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On Saturday 26th June 2021, Eat the Storms returned for its 3rd season and with a Pride Poetry special to celebrate Pride Month 2021.
The guests were Anne Walsh Donnelly, David Hanlon, Ciara Ní É, Sue Finch, Jude Marr, Jeremy Dixon, Paul Stephenson, Day Mattar, Mark Ward, Katie Proctor, Simon Maddrell, Jay Whittaker and Elizabeth Gibson, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly along with a little poetic inspiration from Tennessee Williams. Below are the bios and links to all the glorious guests for you to find and follow them in order to Stay Bloody Poetic and Proud…
Anne Walsh Donnelly
Anne Walsh Donnelly writes poetry prose and plays. She is a single mother of two teenagers originally from Carlow in the south east of Ireland. She now lives in Mayo in the West of Ireland. She has been described by Irish poet Kevin Higgins as ‘a poet with exceptional bravery, a pretty sensational original voice.’ Her chapbook The Woman with an Owl Tattoo and her full-length poetry collection Odd As Fuck were both published by Fly on the Wall Press. She has been shortlisted for the 2019 Hennessy/Irish Times New Irish Writing Literary Award, the winner of the Over the Edge Fictional Slam in 2018 and selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions series 2019
Anne is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AnneWDonnelly
You can buy her pamphlet and full collection at Fly on the Wall Press https://www.flyonthewallpress.co.uk/product-page/bundle-anne-walsh-donnelly-poetry
David Hanlon
David Hanlon is a welsh poet living in Cardiff. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Icefloe Press & Mineral Lit Mag. His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press.
David on on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DavidHanlon13
David on on Instagram at @welshpoetd
Spectrum of Flight is available at Animal Heart Press is https://animalheartpress.net/spectrum-of-flight/
Ciara Ní É
Ciara Ní É is Irish Writers Centre ambassador and was DCU’s Writer in Residence 2020. Ciara is the founder of REIC, a monthly multilingual spoken word and open mic night that features poetry, music, storytelling and rap. She has performed internationally in New York, London, Brussels, Sweden, and across Ireland. Her work has been published in a variety of journals including Icarus Aneas, and Comhar. She was chosen for Poetry Ireland’s ‘Introductions’ series 2017. She is a cofounder of arts collective Aerach.Aiteach.Gaelach, and her first project with the group was selected for The Abbey Theatre’s 5×5 2020. The video for ‘Phenomenal Woman’, a 2018 commission about the LGFA (Ladies Gaelic Football Association) was viewed over 300,000 times, and brought her work to wider attention. Other commissions include RTÉ TV, BBC Radio, TG4, and The Irish Writers Centre. Her first poetry collection is forthcoming.
Ciara is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MiseCiara
Find out more about REIC, the Multilingual Spoken word and open mic night at https://twitter.com/reic
Follow Ciara at her website https://miseciara.wordpress.com/
Paul Stephenson
Paul Stephenson was the winner of the 2014/2015 Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet competition judged by US poet Billy collins. His resulting first pamphlet Those People was published in May 2015 by Smith/Doorstep. His second pamphlet The Days that Followed Paris, written in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks, was published by HappenStance in October 2016 and included as one of the Poetry School’s Books of the Year 2016. His third pamphlet Selfie with Waterlilies won the Paper Swans Press Competition. He is from Cambridge, England. He has published poems in journals including Magma, Poetry London, the Rialto, Bare Fiction and The Interpreter’s House. He has co-curated Poetry in Aldeburgh since 2018.
Paul is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stephenson_pj and Instagram at paulstep456
You can find more about Paul on his website https://paulstep.com/
Find out more about Poetry in Aldeburgh at https://www.poetryinaldeburgh.org/
Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson is a Manchester poet, performer and tutor. She has won a Northern Writers’ Award, and her work has appeared or is upcoming in journals including 404 Ink, Atrium, Confingo, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse, Popshot, Queerlings and Under the Radar. She was awarded an Arts Council DYCP grant in Spring 2021, to work on exploring and owning her queerness in poetry and performance.
Elizabeth is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Grizonne
She is on Instagram at…
https://www.instagram.com/grizonne
She can be found at her website http://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com/
Mark Ward
Mark Ward is the author of the chapbooks, Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) and a full-length collection, Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). His poems have been in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Boyne Berries, Skylight47, The Honest Ulsterman, Assaracus, Tincture, Cordite, Softblow and many more. He was Highly Commended in the 2019 Patrick Kavanagh Award and in 2020 was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize and selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its fifth year.
Mark is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dogwithoutlegs
You can follow mark on the website https://astintinyourspotlight.wordpress.com/
Impossible Archetype can be found here https://impossiblearchetype.wordpress.com/
Jude Marr
Jude Marr is originally from Scotland. After a varied career, they decided to become a writer. Jude now has an MFA from Georgia College, a PhD from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and their first full length poetry collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds, came out in November 2020 from Animal Heart Press. Their poems have also appeared in multiple publications and their chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds, came out from Finishing Line Press in 2017. Jude is a poet and a teacher and currently moving back to the UK.
You can find Jude on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JudeMarr1
Jude’s website is http://judemarr.com/
You can buy We Know Each other by our Wounds at Animal Heart Press https://animalheartpress.net/purchase-we-know-each-other-by-our-wounds/
Simon Maddrell
Simon Maddrell is a queer born Manx man, thriving with HIV. Brought up in Bolton, Lancashire, he recently moved to Brighton and Hove after 20 years in London. His debut pamphlet Throatbone was published by UnCollected Press (2020). He describes Queerfella as a ‘journey from shame to unashamed’.
