Published poet, writer, baker and former fashion maker, with footprints in Paris, London and Amsterdam but currently back home in Dublin with sights aimed at leaving a mark on the West coast one clear fine day...
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 25th September 2021. The guests were Liam Porter, Lannie Stabile, Paul Brookes, Sinead Griffin, Andy N, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Liam Porter
Liam Porter is a writer, poet, and digital marketer from Merseyside, now residing in Chester. His poems have been published in 192, Independent Variable, Bloom and a range of other spaces. He was the co-editor and lead host of the 16th year of In The Red – LJMU’s poetry open mic night and annual anthology. He hopes his writing will provide an essence of calm and reflection in what is a very hectic world. He is the SEO & Content Strategist for Salience Search Marketing. His poetry pamphlet Waldeinsamkeit is published by Nine Pens.
You can see and hear him read from Waldeinsamkeit on the October 3rd 19:00 for the virtual launch (via Zoom) with guest readings- book your free tickets now! Find the link on his Twitter feed.
Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry; the winning chapbook, Strange Furniture, is out with Neon Hemlock Press. She is a back-to-back finalist for the Glass Chapbook Series and back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective. She was named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, is out now with Cephalopress.
Paul Brookes is a shop asst. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018),Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming is Khoshhali and Ghost Holiday (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) He edits The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
Sinéad Griffin first studied science and enjoyed a career in the Irish biotechnology sector before moving with her family, spending years living in both Paris and Edinburgh. She took numerous creative writing classes while raising her children and is a founding member of the ‘Words on the Wind’ poetry group at the Irish Writers Centre. Her poetry has been published in The Honest Ulsterman, Skylight 47, Channel Literary Magazine, The Irish Times Hennessy New Irish Writing, The Waxed Lemon and Poems from the Heron Clan VIIIanthology. She won the Adult Unpublished category of the Trocaire Poetry Ireland Competition 2021. She lives in Dublin with her husband and three adult daughters.
Andy N is the author of 6 full length poetry collections, the most recent being Haiku of life and is the co-host of Chorlton Cum Hardy’s always welcoming spoken word open mic night ‘Speak Easy’. He runs and co-runs Podcasts such as Spoken Label (Poetry / Author / Artist Chat) and Reading in Bed (Book Reviews) and also does ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle.
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Breaker, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 18th September 2021 and was my way to say thank you to my guests at Eating the Storms, on online event on Friday 17th September 2021 which celebrated the 1st birthday of my pamphlet Eat the Storms . All poems and audio recordings that made up this episode were previously featured on Eat the Storms over the past 3 seasons. The guests were…
Annick Yerem
Annick Yerem is a Scottish/German poet who lives and works in Berlin and has been published by RiverMouthReview, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Rejection Letters, 192, Eat The Storms podcast, Green Ink Poetry, Open Collab and Sledgehammer Lit. She is working on her first chapbook for Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Aisling Keogh is a writer and psychotherapist, who lives in County Galway. Her work has been published with The Honest Ulsterman, The Irish Independent, Crannog Magazine, Wordlegs, Ropes, Bangor Literary Journal, A New Ulster, and various anthologies. Her first published short story, “How to Save a Life,” was shortlisted for the Hennessy Irish Literary Awards 2011. In her free time Aisling likes to write and sing.
Lynn Valentine lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands with a husband, two dogs and a wee puppy. She is working towards her debut poetry collection which will be published by Cinnamon Press in April 2022, after winning their Literature Award. She has a Scots language pamphlet ‘A Glimmer o Stars’ out with Hedgehog Poetry Press, after winning their dialect competition. She was one of five North poets commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library in 2020 as part of their Champions project. She was recently awarded runner-up place in the Scots category of the Wigtown Poetry Prize.
Sarah Connor lives in North Devon, England, surrounded by mud and apple trees. Age and experience have taught her that having fun is more important than being cool. She swims all year round, tends her orchard and reads far too much. Her poems have been published by a number of presses, including Black Bough and Irisi magazine, and most recently Hencroft Hub and Spelt Magazine.
Nigel Kent is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet (2019 and 2020) and reviewer who lives in rural Worcestershire. He is an active member of the Open University Poetry Society, managing its website and occasionally editing its workshop magazine and was nominated for Reviewer of Literature in the 2020 Saboteur Awards. He has been shortlisted for several national competitions and his poetry has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and magazines. Hedgehog Press have published four of his works: his poetry conversations with Sarah Thomson, Thinking You Home and A Hostile Environment (2018); his first collection, Saudade (2019); his pamphlet, Psychopathogen (2020); and in October will publish, Unmuted, his collection of ekphrastic poems.
Anna Saunders has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything,’ by The North, ‘a modern myth maker,’ by Paul Stephenson and Tears in the Fence said of her ‘Anna Saunders’ poetry is reminiscent of Plath with all its alpha achievement and radiance.’ She is the author of Communion (Wild Conversations Press), Struck (Pindrop Press), Kissing the She Bear (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox (Indigo dreams) and Ghosting for Beginners (Indigo dreams.) Anna’s new book is Feverfew (Indigo dreams). This collection has been described as ‘rich with obsession, sensuousness and potency’ by Ben Ray and as ‘a beautiful and necessary collection,’ by Penny Shuttle. She is also the Executive Director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival and works as a creative writing tutor and mentor, communications specialist, journalist, broadcaster and copyright/editor.
Julie Stevens writes poems sometimes reflecting the impact Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has on her life. Her winning Stickleback pamphlet Balancing Act was recently published by Hedgehog Poetry Press (June 2021) and her debut chapbook Quicksand by Dreich (Sept 2020).
Vicky Allen lives on the south-east coast of Scotland. Her debut poetry pamphlet is “Broken Things and other tales” (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020). She’s been published in print & online in Mslexia, Stravaig, Bonnie’s Crew, Writers Cafe, Fevers of the Mind & others, & in anthologies by Wild Goose Publications, Black Agnes Press, Dove Tales & Proost. She also recently won the Hedgehog Poetry Press annual Cupid’s Arrow competition.
Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales. Her debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in October 2020 with Black Eyes Publishing, UK. She loves peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. She often drinks tea and eats cake while listening to Eat the Storms on Saturday afternoons.
You can buy signed copies of Sue’s poetry collection Magnifying Glass at payhip.com/SueFinch and if you use the code EATTHESTORMS this will generate a discount. It is also available on Amazon.
Roger Hare
Roger Hare is a poet sniffing-out inspirations in Herefordshire and beyond and has been fortunate to be included in many online and in-print anthologies and journals. He is deeply grateful to the many, like Damien, Matthew M Smith, the Cheltenham Poetry Festival crew and others who make opportunities to keep writers connected and give outlet for their work. No pamphlet yet, but still hoping!!!
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin and works in health and social care. Her poems have appeared in Vox Galvia, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Stony Thursday Book, The Bangor Literary Journal, Abridged and Dreich, with others upcoming in An Capall Dorcha and The Broken Spine Artist Collective. Her debut collaborative pamphlet “In the Jitterfritz of Neon”, written together with Damien B. Donnelly, will shortly be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Giovanna MacKenna can be found looking at the black bits of life and finding ways to make them shine. She’s been recently published by iamb, the Scottish Writer’s Centre, Abridged, Dreich, SouthChild Lit, Brag, Tether’s End and The Speculative Book 2021. She is currently working with The Museum of Loss and Renewal Publishing on her first full collection.
Ruairí de Barra is from Co. Mayo and now resides in Co. Cork. He is a sailor, an award-winning military journalist, and a poet. His creative work has featured with Tinteán, A New Ulster, Live Encounters, Bangor Literary Journal, The Ranthology Anthology, Black Bough Poetry, The Boston Globe, Boston Accent, Poetry Jukebox, The Silence Anthology, The Cobh Chronicle, Eat the Storms Podcast.
Barbara Mercer co-produces Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word with Darren J Beaney who she met whilst they were both studying for Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton. They also edit a quarterly journal called Flights. Barbara writes poetry and prose and is writing a novel which will be semi-autobiographical magical realism, and if this isn’t a genre yet, well it soon will be. Barbara lives in the heart of beautiful county of Sussex.
Karen Mooney: A career in human resource management provided preparation for Karen’s current activities; cats and words. Sometimes they hide, reappearing unexpectedly; sometimes they scratch, sometimes they purr. Her words have appeared in online publications and Penned In, co-written with Gaynor Kane published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her own pamphlet is due to be published later this year by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Jude Marr is a Pushcart-nominated nonbinary poet who writes to survive. Jude’s first full-length collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds, came out from Animal Heart Press in 2020 and they also have a chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds, from Finishing Line Press in 2017. A native Scot, Jude is now living in Herefordshire after 10 years in the US, and looking forward to making more friends in the UK poetry community. Just was one of the finalists in the Black Bough Micro-poetry Christmas- Winter Competition
Darren J Beaney is one half of Flight of the Dragonfly who host regular spoken word events on Zoom and also publish Flights a quarterly e-journal of poetry, flash and prose. He hosts two poetry clubs for Home-Stage and has recently joined the team at Sledgehammer Lit as Special Projects Editor. He has had the pleasure of appearing on the Eat the Storms three times and has somehow managed to have poems published in 17 different anthologies and journals. He has also had two pamphlets published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press and has a full collection due in December 2021.
