October Over The Edge: Open Reading with Tariq Ali, Ruairí McKiernan, & Niamh Flynn

The October ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place on on Zoom on Thursday, October 29th at the usual Over The Edge time 6.30-8.00pm (local Galway time).

This is Over The Edge’s annual non-fiction special, at which all of the Featured Readers are writers of non-fiction; however poets and fiction writers are still very welcome at the open-mic. The Featured Readers are Niamh Flynn, Ruairí McKiernan, & Tariq Ali. 

There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. Anyone interested in taking part in the open-mic should text Kevin Higgins on 087-6431748 or email over-the-edge-openreadings@hotmail.com between 6pm and 6.30pm on the evening of the reading. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars.

 

Niamh Flynn is a native of Galway and works as a sports psychologist at The Galway Clinic. Over the years she has written for The Irish Examiner, Mature Living Magazine, Gaelic World, High Ball, Ireland's Dental Magazine, The Waiting Room and many more publications. Her book End Migraine Fast was taken up earlier this year by a French Publisher and is due to be published in France in 2021. She is currently in talks with agents regarding the publication of her most recent work ‘She Kept Walking’. It is based on a true story which documents the life of a young man, Seánie Ó Lionsaigh, growing up in abject poverty in the West of Ireland in the 1970s. 

Ruairí McKiernan is originally from Cootehill in County Cavan; he now lives in Lahinch. His debut book Hitching for Hope – a Journey into the Heart and Soul of Ireland was recently published by US publisher Chelsea Green and went straight to number 1 in the Nielsen paperback non-fiction bestseller charts. Described as a “powerful manifesto for hope and healing in troubled times”, Hitching for Hope is part personal pilgrimage, part political quest. The book is a reflection of a hitchhiking listening tour McKiernan undertook around Ireland during the last recession while contemplating the prospect of emigration. The book is also a memoir reflecting on his 20 years’ work as a campaigner and social innovator, which includes 7 years as one of President Higgins’ appointees to the Council of State. Of Hitching for Hope, Christy Moore has said: “Ruairí McKiernan takes time to look behind the stone walls of Ireland. He takes note of what many of us sometimes fail to see.” Colum McCann has described the book as “a paean to nuance, decency and possibility”; while Peggy Seeger said Hitching for Hope is “Irish to its core and international in its search for optimism and communal involvement, it’s an easy and uplifting read.”

Tariq Ali was born in 1943 in what is now Pakistan while it was still under British rule. He has lived in London since he was a student and has been a leading figure of the international left since the 60s. He has been writing for the Guardian since the 70s. He is a long-standing editor of the New Left Review and a political commentator published on every continent. He has published dozens of books, including The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity  (Verso, 2003), The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American Power (Scribner, 2009), and The Obama Syndrome (Verso Books, 2010). He has also published a number of novels, including Redemption (Chatto & Windus, 1990), a bawdy satire on late 20^th century Trotskyist groups set in Paris, New York, Mexico City and London, and Fear of Mirrors (Arcadia Books, 1998),  set in post-Stalinist eastern Germany. Mick Jagger allegedly wrote the Rolling Stones’ song ‘Street Fighting Man’ about Tariq Ali after he attended a 1968 anti-war rally at London's US embassy in Grosvenor Square, during which mounted police battled with tens of thousands of demonstrators.

 

Over The Edge is inviting you to the October Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, October 29^th, 6.30-8pm

Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

 

 

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council, Poetry Ireland, & The Arts Council.

 

September Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom - Ron Silliman, Molly Harris, & Fintan Coughlan PLUS open-mic

 The September ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place on Zoom on Thursday, September 24th  at the usual Over The Edge time 6.30-8.00pm (local Galway time). The Featured Readers are Fintan Coughlan, Molly Harris, & Ron Silliman. There will, as always at Over The Edge: Open Readings, be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. Anyone interested in taking part in the open-mic should text Kevin Higgins on 087-6431748 or email over-the-edge-openreadings@hotmail.com between 6pm and 6.30pm on the evening of the reading. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. 

                                     

Fintan Coughlan grew up in Mount Bolus, Co.Offaly, but has lived in  internal exile in Galway for enough years to eventually be adopted. He has been writing poems for such a long time he can't remember when the habit began. His poems have been published previously in Salmon magazine, The Connacht Tribune’s Writing in the West, The Cúirt Journal, & most recently in The Galway Advertiser’s Vox Galvia.

 

Molly Harris is the current Over The Edge New Writer of the Year. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and she received her BA in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Molly also studied creative writing at the 2019 NUI Galway Irish Studies International Summer School. She is the current managing editor of the literary journal Natural Bridge. You find her short stories and nonfiction in journals such as Furrow, Hooligan Magazine, and Vagabond Literature. 

Language poet Ron Silliman has published over 40 books, including The Age of Huts, Tjanting & The Alphabet, the anthology In the American Tree, a collection of criticism The New Sentence & an award-winning memoir, Under Albany. He has received the Poetry Foundation’s Levinson Award, been a Kelly Writers House Fellow, & the subject of symposia at the Universities of Paris & Windsor. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

Over The Edge is inviting you to the September Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, September 24^th, 6.30-8pm

Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

 

 As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always particularly 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.

August Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom with Knute Skinner, Derek Coyle, & Sinead Mongan

The first ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ after the summer break takes place on Zoom on Thursday, August 27th  at the usual Over The Edge time 6.30-8.00pm (local Galway time). The Featured Readers are Sinead Mongan, Derek Coyle, & Knute Skinner. There will, as always at Over The Edge: Open Readings, be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. Anyone interested in taking part in the open-mic should text Kevin Higgins on 087-6431748 or email over-the-edge-openreadings@hotmail.com between 6pm and 6.30pm on the evening of the reading. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars.     

