Over The Edge Returns To Galway City Library After Covid!

Caoimhe May, Sinead Mears, & Morag Anderson for May Over The Edge: Open Reading

The May ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place in Galway City Library on Thursday, May 26^th, 6pm-7.30pm. This is a big occasion as it is the first Over The Edge: Open Reading to take place in Galway City Library since February 2020. The Featured Readers are Morag Anderson, Sinead Mears, & Caoimhe May. There will as usual be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always especially welcome at the open-mic. People outside Galway can still join the reading via Zoom. We hope that those who wish to will be able to read remotely at the open-mic via Zoom. The technology is a work in progress, so we ask that potential open-mic readers bear with us for what is our first post-Covid Over The Edge: Open Reading! Note the new slightly earlier 6pm start time.

For those of you attending via Zoom:  Over The Edge is inviting you to the May Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, May 26^th, 6pm-7.30pm.

Join The Over The Edge Zoom Meeting at

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

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

Caoimhe May is a teenage writer, spoken word artist and performer in Galway. She is an avid activist who focuses on issues such as eating disorder recovery, sex positivity, and self love. Caoimhe’s writing has been published in Vox Galvia, Skylight 47 and elsewhere and she is a published children's author. 

Sinead Mears has always had a love for language. She won a National writing competition at 12 years old. She stumbled upon a Spoken Word group in Debarra’s pub in Clonakilty, Co Cork at aged 17 and partook in their Open Mics from then on. She learned a lot about life and writing from everyone I listened to. They gave her the confidence to pursue writing. Sinead then moved to Galway and studied Creative Writing at NUIG for two years. She recently took part in Susan DuMars’ writing course via GTI. Sinead has read here work at poetry readings held in Galway City and had a poem published in the Galway Advertiser’s Vox Galvia creative writing page.

Morag Anderson

Morag Anderson is a Scottish poet based in Highland Perthshire, Scotland. Her debut chapbook, Sin Is Due to Open in a Room Above Kitty’s (Fly on the Wall Press, 2021), explores human connections—concealed violence, love, and everything in between. It was a Winter 2021 Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her poetry appears in Finished Creatures, Gutter, Popshot Quarterly, Skylight 47, The Broken Spine Arts Collective, and The Scotsman as well as several anthologies, including Best Scottish Poems 2021. She collaborated on a chapbook, How Bright the Wings Drive Us, which won the Dreich Alliance Competition 2021. She was placed in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021, the Edwin Morgan Trust Competition 2021, shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize 2021, and won Over the Edge New Poet 2018.She is currently working on a series of commissions by the Scottish Poetry Library.

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. Those interested in reading at the open-mic should give their names to Kevin Higgins at Galway City Library before the reading starts at 6pm. Those who wish to read remotely should text 087-6431748 in the half hour before the reading starts; if you are texting from outside the Republic of Ireland please add the international code and knock off the first zero on the number.

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

Advanced Fiction Class DAYTIME CLASS on Zoom with Susan Millar DuMars

 STARTING EARLY JUNE Over The Edge announces DAYTIME CLASS in Advanced Fiction Writing with Susan Millar DuMars on Zoom STARTS THURSDAY June 2nd

THE CLASS TAKES PLACE on THURSDAY AFTERNOONS, 2-4pm for 6 weeks STARTING Thursday, June 2nd on Zoom. Finishes July 7^th. Maximum Number students: 5. Each student will receive close individual attention. 

Price: €150 for 6 weeks payable in advance. There are no refunds. To guarantee a place you must pay in advance. If you have been struggling with a short story or a novel, this is the class for you. 

CLASS DESCRIPTION: this class is for those serious about writing short or long fiction; those who are working on a fiction project independently and feel they need feedback and support. From week one, each student will be responsible to email an extract from their story or novel to Susan Millar DuMars and their classmates by Monday noon.  Students will also bring hard copies of the piece into class. Students can submit up to 5 double spaced pages each week. In each session we will provide feedback to each student. Susan’s feedback will be detailed as it will be based on her earlier reading of the work. Thus, each student will receive detailed feedback on a total of 30 pages of work.