Cathy Carson is a cancer nurse, a counsellor and a spoken word performer from Northern Ireland . Her work focuses on the human condition and connection. She has been published in anthologies and performed at festivals, open mic events, for television and radio. She has also been featured on podcasts and commissioned by charities .
Matthew M C Smith is a Welsh poet from Swansea. He’s ‘Best of the Net’ nominated and has work in Icefloe Press, The Lonely Crowd, Finished Creatures and Green Ink. Matthew is also the editor of Black Bough poetry.
Gaynor Kane is the author of the pamphlet Memory Forest, a Stickleback micro collection and her full collection Venus in Pink Marble, all published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. She likes eating, storms and parties. Tonight she is in her element!
Find out more about Gaynor and buying her collections check out her website https://gaynorkane.com/
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!
Eat the Storms, my debut poetry pamphlet, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, turns 1-year-old on 17th September 2021 and to celebrate I am hosting an evening of Poetry Prose and Friends on zoom starting at 7.30pm with free tickets now available on Eventbrite via the link below. Hopefully this will be the first of many events of sharing voices as I couldn’t invite everyone to read at one single evening and besides, it is much better to have many parties instead of just one. The first guests will be…
Annick Yerem
Annick Yerem is a Scottish/German poet who lives and works in Berlin and has been published by RiverMouthReview, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Rejection Letters, 192, Eat The Storms podcast, Green Ink Poetry, Open Collab and Sledgehammer Lit. She is working on her first chapbook for Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Aisling Keogh is a writer and psychotherapist, who lives in County Galway. Her work has been published with The Honest Ulsterman, The Irish Independent, Crannog Magazine, Wordlegs, Ropes, Bangor Literary Journal, A New Ulster, and various anthologies. Her first published short story, “How to Save a Life,” was shortlisted for the Hennessy Irish Literary Awards 2011. In her free time Aisling likes to write and sing.
Lynn Valentine lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands with a husband, two dogs and a wee puppy. She is working towards her debut poetry collection which will be published by Cinnamon Press in April 2022, after winning their Literature Award. She has a Scots language pamphlet ‘A Glimmer o Stars’ out with Hedgehog Poetry Press, after winning their dialect competition. She was one of five North poets commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library in 2020 as part of their Champions project. She was recently awarded runner-up place in the Scots category of the Wigtown Poetry Prize.
Sarah Connor lives in North Devon, England, surrounded by mud and apple trees. Age and experience have taught her that having fun is more important than being cool. She swims all year round, tends her orchard and reads far too much. Her poems have been published by a number of presses, including Black Bough and Irisi magazine, and most recently Hencroft Hub and Spelt Magazine.
Nigel Kent is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet (2019 and 2020) and reviewer who lives in rural Worcestershire. He is an active member of the Open University Poetry Society, managing its website and occasionally editing its workshop magazine and was nominated for Reviewer of Literature in the 2020 Saboteur Awards. He has been shortlisted for several national competitions and his poetry has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and magazines. Hedgehog Press have published four of his works: his poetry conversations with Sarah Thomson, Thinking You Home and A Hostile Environment (2018); his first collection, Saudade (2019); his pamphlet, Psychopathogen (2020); and in October will publish, Unmuted, his collection of ekphrastic poems.
Anna Saunders has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything,’ by The North, ‘a modern myth maker,’ by Paul Stephenson and Tears in the Fence said of her ‘Anna Saunders’ poetry is reminiscent of Plath with all its alpha achievement and radiance.’ She is the author of Communion (Wild Conversations Press), Struck (Pindrop Press), Kissing the She Bear (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox (Indigo dreams) and Ghosting for Beginners (Indigo dreams.) Anna’s new book is Feverfew (Indigo dreams). This collection has been described as ‘rich with obsession, sensuousness and potency’ by Ben Ray and as ‘a beautiful and necessary collection,’ by Penny Shuttle. She is also the Executive Director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival and works as a creative writing tutor and mentor, communications specialist, journalist, broadcaster and copyright/editor.
Julie Stevens writes poems sometimes reflecting the impact Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has on her life. Her winning Stickleback pamphlet Balancing Act was recently published by Hedgehog Poetry Press (June 2021) and her debut chapbook Quicksand by Dreich (Sept 2020).
Vicky Allen lives on the south-east coast of Scotland. Her debut poetry pamphlet is “Broken Things and other tales” (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020). She’s been published in print & online in Mslexia, Stravaig, Bonnie’s Crew, Writers Cafe, Fevers of the Mind & others, & in anthologies by Wild Goose Publications, Black Agnes Press, Dove Tales & Proost. She also recently won the Hedgehog Poetry Press annual Cupid’s Arrow competition.
Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales. Her debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in October 2020 with Black Eyes Publishing, UK. She loves peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. She often drinks tea and eats cake while listening to Eat the Storms on Saturday afternoons.
You can buy signed copies of Sue’s poetry collection Magnifying Glass at payhip.com/SueFinch and if you use the code EATTHESTORMS this will generate a discount. It is also available on Amazon.
Roger Hare
Roger Hare is a poet sniffing-out inspirations in Herefordshire and beyond and has been fortunate to be included in many online and in-print anthologies and journals. He is deeply grateful to the many, like Damien, Matthew M Smith, the Cheltenham Poetry Festival crew and others who make opportunities to keep writers connected and give outlet for their work. No pamphlet yet, but still hoping!!!
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin and works in health and social care. Her poems have appeared in Vox Galvia, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Stony Thursday Book, The Bangor Literary Journal, Abridged and Dreich, with others upcoming in An Capall Dorcha and The Broken Spine Artist Collective. Her debut collaborative pamphlet “In the Jitterfritz of Neon”, written together with Damien B. Donnelly, will shortly be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Giovanna MacKenna can be found looking at the black bits of life and finding ways to make them shine. She’s been recently published by iamb, the Scottish Writer’s Centre, Abridged, Dreich, SouthChild Lit, Brag, Tether’s End and The Speculative Book 2021. She is currently working with The Museum of Loss and Renewal Publishing on her first full collection.
Ruairí de Barra is from Co. Mayo and now resides in Co. Cork. He is a sailor, an award-winning military journalist, and a poet. His creative work has featured with Tinteán, A New Ulster, Live Encounters, Bangor Literary Journal, The Ranthology Anthology, Black Bough Poetry, The Boston Globe, Boston Accent, Poetry Jukebox, The Silence Anthology, The Cobh Chronicle, Eat the Storms Podcast.
Barbara Mercer co-produces Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word with Darren J Beaney who she met whilst they were both studying for Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton. They also edit a quarterly journal called Flights. Barbara writes poetry and prose and is writing a novel which will be semi-autobiographical magical realism, and if this isn’t a genre yet, well it soon will be. Barbara lives in the heart of beautiful county of Sussex.
Karen Mooney: A career in human resource management provided preparation for Karen’s current activities; cats and words. Sometimes they hide, reappearing unexpectedly; sometimes they scratch, sometimes they purr. Her words have appeared in online publications and Penned In, co-written with Gaynor Kane published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her own pamphlet is due to be published later this year by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Jude Marr is a Pushcart-nominated nonbinary poet who writes to survive. Jude’s first full-length collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds, came out from Animal Heart Press in 2020 and they also have a chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds, from Finishing Line Press in 2017. A native Scot, Jude is now living in Herefordshire after 10 years in the US, and looking forward to making more friends in the UK poetry community. Just was one of the finalists in the Black Bough Micro-poetry Christmas- Winter Competition
Darren J Beaney is one half of Flight of the Dragonfly who host regular spoken word events on Zoom and also publish Flights a quarterly e-journal of poetry, flash and prose. He hosts two poetry clubs for Home-Stage and has recently joined the team at Sledgehammer Lit as Special Projects Editor. He has had the pleasure of appearing on the Eat the Storms three times and has somehow managed to have poems published in 17 different anthologies and journals. He has also had two pamphlets published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press and has a full collection due in December 2021.
Cathy Carson is a cancer nurse, a counsellor and a spoken word performer from Northern Ireland . Her work focuses on the human condition and connection. She has been published in anthologies and performed at festivals, open mic events, for television and radio. She has also been featured on podcasts and commissioned by charities .
Matthew M C Smith is a Welsh poet from Swansea. He’s ‘Best of the Net’ nominated and has work in Icefloe Press, The Lonely Crowd, Finished Creatures and Green Ink. Matthew is also the editor of Black Bough poetry.
Gaynor Kane is the author of the pamphlet Memory Forest, a Stickleback micro collection and her full collection Venus in Pink Marble, all published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. She likes eating, storms and parties. Tonight she is in her element!
