Boyle Arts Festival Readings

Boyle Arts Festival event on Saturday next 1st August at 5.30pm in King House, Boyle, Co Roscommon. Entry: €5.

Join the Moylurg Writers as they give selected readings of poetry and prose.

The results of the Boyle Arts Festival 2015 Poetry Competition will also be announced. Winners' poems will be read and judge, Joseph Woods, will be reading from his own work. This will be followed at 6.30pm by the launch by Geraldine Mitchell of Jane Clarke’s debut poetry collection, The River.

Joseph Woods is a poet and  former director of Poetry Ireland who lives in Rangoon, Burma with his wife and daughter. He has published three collections of poetry and his first, Sailing to Hokkaido (2001), won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award.

Dublin-born Geraldine Mitchell lives on the Co. Mayo coast. She has published two collections: World Without Maps (Arlen House, 2011) and Of Birds and Bones (Arlen House, 2014).

Jane Clarke was born in Roscommon and now lives in Wicklow. Her debut poetry collection, ‘The River’ is published by Bloodaxe Books.

Writers Gerry Boland and John Mulligan will also be hosting workshops earlier on Saturday 1st August.

Full details on the Festival Website.

Hanna Greally Literary Awards

The SiarScéal Festival is held every year in Roscommon, Ireland. The 2015 festival will take place 5, 6, 7 November.

SiarScéal celebrates the lives and history of the people of Roscommon, both nationally and globally, through the medium of poetry, prose, short stories, music and dance.

Included in the Festival's proceedings are the annual Hanna Greally Literary Awards. I was lucky enough to win a prize here a couple of years ago.

The competition theme this year is: Centenary in Reflection. Submissions of poetry, prose, short stories on this theme are invited.

The Overall Prize Winner will receive a cash prize of €200. Runners-Up prizes will also be awarded in categories that include: International Poetry; International Prose/Short Stories; National Poetry; National Prose/Short-Story; Local Winner in both Poetry and Prose/Short Stories categories; Prizes for Highly Commended and National Schools.

The winner of the Ger Hanly Memorial Cup will also be selected from among the entries received.

Selected entries from this year and past submissions will be published in the new SiarScéal / Hanna Greally Literary Journal, to be launched in April 2016.

Full Competition Rules on the Website.

Enter online or by post. Entry Fees: €5 per entry; €10 for three entries

Dromineer Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions

Details of the 2015 Dromineer Literary Festival competitions. The festival will take place 1 to 4 October, 2015.


2015 POETRY COMPETITION
(Entrants over 18)
Judge: Thomas McCarthy (picture right).
Number of entries: Unlimited. Maximum Number of lines per poem: 40

Prizes: 1st. Prize €500.00; 2nd. Prize €350.00; 3rd. Prize €150.00
Entry Fee: €5 per poem. Closing date: August 25 2015
Last year's prizewinning poems (including mine!) are here.

2015 FLASH FICTION COMPETITION
(Entrants over 18)
Judges: SARAH DAVIS-GOFF and LISA COEN (Tramp Press)
Number of entries: Unlimited. Maximum Number of words per story: 500
Prizes: 1st. Prize €500.00; 2nd. Prize €350.00; 3rd. Prize €150.00
Entry Fee: €10 per entry. Closing date: August 25 2015

Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and Art Prize

The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award is open for entries. Now in its eighth year, the award is internationally renowned and judged by industry experts including Arifa Akbar, literary editor of The Independent.

Prizes include: £500 prize money – Poetry winner. £500 prize money – Short Fiction winner. Publication in the Creative Writing Annual. A selection of books from Vintage and Bloodaxe. Subscription to Granta. A complimentary copy of next year's Creative Writing Annual

The Aesthetica Art Prize is now open for entries! Submit your work for an opportunity to win £5,000 courtesy of Hiscox, group exhibition, publication in an anthology of 100 top international artists and other great prizes that will get your work noticed by industry, galleries and thousands of art lovers.