The class is organised by Over The Edge literary events and will take place via Zoom at at

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

Meeting ID: 738 901 3549

 

ABOUT THE TUTOR: Susan Millar DuMars’ debut poetry collection, Big Pink Umbrella, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. Her next collection, Dreams for Breakfast, appeared in April 2010. Her work features in Landing Places, Dedalus’ 2010 anthology of immigrant poetry written in Ireland; and also in The Best Of Irish Poetry 2010. A fiction writer as well, she published a collection of short stories, American Girls, with Lapwing in 2007. She published a book of short stories in 2010: Lights in the Distance, published by Doire Press, and was the Featured Fiction writer in the American online magazine The Atticus Review. She has been the recipient of an Arts Council Literature Bursary. Susan's third collection of poetry, The God Thing, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013; her fourth collection, Bone Fire, was launched at the 2015 Cúirt Festival of International Literature. She lives in Galway, where she and her husband have run the Over the Edge readings series since 2003. Susan edited the anthology Over the Edge – The First Ten years, published by Salmon, which includes work by forty seven writers who have published a first book since they did a reading at an Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library. Susan’s New & Selected Poems was published in Spring 2019 by Salmon Poetry. In March 2020 she received a literature bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to work on her hotly anticipated forthcoming collection of short stories.

YOU CAN REGISTER ONLINE NOW FOR THE CLASS WHICH STARTS THURSDAY June 2^nd SEE HERE

Summer 2022 Online Poetry Workshops with Kevin Higgins via Galway Arts Centre

Starting in May, 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, Phoenix 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 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. His book The Colour Yellow & The Number 19: Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly Retain His Sanity During 2020 was published last year by Nuascealta. His essay Thrills & Difficulties: Being A Marxist Poet In 21^st Century Ireland was published in pamphlet form by Beir Bua Press last year. In December 2021 Kevin was both expelled from the British Labour Party, of which he was an overseas member, for publishing his poem ‘Tribute Acts’ in Socialist Appeal magazine and, on the very same day, awarded ‘Poet of The Year’ at the Labour Heroes Awards event at Conway Hall in London. Kevin’s sixth full poetry collection, Ecstatic, is published by Salmon in May. 

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 all commence the week of Monday May 9^th. They will be conducted via Zoom in the usual friendly supportive manner that made Kevin's 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, May 10th); on Thursday afternoons, 2-4pm (first class Thursday, May 12th) and on Friday afternoons, 2-3.30pm (first class Friday, May 13th).

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. As a bonus, Kevin is offering five optional in person workshop sessions which will take place in The House Hotel, Galway on Wednesday, May 18^th, June 8^th. June 15^th, July 13^th, & July 20^th, all starting at 2pm and running until 4pm. These sessions are open to ALL enrolled participants in this term’s poetry workshops.

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/363-363-poetry-with-kevin-higgins-evening-online-remote-course

Over The Edge and Skylight 47 poetry magazine in association with the Cúirt Festival of International Literature present the seventeenth annual New Writing Showcase

 Since its inception in 2006 the New Writing Showcase has grown to become one of the most important platforms for emerging writers in Ireland. This year’s Cúirt Over The Edge New Writing Showcase features three participants from the Over the Edge literary series in Galway – Sadhbh Goodwin, D’or Seifer, & Hannah Ward – and Shane Murphy and Siobhán Flynn, the winners of the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2022. Also reading this year will be Flavia Simas who is chosen as part of the new Skylight 47 Open Window project which will, from now on, be an annual part of Cúirt. The MC for the event will be regular Over The Edge host Susan Millar DuMars. It takes place on Tuesday, April 5^th, 11 am, at The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid Lane. Entry is pay what you can. All welcome. 

Sadhbh Goodwin is a nineteen year old poet from Galway. Their poetry has been published in the Wild Words anthology (four years in a row), in VoxGalvia, and Cinders magazine, and was also featured on Headstuff.org as poem of the week. They write in both Irish and English, and their poem “Oidhreacht” was featured on the #WEARETHEPOETS poetry jukebox in Dublin. They have performed before in the “Over the Edge" open mic, as well as the “In my Orbit" open mic at the Galway Arts centre. They are currently studying English in UCC. Sadhbh was a Featured Reader at the March 2021 Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom.