Find out more about Gaynor and buying her collections check out her website https://gaynorkane.com/
Eating the Storms
Eat the Storms, my debut poetry pamphlet, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, turns 1-year-old on 17th September 2021 and to celebrate I am hosting an evening of Poetry Prose and Friends on zoom starting at 7.30pm Eastern Standard Time with free tickets now available on Eventbrite via the link below. I am hoping this will be the first of many events of sharing voices as I couldn’t invite everyone to read on just one evening and besides, much better to have many parties instead of just one…
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 11th September 2021. The guests were Lucy Holme, Charles K Carter, Anne McDonald, Clifford Brooks and Loukia Borrell, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Lucy Holme
Lucy Holme is originally from Kent in the UK and now lives in Cork City, Ireland. After a career spanning thirteen years working in the private yachting industry, during which time she trained as a wine sommelier and worked as a chief stewardess and yacht purser, she made Ireland her home in 2013. Having always written as a child and young adult, she intended to become a journalist, but after graduating from the University of Manchester with a degree in English Literature and language she spent a summer working in the villas of the South of France which then led to discovering the yachting industry and international travel. Upon ‘retirement’ from yachting she continued to work in the wine industry and then took time to concentrate on raising her three small children. A resurgence of creativity occurred in 2019 and she has been writing ever since. She has been published in over 20 journals since May 2020 and her most recent work can be found in Crossways, The Cormorant Broadsheet, The Liminal Review, Beirbua, Púca Literary Journal and Tír na nÓg. She has poetry forthcoming in Southword, An Capall Dorcha, and Black Bough Poetry’s Christmas & Winter Edition 2021 and 2022. This summer she was fortunate to have been a recipient of a Munster Literature Centre Mentoring Fellowship under the expert tutelage of the poet Grace Wells, with whom she worked on her first manuscript. The resultant as yet untitled colelction will be published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2022 and next month she will begin a Masters in Creative Writing at UCC. And last week she found out that a poem of hers has just been accepted by Poetry Bus.
Anne McDonald is an award-winning writer and spoken word poet. She has performed in theatres in Dublin and London as part of a Women Of Wit collective and is a regular reader on open mic nights in Ireland, the US and the UK. Anne has had writing published in print journals and online publications and broadcast on RTE radio. Her first collection of poetry “Crow’s Books” was published in March 2021.
Charles K Carter is a queer poet and educator from the American Midwest. He shares his home with his artist husband and their spoiled pets. He enjoys film, yoga, and live music. Melissa Etheridge is his ultimate obsession. Carter has an MA in creative writing with a poetry concentration from Southern New Hampshire University and an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. He is a volunteer video curator for Button Poetry. His poems have been featured in several literary journals. He is the author of the chapbooks Chasing Sunshine (Lazy Adventurer Publishing), Splinters (Kelsay Books), and Salem Revisited (WordTech Editions). His first full-length collection will be released in 2022.
Charles is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CKCpoetry and Instagram at @CKCpoetry
You can follow Charles at his website https://ckcpoetry.com/
Salem Revisited may be found on the publisher’s website: https://www.wordtechweb.com/carter.html
Clifford Brooks
Clifford Brooks is a poet, teacher, and founder of the Southern Collective Experience. Editor in Chief of The Blue Mountain Review and host of NPR’s Dante’s Old South, he teaches courses on creative writing, the business of art, and living with autism. His major collections of poetry are available anywhere books are sold. His complete collection is only available through him.
To find out more please email: cliffordbrooks@southerncollectiveexperience.com
Loukia Borrell
Loukia Borrell is the American-born daughter of Greek-Cypriot immigrants. A native of Toledo, Ohio, she was raised in Virginia Beach. She has a bachelor’s degree in English/journalism from Elon University and is a former journalist. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, bioStories.com, West Texas Literary Review, Blue Heron Review, The Mark Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of three books Raping Aphrodite, Delicate Secrete and The Words Between Us.
The first International Page and Stage event brought together poets from New Zealand and Northern Ireland. The second event “From Opposite Ends of the Earth 2” will see poets from Northern Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Singapore of different styles and genres reading and performing live on Zoom.
Poets/Spoken Word Artists
Host – Sophie Procter – New Zealand
David Braziel – Northern Ireland Texture – Scotland Shane Hollands – New Zealand Miriam Larsen-Barr – New Zealand Renee Liang – New Zealand Shu Hoong Yong – Singapore Damien B Donnelly – Ireland
Eat the Storms, my debut poetry pamphlet, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, turns 1-year-old on 17th September 2021 and to celebrate I am hosting an evening of Poetry Prose and Friends on zoom starting at 7.30pm Eastern Standard Time with free tickets now available on Eventbrite via the link below. I am hoping this will be the first of many events of sharing voices as I couldn’t invite everyone to read on just one evening and besides, much better to have many parties instead of just one…
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 4th September 2021. The guests were Alicia Fitton, Anthony Parker, Gerald Friedman, Regine Ebner and Matt Gilbert, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Alicia Fitton
Alicia Fitton is Manchester based, performance poet writing about lust, lies and justified feminist rage, often through a lens of myth and fantasy. She was a finalist in the 2020 Glasgow Women’s Library Digital Slam. Her debut poetry pamphlet, So Tightly Wound, is available now via Amazon.
Her collection So Tightly Wound is available here…
Anthony Parker
Anthony Parker or ‘The Poetic Prince’ lives in Manchester and has been writing poems for ten years. He writes about all manner of subjects from Manchester, to history, to homelessness and social justice.
Gerald Friedman lives in Española, New Mexico and teaches physics at the Santa Fe community college. He is a member of the Rat’s Ass Review. His poetry has appeared in many publications including Entropy, Better than Starbucks, The Daily Drunk, Sledgehammer, Santa Fe Literary Review and, of course, Rat’s Ass. He received an A.B. in physics from Princeton University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been teaching at SFCC since 2002. His goal is to help students learn to solve problems using the methods of mathematics and physics.
You can follow Gerald at his website https://jerryfriedman.wixsite.com/my-site-2
Regine Ebner
Regine Ebner is a teacher in a Montessori school she founded. She loves teaching poetry, science and history to eager elementary students. The unique Sonoran desert in Arizona is often her muse. Regine has a solid background in writing. She co-authored a play, Minor Details, which was performed in Tucson and she has a chapter in the book Reimagining Shakespeare for Children, by Naomi Miller. Her work has appeared in may publications including Rough Diamond Poetry Journal, Sledgehammer Lit, The Walled City Journal and Freedom-Rapture from Black Bough Poetry.
Matt Gilbert is a freelance copywriter and blogger. Originally from Bristol, he currently gets his fill of urban hills in south east London, downhill from the dinosaur haunted heights of Crystal Palace. He’s had poems published by Black Bough, Dawntreader, Green Ink and Anthropocene amongst others.
Eat the Storms, my debut poetry pamphlet, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, turns 1-year-old on 17th September 2021 and to celebrate I am hosting an evening of Poetry Prose and Friends on zoom starting at 7.30pm Eastern Standard Time with free tickets now available on Eventbrite via the link below. I am hoping this will be the first of many events of sharing voices as I couldn’t invite everyone to read on just one evening and besides, much better to have many parties instead of just one…
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 28st August 2021. The guests were Ella Sanderson, Lennart Lundh, ‘S Reeson, David Butler and Sheena Bradley, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Ella Sanderson
Ella Frances Sandersonis a poet with High Functioning Asperger’s who has written a set of poems about Asperger’s titled A Window into Asperger’s. As a teenager, she performed poetry in many locations such as Chapel FM Radio and The Bronte Parsonage. She worked on the Stanza Stones project in conjunction with Simon Armitage and Ilkley Young Writers and performed at poetry on the Moor and in the Kings Hall, Ilkley. She has done several open mics, performed at DiVerse in Saltburn and was picked to perform in Newcastle as part of a BBC competition to find new voices in the North. She won 1st prize in the Wharfedale Festival Poetry Competition. She was published in an anthology of poetry about the Moors in connection with the Stanza Stones Project with Simon Armitage and another a book about the Bronte Family for the Bronte Parsonage Museum.
Lennart Lundh is a poet, short-fictionist, historian, and photographer whose work, including twenty-three poetry titles, has appeared internationally since 1965. His most current books are two self-published volumes in the Poems Against Cancer annual series, which has raised funds for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation since 2014; Pictures, Postcards, Letters (Kelsay Books, 2020); and The River Singing (Workhorse Writers Press, 2019). Lennart books can be found at his Etsy and on Amason with links below.
‘S Reeson [she/they] is 54, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping. A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative. They enjoy living online, but also find great joy from lifting heavy weights, running and cycling in the meat-space.’