Prizes include: £5,000 Main Prize courtesy of Hiscox. £1,000 Student Prize courtesy of Hiscox. Group exhibition in partnership with York Museums Trust. Publication in the Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology. Editorial in Aesthetica Magazine (186,000 readership worldwide)

Early Bird Entry Offer: To save 25% CLICK HERE and enter discount code SAVE5

OFFER ENDS FRIDAY 10 JULY

Boyne Berries Submissions

The submission period for Boyne Berries 18 will close on Saturday 11 July 2015. Boyne Berries 18 will be published in September 2015.

Submit no more than three poems at a time. Fiction should be 1500 words or less. Times New Roman 12 and single spacing are preferred.

Please include your submission in the body of the email and as a single word document attachment and include a short bio.

Send your work via email to orla.a.fay@gmail.com with the subject line 'Boyne Berries 18 Submission Poetry/Prose' or via post to Orla Fay, Editor, Retaine, Dunderry, Navan, Co. Meath.

Copies of Boyne Berries 17 can be ordered online here

The Stony Thursday Book 2015

The Stony Thursday Book is seeking submissions from local, national and international poets for its next issue, to be published in October 2015.

The Stony Thursday Book was founded by Limerick poets John Liddy and Jim Burke in 1975 and is one of the longest-running literary journals in Ireland and celebrates its 40th Anniversary Edition in 2015.

This year's Editor of the Stony Thursday Poetry Book is Mary O’Donnell, poet, writer and member of Aosdana. About the Editor

How to Submit:
Each poet should send no more than six poems.
Submitted poems must be previously unpublished.
Submissions are being accepted by email and by post.
When submitting poems in hardcopy please write your name on each page. Please mark envelopes: The Stony Thursday Book 2015.
When submitting by email please reference TSTB 2015 in your subject line and attach all poems in a single file attachment (pdf or doc).

Send poems to: The Stony Thursday Book 2015, Arts Office, Limerick City and County Council, City Hall, Merchant’s Quay, Limerick or by email to: artsoffice@limerick.ie

Closing Date for Submissions: Friday 31st July 2015

Fathers' Day Poem and Picture

This poem of mine was part of a series of Ox Mountains poems published in their Carthography anthology by Imagination and Place Press, Lawrence, Kansas, USA, edited by Kelly Barth in February, 2013. Gortakeeran is a mountain-side townland in the parish of Killoran/Coolaney, Co. Sligo.

Gortakeeran

Together
we turned the peat sods for the last time
not knowing it was for the last time
exposed each soft underside
to grim Atlantic wind,
bleak sunshine, blind rain
stealing in from the west.

Those sods
never made it home
never warmed winter rooms;
ruthless mountain grasses
reclaimed them,
absorbed them back into bog.

Some Sundays he played
the good shepherd
took the week-tied dogs
padding by his bicycle
to the hill country
searched all of Spinc
for his few raddled sheep
found them far up near the horizon,
checked condition
foot-rot, worms, scour,
mortality markers.

He took no-one with him
but I can hear his voice loose and wild
calling the day-out dogs
to attention. Before nightfall he returned,
tied up the hounds again
sat by the fire, dreamed.

I see him now
shrunken, brown, preserved,
smiling his fixed smile
in the face of dire eternity.

At The Edge Reading, Cavan

Three very different and exciting poets. Rebecca O’Connor, Richard Halperin and Angela Carr, will be reading with AT The Edge, Cavan on Tuesday 23 June at 6.30pm at the Johnston Library, followed by an Open Mic session.

“The pilot of AT The Edge, Cavan was a great success last year,” said Kate Ennals, the co-ordinator of the Cavan literary evening.  "This year we are having three AT The Edge events. The first is Tuesday 23 June, the second is Tuesday 25 August and the third is Tuesday 27 October. Make a note in your diaries.

Cavan woman, Rebecca O’Connor, published her first full collection We’ll Sing Blackbird in 2012. The Irish Times described it as ‘artful and wry'. Rebecca is editor of The Moth Magazine and The Caterpillar Magazine for children.

Richard W. Halperin lives in Paris.  His full collections are via Salmon: Anniversary (2010); Shy White Tiger (2013); Quiet in a Quiet House (listed for Autumn 2015). In 2014 four chapbooks appeared via Lapwing: Mr Sevridge Sketches and A Wet Day; Pink, Ochre, Yellow; The Centreless Astonishment of Things.