D'or Seifer lives in Limerick. She contributes to poetry gatherings, such as Filí an Tí Bháin, and On the Nail. D’or co-runs the online poetry series Lime Square Poets. Previous to this, she co-ran the Not the Time to be Silent series. Her work has appeared in Skylight 47, The Galway Advertiser's Vox Galvia page, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Pendemic. D’or was a Featured Reader at the September 2021 Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom.

Hannah Ward is from Roscommon and grew up in a family ran petrol station which closed in 2018. Hannah is currently a student in NUIG studying creative writing and working towards a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy. Hannah would like to follow in the grand Irish tradition of speaking in great descriptive volumes, with a lot of heart and conviction, and never really making a point. Her poetry has been published in the Vox Galvia creative writing page in The Galway Advertiser. Hannah was a Featured Reader at the May 2021 Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom.

Flávia Simas was born and raised in Goiás, Brazil, where she completed her studies and earned a Master’s Degree in Linguistics. Flávia is interested in literature as a means to express the shared humanity of our daily struggles. Her work has appeared at the rabble.ie, Elephant Journal, and at the special edition of Skylight 47 published in 2019. Flavia is reading as part of the new Skylight 47 Open Window project which will, from now on, be an annual part of Cúirt. 

Shane Murphy is the winner in the fiction category for this year’s Cúirt New Writing Prize. Of Shane’s winning story “Welcome to the World”, this year’s fiction judge Lisa McInerney wrote: ‘A character study that’s compassionate and raw, and a reflection on yearning and identity that was moving and surprising. This isn’t the most polished work on the longlist, but to me it was the most promising. I felt the writer was at once curious and distanced enough from their protagonist to convey a memorable story. A sign, I think, of a gift for words and for people’.

Siobhán Flynn is the winner in the poetry category for this year’s Cúirt New Writing Prize. Of Siobhán’s winning poem “I’m Trying to Write a Poem About an Angel” this years’ poetry judge Gail McConnell wrote: ‘Often the test of a true poem is the reader’s desire to return to it again and again. I liked this poem when I read it first, but I noticed that I kept re-reading it, and each time I did, I noticed something new. It’s a poem that knows what it’s about – and it’s about a state of unknowing. The poem is asking what it is to be a self and what it is to be a body, and to try to answer its questions it looks beyond the binaries of gender (male and female), and presence (natural and supernatural), hoping ‘to find the right form’. It’s a poem after Analicia Sotelo’s ‘I’m Trying to Write a Poem about a Virgin and It’s Awful’, so it’s playing with imitation in its form as well as in its subject. It sets up a pair of relationships: of the poem with its influence, and of ‘I’ with ‘they’. There’s a lot about it to enjoy – humour, clear diction, good line endings and a self-consciousness about the whole strange endeavour of living and writing – but it’ the ending I marvel at. Wonderful’.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing financial support of The Arts Council, Galway City Council, and Poetry Ireland, and our ongoing partnership with the Cúirt Festival of International Literature. 

 

March Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom with Anne Tannam, John Transier, & Aoife Cunningham

 The March ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place on Zoom on Thursday, March 24^th at the usual Over The Edge time 6.30-8.00pm (local Galway time). The Featured Readers are Aoife Cunningham, John Transier, & Anne Tannam. 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 or register their interest by messaging the Over The Edge Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/Over-The-Edge-Literary-Events-712507866206899 between 6pm and 6.30pm on the evening of the reading. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. 

Aoife Cunningham grew up in a small village on the suburbs of Galway City. A twin in a family of 6 children, Aoife grew up as a middle child. She was raised single handily by her mother Sylvia. Aoife began writing when she was 7, beginning with short stories before progressing on to writing and publishing her poetry. Aoife began her poetry career in 2018 after taking a poetry workshop with Kevin Higgins. From there, Aoife has been published in the Galway Advertiser, Broadsheet.ie, The Crow of Minerva and Spilling Cocoa On Martin Amis. As someone who struggled with their mental health, Aoife found solace through her poetry. From jumping off a bridge in 2018 to ending up on life support in 2020 due to Anorexia, Aoife’s poetry documents the battle of mental illness and her subsequent recovery. Aoife aspires to write a book and become an advocate for mental health.  Her dream is to become an renowned author and to help improve the mental wellness support in Ireland, ensuring that all young people have access to treatment.    