David Bulter is a novelist, poet and playwright. The most recent of his three published novels, City of Dis (New Island), was shortlisted for the 2015 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Doghouse Books brought out his first poetry collection, Via Crucis, in 2011, while a short-story collection, No Greater Love, was published in London by Ward Wood in 2013. In 2016 David received a Per Cent Literary Arts Commission to compose a poetry sequence for Blackrock Library. Literary prizes include the Fish International Award for his short story, the Scottish Community Drama, Cork Arts Theatre and British Theatre Challenge awards for drama, and the Ted McNulty, Brendan Kennelly and Poetry Ireland/Trocaire awards for poetry. David lives in Bray with wife and fellow author, Tanya Farrelly. His upcoming collection with Doire Press will be out in September called Liffey Sequence
His upcoming collection with Doire Press will be out in September called Liffey Sequence
Sheena Bradley was born in a village called Straw, near Draperstown, County Derry, Northern Ireland, but has now lived longer in Nottingham than elsewhere. She worked as a Radiologist in Lincolnshire for 22 years. Since retirement she has been writing, mostly poetry, really – anything except radiology reports. She completed an MA in Creative Writing with Trent Uni Nottingham (NTU) in late 2018. Over the past four years she has been published in the Indigo Dreams Publications – Reach, Dawntreader and Sarasvati, also in Orbis, AOITB, Poet’s Choice, Impspired and Dear Reader. Her first pamphlet Painting My Japan was published by Impspired in July 2021.
You can buy her collection Painting my Japan on Amazon but preferable to buy it directly via email at sjb4347@aol.com
Upcoming Events
Eat the Storms, my debut poetry pamphlet, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, turns 1-year-old on 17th September 2021 and to celebrate I am hosting an evening of Poetry Prose and Friends on zoom starting at 7.30pm GMT with free tickets now available on Eventbrite via the link below. I am hoping this will be the first of many events of sharing voices as I couldn’t invite everyone to read on just one evening and besides, much better to have many parties instead of just one…
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 21st August 2021. The guests were Ryan Norman, Kitty Donnelly, Colin Bancroft, Moyra Donaldson, Tara Elliot, David L O Nan and Champion Things, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Ryan Norman
Ryan Norman is a small town queer kid, who escaped the mountains only to return years later to write about them. He is a contributing creative nonfiction editor at Barren Magazine and produces as many essays that his brain can muster in a year. His work is published widely, and has been nominated for inclusion in the Best Small Fictions anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His hybrid micro chapbook of poetry and micro fiction is titled I Always Wanted to be a Bond Girl with daily Dunk Press and his poetry chapbook soon to be released and now ready to pre-order is Cicada Song published by Finishing Line Press.
Here is the link for I Always Wanted to be a Bond Girl…
Kitty Donnelly
Kitty Donnelly’s first collection, The Impact of Limited Time, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2020. She has recently had poems featured in The Honest Ulsterman, The Rialto & Ink Sweat and Tears. Her background is Northern Irish and she lives in West Yorkshire where she works as a psychiatric nurse, an animal rescuer & also does the occasional house clearance. She won a Creative Future Award in 2019 & has an MA in Creative Writing from MMU.
Colin Bancroftis currently in exile in the North Pennines where he is finishing a PhD on the Ecopoetics of Robert Frost. His pamphlet Impermanence was published by Maytree Press in 2020 and he runs the poetry information site Poets’ Directory and also the publishing press Nine Pens
Moyra Donaldson is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co Down. She has published nine collections of poetry, Snakeskin Stilettos, Beneath the Ice,The Horse’s Nest and Miracle Fruit, from Lagan Press, Belfast and an American edition of Snakeskin Stilettos, published in 2002 from CavanKerry Press. Her Selected Poems and The Goose Tree, were both published by Liberties Press, Dublin. Moyra has also collaborated with photographer Victoria J Dean, resulting in the art book Dis-ease and with visual artist Paddy Lennon, resulting in a limited edition book of poetry and paintings, Blood Horses, from Caesura Press. Her latest collection, Carnivorous was published by Doire Press, Spring 2019. Her poetry has received many awards and in 2019, Moyra received a Major Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her new collection, Bone House, was published by Doire Press in April 2021 and she is currently working on a new commission with artist Jasper McKinney MBE.
Champion Things, Belfast based Wordcore outfit, release new album, “Deep Within the Slum Kitchen”
The new Champion Things album, “Deep Within the Slum Kitchen”, is now available to purchase on Bandcamp. The album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Vic Bronzini Fulton at Earth Music Studios in Belfast during April, May and June of 2021 and is the 4th album in 2 years.
Champion Things are a Belfast based group based around Gordon Hewitt who writes spoken word narratives which are then added to with various forms of groove based music. The music on the new album was produced by Hewitt on guitar and Bronzini Fulton who added, bass, guitar, keyboards, synths and drum patterns. The hand drummer, Thomas Annang, originally from Ghana, contributes two tracks to the album and plays on a bonus track as does bass player Michael McKinney.
The themes of the narratives on this album are a continuation of Hewitt’s investigation into viruses and pandemics and how people are impacted in different ways by viral outbreaks, heard on last year’s “Isle of plagues” album. From people who work for farming journals, to women living in slums in India to characters based in Belfast, the narratives are a reminder of how lives are affected in a myriad of different ways when major global events like the pandemic emerge.
“I try to find stories which are beyond the standard narrative regarding the reporting the situation of the pandemic. Whereas the last album concentrated on more general themes, where viruses come from, how they spread, the situation inside hospitals, the role of lawyers and funeral directors, this album concentrates on people who are slightly outside the immediate impact and some who try to profit from a difficult situation. Musically there is a lot more electronic sounds on this album and a lot slower and less jazz influenced grooves but we haven’t given away that unique Champion Things sound.”
Click on The Monthy from the Community Arts Partnership in Northern Ireland to find out what’s happening in Culture with a focus on Spoken Word and Poetry every month, edited by Champion Things frontman Gorgon Hewitt
Tara A. Elliott’s poems have appeared in TAOS Journal of International Poetry & Art, The American Journal of Poetry, and Stirring, among others. A middle-grades English teacher, and the founder and director of Salisbury Poetry Week, she is a past poet-in-residence for Freeman Arts Pavilion and a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). She serves as president of the non-profit Eastern Shore Writers Association (ESWA), and co-chair of the annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. A forthcoming poem, inspired by her former professor, Lucille Clifton will appear in the next issue of Gargoyle.
David L O’Nan is the author of the poetry books New Disease Streets (November 2020) The Cartoon Diaries (2019) Taking Pictures in the Dark (February 2021) Our Fears in Tunnels (2021) The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers (2018) Lost Reflections (2021) all also available on Amazon. His work has been published in Icefloe Press, Royal Rose Magazine, Truly U, Dark Marrow an offshoot of Rhythm & Bones Lit, Ghost City, 3 Moon Publishing, Elephants Never, Nymphs Publishing, Anti-Heroin Chic & more. He is a Best of the Net Nominee for 2021. Coming soon is his best of collection called “His Last Poetic Whispers” which will include poems published in litmags and some other poems previously published in his past books. He is the editor of Fevers of the Mind Press.
Submission are currently open at Fevers of the Mind Press, created by poet David L O Nan. Right now they are accepting pieces for Fevers of the Mind anthology; Fevers 5, Fevers of the Mind Issue 6 as well as a follow up to Anthology to Avalanches in Poetry Writings and Artinspired by Lenard Cohen, the submission period for the last one closes on September 1st.
Fevers of the Mind is currently running an interview series called Quick 9 which has spoken to wonderful poets and musicians such as Ken Stringfellow from the Posies, Ron Sexsmith, Frank Watkinson, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead, Writer of Three Martinis at the Ritz (about Anne Sexton & Sylvia Plath) Gail Crowther, Anne Casey and many more. You can find the most recent interview here with Shaindel Beers https://feversofthemind.com/2021/07/28/a-fevers-of-the-mind-quick-9-interview-with-shaindel-beers/
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 31st July 2021. The guests were Matthew Rice, Ellie Rees, Andy Brechenridge, Susan J Farese and Champion Things, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Susan Richardson
Matthew Rice was born in Belfast. Poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Asheville Poetry Review, The Dark Horse, The Tangerine, and in the anthologies The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017(Eyewear), and Hold Open the Door: The Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology (UCD Press / University of Chicago Press). He was awarded runner-up for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2017, and was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series the same year. He was the recipient of a SIAP Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for 2017/18, and also received an IERP Award in 2020. He is currently completing an MA in Poetry and Criticism at The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast. His debut collection of poems, The Last Weather Observer, was published in 2021 with Summer Palace Press.
Ellie Rees is an internationally-minded, award-winning writer who writes across many genres including poetry, creative non-fiction and memoir. Her work is widely published in various journals including: New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Cabinet of Heed, The Lonely Crowd, The Broken Spine and Black Bough Poetry. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University. Ellie’s first collection of poetry, Ticking won the Hedgehog Poetry Press ‘Selected or Neglected’ Book Collection Competition in 2020 and will be published by them in 2021.
Andy Breckenridge is an English teacher living in Brighton, via London, Paris and Glasgow, but is originally from Oban in Argyllshire. His debut pamphlet, The Liquid Air, was published by Dreich in Jul 2021. He won the East Sussex County Council poetry prize in 2005, and has also had work published in the Common Breath poetry blog, Nutmeg Magazine (the Scottish Football Periodical), Stanza’s Poetry Map of Scotland and the Shoreham Wordfest Anthology 2020. Poems are due out in Dreich’s Summer Anywhere anthology, and in The Best Worst Years by Acid Bath Publishing. He is currently editing his first collection.