In her debut poetry collection, How to Lose Your Home & Save Your Life, Angela Carr mines the territory of an unexpected journey, exploring the unspoken realities, and precarious hope, of lives lived in the shadow of the Celtic Tiger’s demise.

Following the Readings, will be an ‘Open Mic’ session at which everybody is welcome. Please register with Kate on the night.

Photo is of Paddy Halligan reading at AT The Edge, Cavan, July last year.

Popshot - The Curious Issue

Popshot is an illustrated literary magazine that publishes short stories, flash fiction, and poetry from the literary new blood. The magazine is published bi-annually, in April and October and each issue is usually devoted to a theme.

The theme for the forthcoming fourteenth issue of Popshot, is "curious" so the issue will be The Curious Issue. It is now open for literary submissions, poetry and short stories.

If you would like the opportunity to have your short fiction or poetry published and illustrated in the next issue of the magazine, find out the full submissions guidelines at the submit page. The deadline is 20 July.

Please also consider getting hold of a copy of the magazine to gain a feel for the kind of work that they publish.

Happy Birthday W.B. Yeats

It's W.B. Yeats' birthday today and when I got in touch with him earlier to wish him a happy birthday he seemed a little grumpy. He told me to say that he was very disappointed that Irish poets had not taken his advice:

Irish poets, earn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,

He said that in his opinion things have got much worse, all poetry now seems to be out of shape.

He also told me to remind people that the “terrible” is as important as the “beauty” in his poem Easter 1916.

He wants this poem read on his birthday because he’s proud of the shape, the rhythm, the rhyme scheme, the refrain, the contrary sentiments and the clever way he revisited the theme of tower.
.
It’s from his “Last Poems”, one of the last poems he wrote, possibly the very last one.

The Black Tower

Say that the men of the old black tower,
Though they but feed as the goatherd feeds,
Their money spent, their wine gone sour,
Lack nothing that a soldier needs,
That all are oath-bound men:
Those banners come not in.

There in the tomb stand the dead upright,
But winds come up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

Those banners come to bribe or threaten,
Or whisper that a man’s a fool
Who, when his own right king’s forgotten,
Cares what king sets up his rule.
If he died long ago
Why do you dread us so?

There in the tomb drops the faint moonlight,
But wind comes up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

The tower’s old cook that must climb and clamber
Catching small birds in the dew of the morn
When we hale men lie stretched in slumber
Swears that he hears the king’s great horn.
But he’s a lying hound:
Stand we on guard oath-bound!

There in the tomb the dark grows blacker,
But wind comes up from the shore:
They shake when the winds roar,
Old bones upon the mountain shake.

Poems in Local Newspapers

One of the most valuable historical sources is local newspapers. While researching the history of the 1912-1923 period in Sligo I read a lot of local newspapers, the hard copies in the early years, and more recently, on microfilm.

I paid little heed to the poetry which regularly appeared in those newspapers. Recently I have returned to the same newspapers without the pressure of a publisher's deadline and have begun to appreciate the volume and variety of such poetry.

I have set up a website to record, correlate, comment on poems published in Sligo Newspapers 1912-1923. I am especially interested in poems written by Sligo authors.

http://www.sligopoets.com/

It is interesting to see how the poetry published will reflect the political upheavals of those years which saw the outbreak of World War 1, the change in attitude among the people, the 1916 Rising, the rise of Sinn Féin and the IRA and the War of Independence, the Treaty and the Civil War.

The war poetry published in 1915 is especially interesting and I have an article, War Poems in Sligo Newspapers, 1915, published in The Spark, North-West Local History and Arts Review, Issue 28, 2015. It especially deals with a poet from Manorhamilton, County Leitrim, Louisa Stockdale.

I also hope to have an article in this year's Corran Herald dealing with 1915 war poems from some Sligo poets.

It is a hobby rather than a task and will be done slowly as time and humour allows. I hope to keep in step with centenaries, 1915 is online and I am working on 1916.

Below: First stanza of a poem encouraging enlistment by South Sligo MP, John O'Dowd from Sligo Champion 4 September 1915.