                               

Sinéad Mongan is based in Galway and has participated in poetry workshops since January 2018. In 2019, she won the Galway University Hospital Arts Trust Poems for Patience competition. In 2020, she was placed 3^rd in the Cathal Buí Poetry competition. Previously she has been published by Skylight 47, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, Pendemic.ie and her work has also featured in TACTIC’s Archives of Shame exhibition.

Derek Coyle has published poems inThe Irish Times, Irish Pages, The Texas Literary Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Orbis, Skylight 47, Assaracus, and The Stony Thursday Book. He has been shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Award,and he has been a chosen poet for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. Poems of his have been set to music by leading Irish composer Grainne Mulvey, premiered in VISUAL Carlow as ‘The Carlow Song Cycle’. A new work from Mulvey is just about to be premiered in Tokyo as part of an Irish flute festival this Midsummer and will contain words from Derek’s poems. He is a founding member of the Carlow Writers’ Co-Operative. He lectures in Carlow College/St Patrick’s. His first collection, Reading John Ashbery in Costa Coffee Carlow was published in a dual-language edition in Tranas Sweden and Carlow Ireland in April 2019 and was shortlisted for the 2020 Shine/Strong Award for best first collection by an Irish poet.

Knute Skinner is originally from Missouri but has lived in County Clare for many years. His collected poems, Fifty Years: Poems 1957-2007, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2007.  Help Me to a Getaway–a memoir appeared from Salmon in 2010.  His most recent collection, also from Salmon, is An Upside Down World. Knute recently celebrated his 91st birthday.

Over The Edge is inviting you to the August Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, August 27^th, 6.30-8pm

Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7389013549

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

 

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always particularly 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.

Autumn POETRY WORKSHOPS From GALWAY ARTS CENTRE

Starting in September, Galway Arts Centre is offering aspiring poets a choice of three online poetry workshops, all facilitated by poet Kevin Higgins, whose best-selling first collection, The Boy With No Face, published by Salmon Poetry, was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet. Kevin’s second collection of poems, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in 2008 by Salmon Poetry and his poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry. His third collection Frightening New Furniture was published in 2010 by Salmon. His work also appears in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed. Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010) and The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe April 2014).  A collection of Kevin’s essays and book reviews, Mentioning The War, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012. Kevin’s poetry has been translated into Greek, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German, Serbian, Russian, & Portuguese. In 2014 Kevin's poetry was the subject of a paper 'The Case of Kevin Higgins, or, 'The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire' presented by David Wheatley at a Symposium on Satire at the University of Aberdeen.  He was Satirist-in-Residence at the Bogman’s Cannon (2015-16). '2016 - The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins' was published by NuaScéalta in 2016; a pamphlet of Kevin’s political poems The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed was published, also in 2016, by the Culture Matters imprint of the UK based Manifesto Press. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Times (UK), The Independent, The Daily Mirror, Hot Press magazine and on Tonight With Vincent Browne; and read aloud by the film director Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. In 2016 The Stinging Fly magazine described Kevin as "likely the most read living poet in Ireland." He has published six collections of poetry with Salmon, including Song of  Songs 2.0: New & Selected Poems (2017).  Kevin has read his work at Arts Council and Culture Ireland supported poetry events in Kansas City, USA (2006), Los Angeles, USA (2007), London, UK (2007), New York, USA (2008), Athens, Greece (2008); St. Louis, USA (2008), Chicago, USA (2009), Denver, USA (2010), Washington D.C (2011), Huntington, West Virginia, USA (2011), Geelong, Australia (2011), Canberra, Australia (2011), St. Louis, USA (2013), Boston, Massachusetts, USA (2013),  Amherst, Massachusetts, USA (2013), & New Mexico, USA (2018). Kevin’s most recent poetry collection, Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital, was published by Salmon Poetry (June 2019); one of the poems from which will feature in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels. His poems have been broadcast on RTE Radio, Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 4.  

Kevin Higgins

Each week Kevin will give participants a poetry writing exercise for the following week and will offer each participant constructive suggestions as to how her or his poem can become the best possible poem it can be. 

Kevin is an experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. One of his workshop participants at Galway Arts Centre won the prestigious Hennessy Award for New Irish Poetry, two have won the Cúirt New Writing Prize, and yet another the Cúirt Poetry Grand Slam, while several have published collections of their poems; two being shortlisted for the Shine-Strong Award for Best First Collection of poems. In 2013 a group of his students set up the poetry newspaper Skylight 47, which publishes new poems, reviews of poetry books and opinion pieces about poetry related matters. Kevin teaches poetry on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme and is Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway Summer School. Kevin is also co-organiser of the successful Over The Edge reading series which specialises in promoting new writers.

The workshops will commence the week of September 21^st. They will be conducted via private Facebook group, group email, and Zoom in the usual friendly supportive manner that have made Kevin's regular in-person poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre so popular. Participants shouldn't worry about the technology! Full details of precisely how the workshop will function online will be explained to participants during the first session.

They will take place on Tuesday evenings, 7-8.30pm (first class Tuesday, September 22nd); on Thursday afternoons, 2-4pm (first class Thursday, September 24th) and on Friday afternoons, 2-3.30pm (first class Friday, September 25th).

The Tuesday evening and Friday afternoon workshops are open to both complete beginners as well as those who’ve been writing for some time. The Thursday afternoon workshop is an Advanced Poetry Workshop, suitable for those who’ve participated in poetry workshops before or had poems published in magazines. The cost to participants is €110.

Places must be paid for in advance. To reserve a place contact reception at Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, phone 091 565886, email info@galwayartscentre.ie, or go to https://www.galwayartscentre.ie/courses