Susan J. Farese, MSN, RN, (Veteran), a native of NJ, is owner/president of SJF Communications, San Diego, CA. She received her Bachelor of Science degree at Widener University (PA) and Master’s of Science degree from Seton Hall University (NJ). Ms. Farese has diversified experience in health care and communications, including military and civilian nursing practice, management, education/training, public speaking, research, and consulting. Susan is the author of the book Poetic Expressions in Nursing… Sharing is Caring (1993 and 2021), currently teaches ‘Capturing Your Creativity with Haiku’ workshops and has published poetry and articles on a variety of topics. In addition to her being on the advisory board of San Diego Film Week, Susan is a member of SAG-AFTRA, American Legion Post 43, Veterans in Media & Entertainment, San Diego Writers Ink, The San Diego Press. Since 2017, Susan has been a Mentor in San Diego State University’s Aztec Mentor Program.
Susan’s passions include birdwatching, nature photography, writing/poetry, as well as film/tv/theatre. Susan is in awe of hummingbirds, seahorses, heart-shaped items/art and the colors purple and teal. She lives in sunny San Diego with her husband Mike, daughter Emmy and also is human caregiver to her family’s geriatric tuxedo cat Chloe Marie and Betta Fish Alvin Danny Boy.
Champion Things, Belfast based Wordcore outfit, release new album, “Deep Within the Slum Kitchen”
The new Champion Things album, “Deep Within the Slum Kitchen”, is now available to purchase on Bandcamp. The album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Vic Bronzini Fulton at Earth Music Studios in Belfast during April, May and June of 2021 and is the 4th album in 2 years.
Champion Things are a Belfast based group based around Gordon Hewitt who writes spoken word narratives which are then added to with various forms of groove based music. The music on the new album was produced by Hewitt on guitar and Bronzini Fulton who added, bass, guitar, keyboards, synths and drum patterns. The hand drummer, Thomas Annang, originally from Ghana, contributes two tracks to the album and plays on a bonus track as does bass player Michael McKinney.
The themes of the narratives on this album are a continuation of Hewitt’s investigation into viruses and pandemics and how people are impacted in different ways by viral outbreaks, heard on last year’s “Isle of plagues” album. From people who work for farming journals, to women living in slums in India to characters based in Belfast, the narratives are a reminder of how lives are affected in a myriad of different ways when major global events like the pandemic emerge.
“I try to find stories which are beyond the standard narrative regarding the reporting the situation of the pandemic. Whereas the last album concentrated on more general themes, where viruses come from, how they spread, the situation inside hospitals, the role of lawyers and funeral directors, this album concentrates on people who are slightly outside the immediate impact and some who try to profit from a difficult situation. Musically there is a lot more electronic sounds on this album and a lot slower and less jazz influenced grooves but we haven’t given away that unique Champion Things sound.”
Click on The Monthy from the Community Arts Partnership in Northern Ireland to find out what’s happening in Culture with a focus on Spoken Word and Poetry every month, edited by Champion Things frontman Gorgon Hewitt
Submission are currently open at Fevers of the Mind Press, created by poet David L O Nan. Right now they are accepting pieces for Fevers of the Mind anthology; Fevers 5, Fevers of the Mind Issue 6 as well as a follow up to Anthology to Avalanches in Poetry Writings and Artinspired by Lenard Cohen, the submission period for the last one closes on September 1st.
Fevers of the Mind is currently running an interview series called Quick 9 which has spoken to wonderful poets and musicians such as Ken Stringfellow from the Posies, Ron Sexsmith, Frank Watkinson, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead, Writer of Three Martinis at the Ritz (about Anne Sexton & Sylvia Plath) Gail Crowther, Anne Casey and many more. You can find the most recent interview here with Shaindel Beers https://feversofthemind.com/2021/07/28/a-fevers-of-the-mind-quick-9-interview-with-shaindel-beers/
EastSide Arts Festival, Belfast, 5th to 15th August 2021
On 6th August at 7.30pm online, Join Belfast poet Gaynor Kane, as she hosts an event showcasing poets from the Hedgehog Poetry Press, celebrating the connections between them and their homelands of Scotland and Ireland, North and South. You will be entertained by readings from Anne McMaster, Damien B Donnelly, Karen Mooney, Lynn Valentine, Martin Malone, Peter A and Vicky Allen.
Gaynor is east Belfast born and bred, author of three Hedgehog Press publications and co-author of a fourth. Her full collection of poetry ‘Venus in Pink Marble’ was released last September on her fiftieth birthday. Her website is https://gaynorkane.com/
Gaynor Kane & Matthew MC Smith headline Cheltenham Poetry Festival
On Tuesday 3rd August, at 7pm, Gaynor Kane (Venus In Pink Marble) and Black Bough Poetry creator Matthew MC Smith (Origins: 21 poems) headline at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival online with tickets available at https://cheltenhampoetryfestival.co.uk/
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 24th July 2021. The guests were Susan Richardson, George Sandifer-Smith, Julie Irigaray, Michael Conley and Claire HM, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Susan Richardson
Susan Richardson is an award winning, internationally published poet, and the author of “Things My Mother Left Behind” from Potter’s Grove Press. In 2002, she was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, and in 2010, began writing the blog https://floweringink.wordpress.com/
She lives in Ireland with her husband, two pugs and two cats.
George Sandifer-Smith is a Welsh writer. His poetry has appeared in various journals and magazines including New Welsh Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Stockholm Review, and Black Bough, and numerous anthologies including Poems from Pembrokeshire (Seren Books, 2019) and Hit Points (Broken Sleep Books, 2021). His debut poetry collection Nights Travel at the Right Speed will be published by Infinity Book this year and his pamphlet Empty Trains will be published in 2022 by Broken Sleep Books.
Julie Irigaray is a French Basque poet dividing her time between the UK and France. Her début pamphlet Whalers, Witches and Gauchos was published by Nine Pens this year. Her poems have appeared internationally (US, UK, Ireland, Mexico, Canada, Singapore and South Korea) in Ambit; Magma; Stand and Mslexia. She was commended in the 2020 Ambit Magazine Poetry Prize; shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize 2019, and selected as one of the 50 Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear Publishing), among other prizes.
Michael Conley is a writer and teacher from Manchester. His poetry has appeared in Rialto, Magma, Interpreters House, Butcher’s Dog, Strix, among other magazines. His first pamphlet, ‘Aquarium’ was published in 2015 by Flarestack, and his latest, “These Are Not My Dreams And Anyway Nothing Here Is Purple” is published by Nine Pens. He also writes short stories and flash fiction, and his prose collection, ‘Flare And Falter’, was published by Splice and longlisted for the 2019 Edge Hill Prize.
In 2019 Claire HM had an essay published in the anthology, I Wrote it Anyway, about her experience of accessing university, and the long journey of finding the confidence to write as a woman in her forties from a working class background. How to Bring Him Back, her debut novella set in the seedier side of 90s Birmingham, is a story framed by a spell to let go of the past and will be published by Fly on the Wall press in October 2021. Claire has also written a poetry pamphlet Ask Those Birds that takes the motif of birds, and other winged creatures, to chart a journey of self acceptance through a piecing together of a personal mythology of desire. She hopes to find a publisher for these poems in 2021.
Claire’s poems have most recently been published in Black Flowers Literary Journal, streetcake, Flights, CapeMagazine, Nymphs and Tears in the Fence.
EastSide Arts Festival, Belfast, 5th to 15th August 2021
On 6th August at 7.30pm online, Join Belfast poet Gaynor Kane, as she hosts an event showcasing poets from the Hedgehog Poetry Press, celebrating the connections between them and their homelands of Scotland and Ireland, North and South. You will be entertained by readings from Anne McMaster, Damien B Donnelly, Karen Mooney, Lynn Valentine, Martin Malone, Peter A and Vicky Allen.
Gaynor is east Belfast born and bred, author of three Hedgehog Press publications and co-author of a fourth. Her full collection of poetry ‘Venus in Pink Marble’ was released last September on her fiftieth birthday. Her website is https://gaynorkane.com/
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 17th July 2021. The guests were Adele Cordner, Jack B Bedell, Julie Stevens, Karen Mooney, Darren J Beaney, Lynn Valentine, Patricia M Osborne, Eilín de Paor, Anne McMaster, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Adele Cordner
Adele Cordner was born in Newport, South Wales and worked an advertising copywriter, editor and account manager before becoming a full-time mum of her four children. Since they have all started to grow up, Adele has found time to focus on her creative writing.
The Kitchen Sink Chronicles, Adele’s first pamphlet, was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in January 2021. Her poetry has been placed in various international competitions including The Plough Prize, Poetry on the Lake, The Magic Oxygen Literary Prize, and The Welsh Poetry Competition. She has also won prizes in Abergavenny and Upper Chapel Eisteddfods and her work has featured in Red Poets Magazine and anthologies such as Poems For Grenfell Tower, Pandemic Poetry and Ways To Peace. Adele hosts Newport Poetry Society Stanza workshop and attends NaCOT poetry workshop in Chepstow. She recently achieved an MA(Distinction) in Scriptwriting from Bath Spa University and has written two stage plays which will be performed in South Wales in 2022.