Keystone Anthology

Janice Windle and Dónall Dempsey are co-founders of the loose collective they have called “The 1000 Monkeys”. The name refers to the saying that an infinite number of monkeys with keyboards, given an infinite span of time, will produce every work of literature ever written.

I met Janice and Dónall at Fermoy Poetry Festival two years ago and again at the Cork Poetry Festival earlier this year.

Over the past three years they have been organizing performance open mics with featured guests in Guilford and also publish an annual anthology. This year's anthology, The Keystone Anthology, is a collection of 121 poems by poets whose work Janice Windle and Dónall Dempsey have enjoyed at spoken word events and book promotions in 2014 – 5.

I'm delighted to have three poems, Lady's Anniversary, The Gun and My Turn, included in the anthology - and have my photo of the back cover!

There’s something for every taste in the anthology, the criterion for the editor’s choice being the poems’ accessibility and their value as oral, as well as written poetry. It includes poems by the eminent writer Bernard Kops, established and award-winning poets like Chrys Salt MBE, Wendy Klein, Patrick Osada, and Bethany Pope and successful performance poets like Steve Pottinger and Robert Garnham.

The anthology will be launched in Guildford on 8 June 2015. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend but I',m sure it will be a great occasion.

It can be ordered online using PayPal and copies will be dispatched after the launch. Price: £9.99 + postage.

Connie Roberts Collection Published.

Arlen House, Dublin are proud to announce the publication of Connie Roberts's debut volume Little Witness. 

Connie Roberts, an Offaly native, emigrated to the United States in 1983. She has won both the Patrick Kavanagh Award and the Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection Award. She teaches creative writing at Hofstra University, New York.

In Little Witness, Connie Roberts interrogates memory and history. From her early-childhood with her parents to her years in an industrial school in the Irish Midlands, the 1943 Cavan orphanage fire where 35 children perished and the self-immolation of a former inmate of Letterfrack Industrial School, Roberts spins the coarse flax of poverty and abuse into the golden rope of poetry.

This is the poetry of rock-hard experience. It will skin your soul. – New York Times journalist Dan Barry.

The collection will be launched at the Listowel Writers Week on Friday 29th May 2015 at 12.30 pm in the Boys' National School Hall.

Purchase a copy here.

Moth and Caterpillar Competitions

Entries for the Moth Short Story Prize, judged by Donal Ryan, close on 30 June.

The word limit is 6,000 (no minimum length) and the story can on any subject.

The prizes: 1st €3,000; 2nd a week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France (including a €250 stipend); 3rd €1,000.

The winning stories will be published in the autumn 2015 issue of The Moth.

You can enter The Moth Short Story Prize here.

There's also the new Caterpillar Short Story Prize – with a single prize of €1,000 (and publication in The Caterpillar) for the best story written by an adult for children (aged 7-11). Closing date is 30 September.

You can enter The Caterpillar Short Story Prize here.

2015 iYeats Poetry Competition

The iYeats Poetry Competition is an annual, online, international poetry competition which has won a prestigious reputation for the calibre of both entrants and judges. The competition is open to all those 16 years of age and upwards.

Prizes: General category: First Prize €500. Emerging category: €300 (aged 16 – 25 years)

The iYeats Poetry competition was launched by the Hawk's Well Theatre in 2009 to mark the 50th Yeats International Summer School and the 70th anniversary of the death of W. B Yeats. This year it joins in the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Yeats’ birth.

Closing date for entries: Wed 1 July, 2015 at 5pm. Winners will be notified by: Monday 20 July, 2015
Results publicly announced: Late July, during the Yeats International Summer School.

Judges for 2015 are Jane Clarke and Dave Lordan. Now there's a great choice of poets to put together as judges. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at their deliberations!

Jane's collection The River has been published by Bloodaxe this year and Dave's most recent published work is Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains published by Salmon.

Find out more about entering here. Competition terms and conditions here. Another 40 line limit competition. Ah well, just amalgamate lines.

Wild Atlantic Words open poetry competition 2015

Entries are invited for the Wild Atlantic Words open poetry competition 2015, for poems on any theme related to coastal landscape or maritime life and heritage, broadly interpreted.. The competition will be judged by Breda Wall Ryan.

