2020 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop

The 2020 Over The Edge Poetry Book Showcase, featuring Emily Cullen, Michael Gorman, Mary Madec, Geraldine Mills, Jenny Farrell, Anne Walsh Donnelly, Katherine Noone, Patrick Stack, Aoife Reilly, Nicola Geddes, Christine Valters Paintner, Knute Skinner, Susan Millar DuMars, Ruth Quinlan, Lorraine Carey, Kevin Higgins, Rachel Coventry, Liam O’Neill, Art Ó Suilleabháin, Danielle Holian, Mary Melvin Geoghegan, and the anthologies The Children of the Nation: An Anthology of Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland (Culture Matters, edited by Jenny Farrell & Mike Quille) & Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, edited by Pat Boran & Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi) will take place at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop on Friday, February, 7^th starting at 6pm. The event will be jointly MCed by Kate Ennals and Kevin Higgins. 

In this annual retrospective of the year just past, poets based in the West of Ireland, who published a new collection of poems during 2019, are invited to read three poems from the collection in question. There will also be readings from the anthologies The Children of the Nation & Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets, to which several Galway-based poets contributed.

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, Poetry Ireland and Galway City Council.

January Over The Edge: Open Reading - Over The Edge Celebrates 17th Birthday with Louise Kennedy, Orla Fay, & Attracta Fahy

The January ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, January 23rd, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Attracta Fahy, Orla Fay, & Louise Kennedy. All welcome. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished which this month will include, among others, fiction writers from the MA in Writing at NUI Galway.  New readers are especially welcome. This reading celebrates the seventeenth anniversary of the first Over The Edge reading in Galway City Library and there will be a birthday party afterwards. 

Attracta Fahy works as a Psychotherapist, lives in Co.Galway, and has three children. She completed her MA in Writing NUIG in 2017, and participates in the Over The Edge poetry workshops. Her poems have been published in The Irish Times, Banshee, Poetry Ireland Review, Poethead, Coast to Coast to Coast, Orbis, Crossways, The Curlew, North West Words, Honest Ulsterman, Four x Four, Boyne Berries, The Cormorant, Enthralled, The Blue Nib, Burning House Press, Elixir, Bangor Literary Journal, A New Ulster, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon, and several other magazines and journals at home and abroad. She was shortlisted for 2018 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year, and was a Blue Nib nominee for a Pushcart prize. Her debut poetry pamphlet will be published by Fly On The Wall Poetry (UK) early in 2020.

Orla Fay lives in County Meath is the editor of Boyne Berries. Recently her work has been published in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, ROPES 2019, Quarryman, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Bangor Literary Journal and FourXFour. She was shortlisted for The Cúirt New Writing Prize 2019, longlisted for the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award 2019 and won 3rd place in The Oliver Goldsmith Poetry Award 2019. She blogs at http://orlafay.blogspot.com

Louise Kennedy

Louise Kennedy lives in Sligo and her fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, Banshee and The Tangerine. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2019. Bloomsbury will publish The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, her debut collection of short stories, in early 2021. 

There will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially 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.

Saolta Arts is seeking entries for its annual Poems For Patience poetry competition

Saolta Arts formerly Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust is seeking entries again for its annual poetry competition. The poetry competition is run in conjunction with the Poems For Patience series as part of Cúirt International Festival of Literature which runs from April 20^th – 25^th in Galway. The closing date for the competition is Friday February 22nd.

The prize as part of the annual poetry competition includes: the winner will have his/her poem published and displayed on the Arts Corridor of University Hospital Galway as part of the 2020 Poems For Patience series. Poems For Patience is a long running series which over the past decade has featured poems by leading Irish and international poets such as Seamus Heaney, Philip Schultz, Jane Hirschfield, Michael Longley, Naomi Shihab Nye, Vona Groarke, Tess Gallagher and many more. The poems, after exhibition on the Arts Corridor, are then displayed in waiting areas throughout Galway University Hospitals. The winner will also be invited to read his or her winning poem at the launch of the 2020 Poems For Patience at Cúirt International Festival of Literature in April 2020. The winner will be provided with accommodation in Galway if travelling for one night during the 2020 Cúirt International Festival of Literature. The winner will be given a copy of their poem printed and framed as a Poem for Patience poster. The winner will be asked to submit six poems for consideration to be a Featured Reader at the Over The Edge: Open Reading series in Galway City Library.

2019 winner Sinead Mongan

Margaret Flannery Arts Director ‘Poems For Patience is one of our long running projects as part of the arts programme. Each year we receive a high volume of entries for the competition and look forward to welcoming all new participants. Poems For Patience is a firm favourite for many patients, staff members and visitors’. 

Kevin Higgins & Margaret Flannery at 2016 Poems For Patience launch

The competition judge is Kevin Higgins. He is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He has published five full collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), & Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). His poems also feature in Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). Kevin was satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon 2015-16. 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in 2016. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems was published by Salmon in Spring 2017. Kevin is a highly experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and taught Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute for the past fifteen years. Kevin is the Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway International Summer School and also teaches on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, writer and activist Eamonn McCann, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times (London), Hot Press magazine, The Daily Mirror and on The Vincent Browne Show. The Stinging Fly magazine has described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”. Kevin’s most recent poetry collection Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital was published by Salmon Poetry in June; one of the poems from which will feature in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels.

CRITERIA: poems entered in the competition should be no more than 32 lines long. They must be the original work of the entrant. Poems previously published in magazines or poetry collections are eligible. Multiple entries are accepted; poets can enter as many poems as they wish.

ENTRY FEE: to enter one poem the fee is €10. If you enter two or more poems the entry fee is €7.50 per poem i.e. to enter two poems it costs €15, to enter three poems €22.50 and so on.

Payment should be made by cheque or postal order payable to Saolta Arts. Alternatively for online transfer contact the arts office for payment by Paypal or bank transfer. Entries should be sent by post (or via email once confirmed with arts office- bridget.cheasty@hse.ie ) to Bridget Cheasty, Arts Assistant, Saolta Arts, c/o Galway University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway. *Do not put your name on the poems; please include your contact details on a separate sheet. This is to keep all poets anonymous during the judging process. 

Please include your contact details – name, address, email address and title of poem(s) - ensure these details are on a separate page and poems are titled but do not put your name on poems. If you are emailing your entry you can do as above and send poem(s) as attachments.

The closing date for the competition is Friday February 22nd. 

You can sign up to Saolta Arts’ newsletter here: https://saoltaarts.com/subscribe/ to keep up-to-date with all our activities.

For further contact Bridget Cheasty, Arts Assistant, Saolta Arts, Galway University Hospitals, University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway Tel: +353 (0)91 893191 Email: bridget.cheasty@hse.ie     

About Saolta Arts:

For ten years, as Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust, we provided an Arts and Health programme to promote wellbeing and improve the hospital experience at Galway’s public hospitals.  As Saolta Arts, we shall continue to nurture the discovery and development of creative potential, encourage new ways of seeing, and stimulate fresh dialogue across 5 counties – making the hospital a place of possibilities.  Saolta Arts runs the west of Ireland's leading Arts and Health programme as a means of improving the hospital experience for patients, staff and visitors.  We believe access to the arts promotes well-being and enhances the hospital environment.  We provide a multi-disciplinary programme of events and activities, including exhibitions, participative workshops, music, theatre and poetry.  Saolta Arts CLG  is a registered Charity (CHY17964).