Adele is an actor and director for Newport Playgoers Society and Everyman Theatre Cardiff, and sings with The Singing Club in Chepstow. She also works as a Supporting Artist in film and television so you might spot her as a background nurse in Casualty.
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in Barren, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Okay Donkey,EcoTheo, The Hopper, The Night Heron Barks, and other journals. His latest collection isColor All Maps New (Mercer University Press, 2021). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
Julie Stevens writes poems sometimes reflecting the impact Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has on her life. Her winning Stickleback pamphlet Balancing Act was recently published by Hedgehog Poetry Press (June 2021) and her debut chapbook Quicksand by Dreich (Sept 2020).
A career in human resource management provided preparation for some of Karen Mooney’s current activities; cats and words. Sometimes they hide, reappearing unexpectedly; sometimes they scratch, sometimes they purr. Her words have appeared in online publications and in Penned In, co-written with Gaynor Kane published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her own pamphlet is due to be published later this year by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Darren J Beaney is one half of Flight of the Dragonfly, who host a regular spoken word evening on Zoom and produce Flights a poetry, prose and flash e-journal. He hosts two online poetry clubs for Home-stage and has recently been enlisted as a guest editor for Sledgehammer Lit to help sift through 120 chapbook submissions and select a handful for future publication. He has had poems published in a number of journals and anthologies and has two pamphlets published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press – Honey Dew and The Machinery of Life.
Patricia M Osborne is married with grown-up children and grandchildren. In 2019 she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing (University of Brighton).
Patricia is a novelist, poet and short fiction writer. She has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. The final book in House of Grace family saga trilogy was published March 2021. Taxus Baccata and The Montefiore Bride were published byThe Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2020.
She has a successful blog at Whitewingsbooks.com featuring other writers. When Patricia isn’t working on her own writing, she enjoys sharing her knowledge, acting as a mentor to fellow writers.
Lynn Valentine is working towards her debut poetry collection which will be published by Cinnamon Press in April 2022, after winning their Literature Award. She has a Scots language pamphlet out with Hedgehog Poetry Press, after winning their dialect competition. Lynn was one of five ‘North’ poets to be commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library as part of their Champions project 2020. She is widely published in places like Atrium, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Northwords Now and Poetry Scotland.
Anne McMaster lives on a much-loved old farm in rural mid Ulster. Once a full-time farmer, she spent several years teaching in California and traveling the US before returning to Northern Ireland. She has lectured in both English literature and performing arts while developing original products and theater productions – working as a playwright and theater director for over 25 years. She now spends her time as a poet, professional voice actor, editor, project designer and creative writing mentor. Her work has been published extensively in the USA, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Her collection Walking off the Land offers a series of glimpses into a disappearing way of life – a rural childhood on a small Ulster farm. Drawing the soft echo of remembrance into the present moment, this collection of poems explores seasonal rituals and traditions that once shaped the days and lives of those who worked the land. It also traces the gradual decline of a family and an old farm.
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin and works in health and social care. Selected for The Stinging Fly Summer School 2019, her poems have been published by Algebra of Owls, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Bangor Literary Journal, The Stony Thursday Book, Vox Galvia, Abridged and Dreich Wee Books.
EastSide Arts Festival, Belfast, 5th to 15th August 2021
On 6th August at 7.30pm online, Join Belfast poet Gaynor Kane, as she hosts an event showcasing poets from the Hedgehog Poetry Press, celebrating the connections between them and their homelands of Scotland and Ireland, North and South. You will be entertained by readings from Anne McMaster, Damien B Donnelly, Karen Mooney, Lynn Valentine, Martin Malone, Peter A and Vicky Allen.
Gaynor is east Belfast born and bred, author of three Hedgehog Press publications and co-author of a fourth. Her full collection of poetry ‘Venus in Pink Marble’ was released last September on her fiftieth birthday. Her website is https://gaynorkane.com/
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 10th July 2021. The guests were Briony Collins, Catherine Graham, Robert Fanning, Marcelle Newbold, Lisa Mary Armstrong, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Briony Collins
Briony Collins is a poet, novelist, and playwright. She won the 2016 Exeter Novel Prize and has several prominent publications. Her debut poetry book, Blame it on Me, is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books in August 2021. She is co-founder and co-editor of Cape Magazine
Catherine Graham is a Toronto-based writer of poetry and fiction. Her sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was nameda CBC Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Award for Poetry and her debut novel, Quarry,was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction and Fred Kerner Book Award and won the Miramichi Reader’s “The Very Best!” Book Award and an Independent Publisher Book Awards’ gold medal for Fiction. Her poems have been translated into Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Bangla, Chinese and Spanish and have appeared in The Malahat Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Glasgow Review of Books, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland Review, Gutter Magazine, Crannóg, The Bangor Literary Journal,Southwordand more. A finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, she won the Arc Award of Awesomeness. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. A previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Poetry NOW, she leads their monthly book club and is an interviewer for By the Lake Book Club. Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric is her seventh book. Her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart, is forthcoming.
Robert Fanning is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: Severance (Salmon Poetry, 2019), Our Sudden Museum, (Salmon Poetry, 2017), American Prophet (Marick Press, 2009), and The Seed Thieves (Marick Press, 2006), as well as two chapbooks: Sheet Music (Three Bee Press, 2015) and Old Bright Wheel (The Ledge Press, 2001). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, The Atlanta Review, Waxwing, THRUSH, The Cortland Review, The Common, and many other journals. He is a Professor of English at Central Michigan University, as well as the Founder/Facilitator of the Wellspring Literary Series in Mt. Pleasant, MI., and the Founder/Director of PEN/INSULA POETRY, a resource for Michigan poets
Marcelle Newbold loves poetry as a way of exploring inner spaces, place, and inheritance. She addresses the day to day: the unexceptional as precious moments. Pushcart Prize nominated and winner of the Poetry in the Arcades competition in 2020, her poems have been published online and in print magazines, and in recent anthologies by Black Bough Poetry, Maytree Press, and Indigo Dreams. She is a Managing Editor of Nightingale & Sparrow and lives in Cardiff, Wales where she trained as an architect.
Lisa Mary Armstrong lives in Scotland with her children and tutors law and criminology at Strathclyde University. She is a children’s rights advocate and researcher and writes about women and children’s experiences of the criminal justice system. She started writing poetry during the pandemic and has had over forty poems published in journals such as Anti Heroin Chic, the Aurora Journal, Yours Poetically Magazine, Dwelling Literary, The Daily Drunk, Fahmidan Journal, Heath and Coffin, Spillwords and many more. She is currently putting together two collections of poetry on women and war and a series of character monologues in which she explores the lives and loves of 50’s Hollywood Actresses.
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 3rd July 2021. The guests were Christina Thatcher, Matt Hohner, Daniel Wade, Kristin Garth and Gaynor Kane, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Christina Thatcher
Christina Thatcher is a Creative Writing Lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She keeps busy off campus as Poetry Editor for The Cardiff Review, a tutor for The Poetry School, a member of the Literature Wales Management Board and as a freelance workshop facilitator across the UK. Her poetry and short stories have featured in over 50 publications including The London Magazine,Magma, North American Review, Planet Magazine, The Interpreter’s House and more. She has published two poetry collections with Parthian Books: More than you were (2017) and How to Carry Fire (2020).
Matt Hohner is an editor for Loch Raven Review. He once won a poetry slam in Washington State over the phone from Maryland. He has collaborated with Dutch composer Bec Plexus to convert a poem of his into lyrics for a song performed in Amsterdam, and with visual artists for an LED electronic art billboard project in Baltimore City. Hohner’s first collection is Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House 2018). Salmon Poetry will publish his next collection in 2023. An international award-winning poet, he most recently placed second in the 2021 Fish Publishing Poetry Prize. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Daniel Wade is a poet, playwright and fiction writer from Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland. In January 2017, his play ‘The Collector’ opened the 20th anniversary season of the New Theatre, Dublin. His spoken-word album ‘Embers and Earth’, available for download on iTunes and Spotify, launched at the National Concert Hall. A prolific performer, Daniel has featured at many festivals including Electric Picnic, Body and Soul, and the 2019 International Literature Festival (ILFD). In January 2020 his radio drama ‘Crossing the Red Line’ was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 Extra, and later won a silver award at the New York Festivals Radio Awards for Best Digital Drama. Daniel was the Hennessy New Irish Writing winner for April 2015 in The Irish Times, and his poetry and short fiction have featured in over two dozen publications since 2012. His debut collection ‘Rapids’ was published by Finishing Line Press in August of 2021. His novel ‘a Land Without Wolves’ is published by Temple Dark Books. In November 2020, his screenplay ‘Strike’, co-written with filmmaker Shane Collins, was nominated as a finalist in the 2020 Waterford Film Festival.
Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Rhysling nominated sonneteer and a Best of the Net 2020 finalist. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of 20 books of poetry including Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (Hedgehog Poetry Press), Flutter Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press), and Girlarium (Fahmidan Journal). She is the founder of Pink Plastic House a tiny journal and co-founder of Performance Anxiety, an online poetry reading series.