Closing date for entry is 19 July 2015. There will be a first prize of €500, a second prize of one week’s retreat accommodation at The Creativity Cabin on the Beara peninsula, and a third prize of €100.

Winning and shortlisted poems will be featured at the Wild Atlantic Words Poetry Festival in in Castletownbere, County Cork, on 5-6 September 2015, and published in a printed anthology and/or on the Hungry Hill Writing website.

Each poem must not exceed 40 lines, and should be typed single-spaced. Up to three poems may be submitted per entry. You may submit as many entries as you wish. A fee of €10 is payable per entry of up to three poems.

You can enter online or by post. Full details on the website.

Poetry Day Reading, Maguire's Tara

A very successful Boyne Writers Group Poetry Day reading at Maguire's, Hill of Tara on 7 May. A great turn out, great readers, young and old. Some favourite poems by Eliot, Belloc, Yeats, Heaney, Kavanagh and some wonderful new poems by great readers and writers.

Well done to all involved! Thanks to all the readers, members of Boyne Writers and Meath Writers Circle and other groups and to those who travelled a distance to be there.

Poetry On Tara

Poetry Day Ireland takes place on 7 May 2015 and will celebrate poetry’s vital place in our culture by making poetry both inescapable and irresistible for a day. Groups, organisations, libraries, schools, bookshops, poets and all poetry lovers are invited to get involved.

Poetry Ireland encourages everyone to become involved and has plenty of ideas on its website. There are loads of free materials available also to help celebrate the day.

The website is also adding events as they are being organized.

Boyne Writers Group has organised Poetry On Tara, a poetry reading and open mic in Maguire's Cafe on the Hill of Tara. It takes place at 7.30pm on Thursday 7 May and all are welcome. People are invited to read favourite poems and/or their own poetry and there is no admittance charge.

Prole Journal - Latest Issue and Submissions

Some news from Prole Books who publish the always interesting prose and poetry journal, Prole. The latest issue Prole 16 is now available to purchase from the website.


They are open to submissions of prose or poetry all year round. They aim for a four week turnaround – though if a piece of writing is shortlisted, a final decision can take a little longer.

They have just opened for entries for their annual prose writing competition, the Prolitzer Prize. Full details on the website. Prizes: Winner: £200, publication in Prole; two runners up: £50, possible publication in Prole 18; publication on the Prole website.

Judge: Jaki McCarrick. Entries are anonymised prior to judging. Open: April 1st 2015 and closes: October 1st 2015. Unpublished prose only. Word limit 2500. Fees: £4.00 for one entry, £3.00 each for further entries. Enter via the website.  Payment can be made by PayPal.

In Caboodle, they've put together six short poetry collections into one publication. Karina Vidler, Gill McEvoy, Russell Jones, Kate Garrett, Angela Croft and Rafael Miguel Montes have created a powerful body of work for both avid and occasional readers of great poetry.

Wendy Pratt’s Museum Pieces is also making waves and bringing a very talented writer to a wider audience. Wendy is certainly a writer to look out for.

Both Caboodle and Museum Pieces are available from the website.

Brett Evans is one of Prole's editors and his first pamphlet, The Devil’s Tattoo, has just been published by Indigo Dreams.

Poem in The Pickled Body

I'm delighted to have a poem included in the current issue of the online magazine, The Pickled Body. The editors are well-known Irish poets, Dimitra Xidous and Patrick Chapman. Dimitra's first collection was published by Doire Press and Patrick has a number of collections published by Salmon Poetry.

The theme for this issue was Quantum and it includes work by Marjorie Lofti Gill, Iggy McGovern, Eleanor Hooker, Kate Dempsey, Afric McGlinchey, Angela T Carr, Paul Casey and others. Good company!

The poem is based on a painting by the Cavan artist, Roisin Duffy, which I saw at her exhibition in Bailieborough Library last October which coincided with our LitLab Bailieborough Poetry Festival. Roisin's website is here.

The poem is called "My Fish and I" which is the title of Roisin's painting, below.