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This episode of Season 9 aired on Saturday 26th October 2024. It is produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to the guest stars…

David McLoghlin

Born in Dublin in 1972, David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet and writer of creative nonfiction. The author of Waiting for Saint Brendan and Other Poems and Santiago Sketches (both from Salmon Poetry), his work has appeared widely in literary magazines and been broadcast on WNYC’s Radiolab. A Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship Recipient in 2023, he was awarded second prize in the Patrick Kavanagh Awards, was a Teaching Fellow at New York University, won the Open category in the 2018 Voices of War International Poetry Competition and received a major Literature Bursary from The Arts Council. His writing has been anthologised, most recently in Distant Summers: Remembering Philip Casey (Arlen House, 2023) and Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing (Penguin Random House, 2020). He was Resident Writer at Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx, and has taught at New York University, University College, Dublin, the American College, Dublin and UCD’s innovative Poetry as Commemoration project. He currently facilitates creative writing classes with Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools and The Center for Fiction (New York).

With unusual, memoir-like power, Crash Centre explores what happens when grooming, gaslighting and abuse masquerade as trust in the relationship between the author and a charismatic literary monk—an antagonist who unites the more toxic legacies of the Catholic Church and Northern-Irish Republicanism. Set at an elite boarding school in the early 1990s, this powerful, affecting work addresses questions of mentorship and betrayal, trauma, memory and erasure, as well as pathways to recovery. Employing impactful, direct address at key moments, the poems also use fairytale imagery and resonant poetic closure. Where Crash Centre begins as self-witness, to reclaim a younger self from silence, by the end it breaks through to a lost community, speaking to, and for, others.  

Follow David on X or via his website

Crash Centre is available at Salmon Poetry

Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Elizabeth Kate Switaj has worked at the College of the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific since 2013. She holds a PhD in English from Queen’s University Belfast, an MFA in Poetics & Creative Writing from New College of California, a BA from The Evergreen State College, and an AAS from Bellevue College. Elizabeth Kate Switaj’s second full-length collection of poetry, The Bringers of Fruit: An Oratorio (11:11 Press, 2022) won the 2023 Whirling Prize. Her next collection, At (Ghost) Depth, is forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press, and her sequence, The Articulations, is forthcoming as part of a tête-bêche from Kernpunkt Press. She works at the College of the Marshall Islands on Majuro Atoll.

Follow Elizabeth on X

The Bringers of Fruit is available here

Mary Ringland

Mary E. Ringland is a poet, prose writer, and therapeutic counsellor. She has travelled far and wide but now lives on the Antrim Coast, near Larne. Her poetry, diverse in theme and content, ranges from everyday personal experience to the broader landscape of our current ecological crisis. She is a keen participant in spoken word events, and her work has been published in The Bangor Literary Journal, The Belfast Community Arts Partnership Anthologies (2022 & 2023), Live Encounters (2022 & 2023), New Isles Press – Issue 3 (2023), The Morecambe Poetry Festival Anthologies (2023 & 2024), and previously in The Storms Journal (2023). Mary has recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at the Open University, and her debut pamphlet ‘Scan and Savour’ is due for publication in 2025.

Follow Mary on Facebook

Behind the Storms

Lesley Curwen, featured guest

 Lesley Curwen is a poet, broadcaster and sailor from Plymouth. She often writes about the devastating effects of coercive control, and forced adoption. She won the Molecules Unlimited Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the Wales Poetry Award.  Her first pamphlet ‘Rescue Lines’ is published by Hedgehog Press and an eco-chapbook ‘Sticky with Miles’ is published by Dreich. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems have been published by Bad Lilies, Black Bough, Broken Sleep, Atrium, Spelt, The Alchemy Spoon and Ice Floe Press.

Comments about her work:  

Gwyneth Lewis called it: ‘devastating, forensic’

Matthew M C Smith said ‘fierce and brilliantly disruptive’

Dr Chris Laoutaris called her poetry ‘soaring, incisive, executed with daring grace’.

Follow Lesley on X and her website

Rescue Lines is available from Hedgehog Poetry Press

Damien B Donnelly, Producer, Host and Poet

Damien B Donnelly is a 48-year-old Irish, adopted, queer writer and podcast producer who spent 23 years living in Paris, Amsterdam, and London working in the fashion industry, returning to Dublin at the end of 2020. He is the host and producer of the poetry podcast Eat the Storms and the editor-in-chief of The Storms, a journal of poetry, prose and visual art. His debut pamphlet, Eat the Storms, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21, followed by a Pushcart Prize nominated Stickleback (micro collection) and In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational pamphlet co-written with Eilín de Paor. His first full collection Enough! was published by Hedgehog in August 2022. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, both online and in print. His 2^nd full collection Back from Away was published on the 8th May 2024 with Turas Press

The Storms journal is available here

Follow Damien is on X and instagram

You can purchase his pamphlets and collections at his website

Backing music for Eat the Storms is from Purple Planet Royalty Free Music

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