Gaynor Kane is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast. She has two poetry pamphlets, and a full collection, from Hedgehog Poetry Press, they are Circling the Sun, Memory Forest, and Venus in Pink Marble (2018, 2019 and September 2020 respectively). She is co-author, along with Karen Mooney, of Penned In a poetry pamphlet written in response to the pandemic (November 2020).
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms.
On Saturday 26th June 2021, Eat the Storms returns for its 3rd season and kicks off with a Pride Poetry special to celebrate Pride Month.
The guests will be Anne Walsh Donnelly, David Hanlon, Ciara Ní É, Sue Finch, Jude Marr, Jeremy Dixon, Paul Stephenson, Day Mattar, 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. So join us this Saturday from 5pm GMT to Stay Bloody Poetic and Proud…
A descent into the mayhem of a crisis, coming to terms with Covid concerns in The Kitchen Sink Chronicles, looking out for holds of hope, wishing for buds to blossom, to refill what the shelves no longer offer before the bough breaks and it comes down to all but a cradle of wood, no ketchup & only birds who get to see the Savannahs now.
Adele Cordner’s poetry pamphlet, The Kitchen Sink Chronicles, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press with perfectly fine lines of fragile illustrations by her daughter Florence Cordner, is an unmissable account of a family’s journey as they reshape the landscape of their everyday lives between mid-March and the end of August 2020.
Loo roll shortages, no ketchup in the cupboards and bland beige blobs left behind on supermarket shelves instil these poems with a fear that only yesterday we would have thought was a joke and yet Adele never lets the words drown in despair but moves through familiar settings of front lawns, back gardens, shopping aisles, now fitted out with invisible booby traps, with the resilience a mother needs to hold onto, regardless of the situation in order to protect her family, the falling trees and the baby birds, lost to their position. Beyond the numbers that eventually came to numb us and the pre-prepared speeches that washed over our skin quicker than any invisible deathly dust, these poems pull us in to the everyday concerns; house bound, bubble bound, the worries that came before Covid; road accidents, crashes, broken dishwashers, children’s illnesses, distance from family members and the gentle release occasionally found in unexpected places; dropping your hand into the soft tide to let things wash away.
This is a brave account of a terrifying time told with compassion, consideration and that resilience that keeps us all breathing. This is an invite to come inside a home and, having been kept away from other homes but our own for so long, how can we refuse not to pull up a chair in this kitchen and listen to the tale of how it all unfolded.
Check out Adele Cordner’s website for more info and to buy the book…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired on 8th May 2021 and I was joined by poets Ryan Gibbs, Sue Finch, Mere Leonard, Brian McManus, Sergio A. Ortiz, Ankh Spice and this weekend’s special guest star; Rhona Greene. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Ryan Gibbs is an English professor who lives in London, Canada. His forty published poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada, The United States, Malta, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. His children’s poetry has been included in the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness. Ryan is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RyanGibbsWriter and you can find out more about this writing by visiting the link below…
Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales (now confirmed bakers). Her first published poem appeared in A New Manchester Alphabet in 2015 whilst studying for her MA with Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines including: The Interpreter’s House, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Dear Reader and One Hand Clapping. Her debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in October 2020by Black Eyes Publishing. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/soopoftheday and you can find her book at…
Mare Leonard is an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. She has published 4 chapbooks. The most recent, The Dark Inside My Hooded Coat, was published at Finishing Line Press in 2018. Her first full-length book, I Always Knew This, should be available at the end of May. She was nominated for a pushcart in 2018 for a poem in The Pickled Body. You can find her poetry collection here…
Brian McManus played a central role in the international criminal enquiry following the terrorist bombing of a Pan Am jet airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 with the loss of 270 lives. His collection of poetry, prose and photographs recounting the events of those times was published as Blue Daze, Black Knights – The Story of Lockerbie in 1999. Having stepped away from the world of work, Brian spends his time reading and writing poetry reflecting on our increasingly challenging world, and in his own small way holding to account those who abdicate their responsibility for managing it and the lack of support for those who inhabit it. Liar Liar, his last book of poems, looked closely at the government’s management of Covid. Solastalgia, his next pamphlet will be published this summer by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Brian is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BrianOpenWorld and his website is…
Sergio A. is a retired, Educator, Bilingual-Queer PRican Trans Poet, & Human Rights Activist. Pushcart nominee, Best of the Web, Best of the Net, nominee. He took 2nd place in the 2016 Ramón Ataz annual poetry competition, sponsored by Alaire Publishing House. He workshops his poetry in RatsAssReview workshop. Recent credits include Spanish audio poems in GATO MALO Editing, Maleta Ilegal, Frances House, South Florida Poetry Journal, RatsAssReview, The Maynard, and Spillwords. He is the Founder of Undertow Tanka Poetry Review now La Resaca. Founder of the Online LGBTTQI+ Elderly Virtual Caribbean Artist Public Housing Collective and Publishing Press. You can find Sergio on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Saore and his website is…
Ankh Spice is a sea-obsessed, queer-identified poet from Aotearoa (New Zealand). He writes because he doesn’t have much skin, because the tiniest detail of the world is sentient in ways we overlook – loud and raw and all we’ve got – and because he seems to have a bit of a knack for translating that. His work circles constantly around natural imagery, environmental issues, mental and physical health, living landscape and myth, narratives of queerness, physicality and anti-colonisation, and the persistent briefness of being human. He’s grateful and a bit astonished to have had more than 100 pieces of work published on several continents over the last 2 years and refuses to rate any literary magazine as more important than any other, so doesn’t list them in author bios. Six of his poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, or both, and his poem ‘New Cloth’ was selected as joint winner of the Poetry Archive’s World View 2020 competition. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press, a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine, and has two secret poetry collections coming later in 2021. You can find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SeaGoatScreams and for more about his work click the link below…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired on 29th April 2021, Poetry Day Ireland and I was joined by poets Gaynor Kane, Kevin Higgins, Susan Millar DuMars, Kevin Bateman, Anne Walsh Donnelly, Paul McCarrick, Annraoi de Paor, Eilín de Paor, Eleanor Hooker, Theresa Donnelly, Catherine Ann Cullen, Aisling Keogh, Marty McKenna, Cathy Carson and Ruairí de Barra. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Gaynor Kane is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast. She has two poetry pamphlets, and a full collection, from Hedgehog Poetry Press, they are Circling the Sun, Memory Forest, and Venus in Pink Marble (2018, 2019 and September 2020 respectively). She is co-author, along with Karen Mooney, of Penned In a poetry pamphlet written in response to the pandemic (November 2020). Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/gaynorkane and you can find out more about Gaynor and her collections at her website…
Kevin Higgins (in the photo with his wife Susan Millar DuMars) is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He has published five full collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), & Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). His poems also feature in Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). Kevin was satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon 2015-16. 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in 2016. The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed was published by Culture Matters (UK) also in 2016. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems was published by Salmon in Spring 2017. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, writer and activist Eamonn McCann, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times (London), Hot Press magazine, The Daily Mirror and on The Vincent Browne Show, and read aloud by Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. He has published topical political poems in publications as various as The New European, The Morning Star, Dissent Magazine (USA), Village Magazine (Ireland), & Harry’s Place. The Stinging Fly magazine has described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”. One of Kevin’s poems features in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels which is just published. His work has 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 is just published by Nuascealta. Kevin’s sixth full poetry collection, Ecstatic, will be published by Salmon Publishing. Kevin is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KevinHIpoet1967 and you can find out more about Over the Edge at https://twitter.com/OverTheEdgeOpen and for more information about forthcoming events check out the website below…
Susan Millar DuMars was born in Philadelphia but has lived in Galway for the past twenty years. Her 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 two Arts Council Literature Bursaries (2005 & 2020). 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 Naked: 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 highly anticipated forthcoming collection of short stories.
