Helen Ivory. The poet should beware not to become opaque and lose the reader.

2. Victoria Kennefick – Poems, Shanagarry, Lighthouse, Writer's Retreat

Three striking poems, what an astounding line ‘stones/are born like grudges’, The poet should avoid overused poetic tropes, these poems own originality, trust that.

3.  Angela Carr – Poems, Bone Yard, CAT Scan, July, a Storm

Three excellent poems, with stunning opening lines that absolutely grab the reader. CAT scan is an astonishing poem, well achieved. Be cautious of over-wording a thought; be confident that your turn of image will carry it.

Highly commended in Prose:

1. Rory Duffy – Short Story, Young Robbins Don't Have Red Breasts

Utterly convincing voice of the child, beautifully observed. This story has serious potential, however, beware of formatting, layout and language, it could affect whether a reader will persist.

2. Edel Burke – Short Story, Fractured

A brilliantly told story that leads the reader and exposes the dangers of their assumptions. The writer should be on their guard against hackneyed writing or clichéd characters.

3. Averil Meehan – Story, Chapter One

This story holds us from the outset, it’s ending doesn’t maintain the promise of the opening pages. Don’t go for easy resolutions, the best stories are those unwillingly told. I wonder should the author consider keeping this a short story (the title is Chapter One…could one sustain this throughout a novel?)"