Simon is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/QueerManxPoet
You can find Queerfella at The Rialto https://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/product/queerfella/
You can find Throatbone at https://www.bridge-bookshop.com/store/p723/Throatbone-by-Simon-Maddrell.html
Read an interview with Simon at the Isle of Man Arts Council https://iomarts.com/news/pride-and-the-arts–simon-maddrell
Jay Whittaker
Jay Whittaker is an Edinburgh-based poet. She has published two poetry collections, Sweet Anaesthetist (Cinnamon Press, 2020) and Wristwatch (Cinnamon Press), which was Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2018 (Saltire Society Literary Awards). Jay writes about living with cancer, resilience, grief, family secrets, and LGBTQ+ lives (including her own). Widely published, her poems are included in the 2019 anthology We were always here: a queer words anthology and in the latest Bloodaxe poetry anthology, Staying Human.
Jay is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jaywhittapoet and on Instagram at @jaywhittapoet
Follow Jay at her website and follow her blog An Illustrated Guide to the Ruins… https://jaywhittaker.uk/blog/
Jeremy Dixon
Jeremy Dixon is a poet and maker of Artist’s Books based in rural South Wales. His poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Found Poetry Review, HIV Here & Now, Impossible Archetype, Lighthouse Journal, Riptide Journal, Roundyhouse and other print and online magazines. He is the author of the pamphlet IN RETAIL (Arachne Press, 2019). His first full poetry collection A VOICE COMING FROM THEN is forthcoming from Arachne Press in August 2021.
Jeremy is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HazardPressUK and Instagram @hazardpressuk
Jeremy is on YouTube at HazardPressPoetry
Jeremy’s books can be found at Arachne Press https://arachnepress.com/books/poetry/a-voice-coming-from-then-by-jeremy-dixon/
Katie Proctor
Katie Proctor (they/them) is a poet from Yorkshire, England. Since they can remember they have loved to write and nowadays, they write freeform poetry and prose often regarding their experience with love, relationships and mental health. Their debut collection of poetry, Seasons, was published in 2020, and their sophomore collection A Desire for Disaster will be published later this year, both by Hedgehog Poetry. They are the editor-in-chief of Celestite poetry, a journal of creative writing and non-fiction. They are a student with a passion for literature, history and classics, and are a big fan of Shakespeare. They love to act and plan to study English Literature at university.
Katie is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/katiiewrites and Instagram @katiiewrites.
Follow at at her website https://katiiewrites.carrd.co/
Celestite Journal is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/celestitepoetry
Day Mattar
Day Mattar is a cheeky queer poet and performer from Liverpool. They facilitate writing workshops with the Queer Bodies poetry collective, of which they’re the co-founder. Day’s poems come from the body, they use poetry as a tool to explore links between the psychological and the physical, the somatic and the sensual. Can a poem make you jump? Is your heart beating faster? Their poetry pamphlet, Springing from the Pews, was published this May with Broken Sleep Books, and is an explosive pamphlet which explores an episode of sexual violence through a verse play interwoven with confessions and journal entries. Mattar’s poetry is eloquent, with a dark intensity underlying the sugary surface, with echoes of Frank O’Hara and Sharon Olds. A breathtaking read, Mattar’s splenetic energy gushes out like water from a fire hydrant.
Day is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/daymattar and Instagram @daymattarpoetry
Day’s book is available at Broken Sleep Books https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/day-mattar-springing-from-the-pews
Follow Day on their website https://daymattar.wixsite.com/poet
Sue Finch
Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales. She likes all kinds of coasts, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. Her first collection of poetry, ‘Magnifying Glass’, is published with Black Eyes Publishing and focuses the lens on moments in time and carries the reader from childhood through to adulthood. The title poem recalls one of her brother’s experiments in the garden with his new magnifying glass and its ability to focus sunlight to make fire. The poems are at times dark (Hare Mother reflects on a woman leaving an abusive relationship), occasionally twisted (The Red Shoes is a fairy tale inspired poem that begins with a meeting in a shoe shop) and often poignant (No Second Chance recounts an autobiographical moment where poor use of an axe to chop wood has unforeseen consequences). The final poem, Graphene, is a love poem as well as a celebration of carbon atoms.
Sue is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/soopoftheday and instagram at @soopof
You can buy Magnifying Glass at https://payhip.com/SueFinch
Damien B Donnelly, Producer, Host and Poet
Damien B Donnelly returned to Ireland in 2019 after 23 years in Paris, London and Amsterdam, working in the fashion industry as a pattern maker for various brands including Calvin Klein, & Other Stories, Pepe Jeans, Reiss and G-Star. His writing focuses on identity, fragility and connection. His interests revolve around falling over and learning how to get back up while baking delicious cakes. His work had been published in numerous journals online and in print including Black Bough Poetry, Barren Magazine, Anti Hereon Chic, Icefloe Press and The Bangor Literary Journal. His debut poetry pamphlet Eat the Storms, which was featured on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21 and his Stickleback micro collection Considering Canvases with Boys were both published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. His next collection with be a conversation pamphlet he co-wrote with fellow Irish poet Eilín de Paor called In the Jitterfritz of Neon. He is currently finishing his first full collection documenting his love affair with Paris called Enough!
He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/deuxiemepeau and instagram at @damiboy
You can follow him and buy his Eat the Storms debut pamphlet and his Stickleback micro collection at https://deuxiemepeaupoetry.com/
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