John Transier is a fiction writer based in Portland, Oregon who has been shortlisted in many literary competitions. John is currently working on his first novel. He loves reading history, cooking, writing, long walks and the novels of John Steinbeck, George MacDonald Fraser and Patrick O’Brian. He does not understand why anyone drinks anything other than Aviation gin, which is distilled about ten miles from his house in Portland. On winter evenings he likes to lay on the couch, listen to his wife play guitar and his daughter play piano and reflect on the fact that he has no musical ability whatsoever. 

Anne Tannam is from Dublin and is the author of three poetry collections, ‘Take This Life (Wordonthestreet 2011), ‘Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor’ (Salmon Poetry 2017) and the latest ‘Twenty-six Letters of a new Alphabet’ published with Salmon in 2021. Anne’s work has been featured on national radio and press and forms part of UCD’s Irish Poetry Reading Archive. Also a spoken word poet, Anne has performed at home and abroad at events such as Electric Picnic, Kosovo International Poetry Festival and Berlin’s Craw Festival. For more on Anne’s poetry visit www.annetannampoetry.ie

Over The Edge is inviting you to the March Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, March 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.

February Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom with Polina Cosgrave, Sharon Black, Claire Loader, & Vincent Flannery PLUS open-mic

 The February ‘Over The Edge: Open Reading’ takes place on Zoom on Thursday, February 24^th at the usual Over The Edge time 6.30-8.00pm (local Galway time). The Featured Readers are Vincent Flannery, Claire Loader, Sharon Black & Polina Cosgrave. 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 or register their interest by messaging the Over The Edge Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/Over-The-Edge-Literary-Events-712507866206899 between 6pm and 6.30pm on the evening of the reading. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars.

Vincent Flannery is a creative writing student at NUI Galway. His writing allows him to act as a conductor, directing his emotional states and abstract mental imagery into the physical world of writing. Writing, for Vincent, is the thread that binds his mind to his body and his body to the world. Through writing, Vincent translates an internal world into a grounded reality. Writing is the thread he follows to navigate the internal and external enigma that is the life. His poems have been published in ROPES.                             

Claire Loader is a New Zealand born writer and photographer now living in Galway, Ireland. Her work has been published in various magazines, including Poetry Bus, Splonk, Crannóg and Skylight47. She won the Women Speak Poetry Competition in 2019 and her story Return was shortlisted for the Allingham Flash Fiction Prize in the same year. She is a Forward and Pushcart Prize nominee and this year sees her first collection Pushed Toward the Blue Hour published by Nine Pens Press.

Sharon Black is from Glasgow and lives in a remote valley of the Cévennes mountains of France. Her poetry is published widely and she has won many prizes for her work including the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2019 and The London Magazine Poetry Prizes 2019 and 2018. Her collections are To Know Bedrock (Pindrop, 2011) and The Art of Egg (Two Ravens, 2015; Pindrop, 2019). A pamphlet, Rib, is out now (Wayleave Press, 2021), and her third and fourth full collections will appear in 2022 with Vagabond Voices and with Drunk Muse Press respectively. www.sharonblack.co.uk

Polina Cosgrave is a Russian-born writer based in Ireland. Polina was born in Volgograd, Russia in 1988. She earned a degree in Linguistics as a teacher of English and French in Volgograd State Pedagogical University at the Chair of International Communication. Polina’s diploma thesis The Linguistic Phenomenon Of Fear In Stephen King’s Novels won the first prize at the University’s 63rd conference. Her work in Russian was featured on Echo of Moscow radio station, Russia-K channel and the website Polutona. Polina’s publications in Russian include poems in Aloud, Poems About Ourselves, (Ridero, Moscow, 2016), Pashnya, Almanac (CWS, Moscow, 2016), Lost Poetry Front 6 (Volgograd, 2017), Lost Poetry Front 7 (Volgograd, 2018) and her short story Ivan’s Choice in the short story anthology Twist On The Sprat Can (Eksmo, 2019). Her debut poetry collection My Name Is was published by Dedalus Press. She is featured in the Forward Prizes Book of Poetry 2022. Polina is a recipient of Arts Council Ireland Literature Bursary Award for 2021. Her work appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Local Wonders (Dedalus Press, 2021) and Writing Home: New Irish Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019). 

Over The Edge is inviting you to the February Over The Edge: Open Reading on Zoom. Thursday, February 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.