Kevin Bateman is a Surrealist poet from Galway currently based in his mind who has created at a variety of Events In Spiritual Places That People Have Forgotten To Visit. He has been short listed for the Saboteur Awards in 2017 and 2019 for his events and his poem have been published in many journals including in The Runt Magazine issue 7, 9 and 10, Beir Bua Journal, Fly on the wall Press, BlueFoot Press. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Bate_Kevin and you can watch his poetry events on Youtube by following the link below…
Anne Walsh Donnelly lives in Ireland with two teenagers and works as a Student Services Officer in a third-level college. Her work has been published in several literary outlets including The Irish Times, Crannog, Boyne Berries, The Blue Nib, Cold Coffee Stand, Ariel, Heart and Humanity, Inside the Bell Jar, Please Hear What I’m Not Saying and Star82 Review. Her short stories have been shortlisted in competitions such as the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Award (2014, 2016), Fish International Prize (2015) and the RTE Radio One Frances Mac Manus competition (2014, 2015). Her poems were highly commended in the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Award (2017 & 2018). She won the Spring 2018 Blue Nib poetry chapbook competition and also the 2018 Over the Edge Fiction Slam. She was also nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2018. Her debut chapbook A Woman with An Owl Tattoo and her full collection Odd as Fuck are both published by Fly on the Wall Press. Anne is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AnneWDonnelly and you can read more of her poetry at Poethead…
Paul McCarrick has been published in Crannóg, The Ogham Stone, Honest Ulsterman, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. In 2019, he was selected to take part in the 2019Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. He was also awarded an ArtsBursaries Grant from Westmeath County Council. He lives in the midlands in Ireland where is currently completing his first collection. Paul was one of the featured writers recently at the Cuirt New Writing Showcase and there is a link below to watch the event on You Tube. Paul is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PaulMcCarrick and you can watch the video of Paul reading his poem Promise of a sunny day at the link below…
The Cuirt Festival New Writing Showcase 2021 hosted by Susan Millar DuMars featuring Paul…
Annraoi de Paor was born in Waterford. He was a Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, University College Dublin as well as a writer and translator. He is a Irish history, language and folklore enthusiast. In addition to a long career of academic writing and publication, Annraoi de Paor has written four Irish language books, all published by Coiscéim; Buan ar Buairt (1985) le Annraoi de Paor (úrscéal) Dubček faoi cháil is faoi scáil (1997) le Tereza Michalová, arna aistriú ag Annraoi de Paor (bailiúchán d’ailt) Beirt Mhairnéalach (2003) le Alfred Tennyson & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, arna aistriú ag Annraoi de Paor (leaganacha Gaeilge de “Ulysses” Tennyson agus “Ancient Mariner” Coleridge) Duanaire Daonscoile (2014) le Annraoi de Paor (Eagarthóir). In 2013, Tyndall Scientific published Annraoi’s “An Illustrated Collection of Limericks for Engineers & Physicists”, with cartoons by Jane Courtney. Although now out of print, it is available to view online at the following link
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin and works in health and social care, was selected for The Stinging Fly Summer School 2019, her poems have been published by Algebra of Owls, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Bangor Literary Journal, The Stony Thursday Book, Vox Galvia, Abridged and Dreich (upcoming). Eilín is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/edepaor and you can read more of her poems at The Organic Poet at the link below…
Eleanor Hooker’s third collection, Of Ochre and Ash will be published by Dedalus Press and she has two chapbooks due for publication later this year. She is a recipient of the Markievicz Award 2021. Her two other poetry collections with Dedalus Press are: A Tug of Blue (2016); The Shadow Owner’s Companion (2012). Eleanor holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin, an MA (Hons) in Cultural History from the University of Northumbria, and a BA (Hons 1st) from the Open University, UK. Eleanor is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London (FLS). She is a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. Eleanor is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/EleanorHooker_ and you can find out more about her at…
Theresa Donnelly is an Irish/Canadian poet was born and educated in Dublin. She attended the Richemont Cookery School in Luzern, Switzerland; worked in hospitality and culinary management. She is also a qualified Makeup Artist who has dabbled in interior design and antique collecting. Living abroad in a variety of countries enabled her to become socially involved in their communities. These experiences are reflected in her poetry. Her work has been published with Beret Days Press , The Copperfield Review, Verse Fire, Buried Horror, Red Claw Press, The Brooklyn Towncrier, Surfacing Magazine, UCD Library Poems for the Pandemic, The Caterpillar Magazine , Tales from the Forest, Dreich, Black Bough Poetry and she is a regular contributor to Poetry Ireland, Poetry Prompts. She is a founding member of The Brooklin Poetry Society and a member of The Ontario Poetry Society. She is the author of Moon Witch and Reoccurrence of Blue, presently working on the second collection for adults and fairy tale poems for children. Up until the pandemic, she was spending her time equally between Waterville, County Kerry and Brooklin, Ontario. Theresa is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/TheresaWriter and you can find out more about her work at her website…
Catherine Ann Cullen is the inaugural Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland and an award-winning poet, songwriter and children’s writer. She has published three collections: A Bone in My Throat (Doghouse 2007), Strange Familiar (Doghouse 2013) and The Other Now (Dedalus Press, 2016). Two of her children’s books, The Magical, Mystical, Marvelous Coat (2001) and Thirsty Baby (2003), were published by Little, Brown in the US, the former winning a gold award for Poetry and Folklore. Her latest children’s book, All Better! Poems on Illness and Recovery (Little Island, 2019), was reimagined from Latvian. Catherine Ann Cullen has twice won the Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award, was joint first in the JoyceCycle Poetry Competition 2019 and has been shortlisted for many prizes including the Listowel Writers Week Irish Poem of the Year 2020. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Middlesex University. She has presented at international conferences on ballads and on children’s literature, and published several chapters on broadside ballads. In 2020, Catherine Ann Cullen organised “Living Ghosts: A Tribute to Frank Harte in Poetry and Song” and curated Irish participation in the Irish Spanish Latin American Literary Festival. Her “Behind the Lines” series of videos, recorded during lockdown, has Irish poets discussing their own or favourite poems on the Leaving Certificate. Another lockdown project is a crowd-sourced rhyming alphabet of Dublin. She was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship 2018 and has received bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and Irish Writers Centre. Her work as A&L Goodbody Writer in Residence in East Wall won her the nationwide B2A award of Best Use of Creativity in the Community 2017. She works on the Trinity Access Programmes and is a former producer for RTÉ Radio 1. Catherine Ann is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tarryathome and you can follow her at her website…
Aisling Keogh is a writer who lives in County Galway. She’s had stories and poems published with The Irish Independent, The Honest Ulsterman, Crannog Magazine, Wordlegs, Ropes, Bangor Literary Journal, A New Ulster, and anthologies in the U.K. and the U.S.A. Her first published short story, “How to Save a Life,” was shortlisted for the Hennessy Irish Literary Awards 2012, and in 2019 she was shortlisted for the Doolin Writer’s Weekend Short Story Competition. In 2020, she was selected, as one of three emerging writers, to read at the New Writers Showcase, as part of Cuirt International Festival of Literature. In her free time Aisling likes to write, sing, and try to play the guitar. Aisling is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aislingtkeogh
Marty McKenna is an independent Irish poet born in Tyrone, now living and writing in Belfast. He works for the Belfast Trust and is currently publishing poems to put toward his forthcoming chapbook ‘Silent Stigma, Loud Leaf’. Poems have been published in Vernacularisms, Dreich and Blue Nib, among others; He won the Matrix Poetry Competition in 2017. When not writing poems he is out walking around the hills of Belfast with his daughter, Roisín. You can read Marty’s poem at the wonderful Feral Poetry by clicking the link below…
Cathy Carson is a cancer nurse, counsellor and spoken word performer from Co Down in Northern Ireland . She has performed at festivals and for radio and television. She has also featured on podcasts. The subjects in her work have also led to commissions and performances for charity events. She is published in “ The Bramley Anthology “ editions one and two and in “Her other language”, an anthology highlighting domestic violence. Her performances have been described as “ raw, honest and unflinching “ and focus on exploring human connection and condition. This year she has headlined at: Pic n mix, Oooh beehive, Crafty Crows, Fragmented voices, Stamford poetry and Lit up. She will soon headline at Flight of the DragonFly Spoken Word and the link is below. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ourweekathy73. For Flight of the DragonFly details click below…
Ruairí de Barra is from Co. Mayo and now resides in Co. Cork. He is a sailor, an award-winning military journalist, and a poet. His creative work has featured with Tinteán, A New Ulster, Live Encounters, Bangor Literary Journal, The Ranthology Anthology, Black Bough Poetry, The Boston Globe, Boston Accent, Poetry Jukebox, The Silence Anthology, Eat the Storms Podcast, The Cobh Chronicle. Ruairí is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/r_debarra and all his work can be read on his blog below…
Damien B Donnelly returned to Ireland at the end of 2019 after 23 years in Paris, London and Amsterdam, working as a pattern maker in the fashion industry. His writing focuses on identity, fragility and connection. His daily interests revolve around falling over and learning how to get back up while baking rather delicious cakes, especially carrot cake! His short stories have been featured in the Irish best-selling short story anthology; A Page from My Life/Harper Collins, Body Horror/Gehenna & Hinnom, Coffin Bell & Prismatica. His poetry has appeared online and in print including Black Bough, Barren Magazine, Impspired, Neurological, The Adriatic, Fahmidan Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fevers of the Mind, Bealtaine, 2 Metre Review and coming soon in both The Bangor Literary Journal and Ice Floe Press. His debut poetry pamphlet Eat the Storms was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in Sept 2020 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was featured on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21. He followed Storms with his Stickleback, Considering Canvases with Boys (micro collection) in Jan 2021, also from The Hedgehog Poetry Press. He is the producer and host of the poetry podcast Eat The Storms which he created in 2020 as a platform for all poets, at all stages of their careers, published or not, a space to share and shine.
If you want to tune into Eat the Storms, the Poetry Podcast, there are lots of ways. We are on multiple platforms, as same platforms you possibly listen to the news on or listen to music on or even other podcasts. So head over to your favourite platform and search for Eat the Storms and give us a listen. We are on the following platforms…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms.
This episode aired on 24th April 2021 and I was joined by poets Giovanna MacKenna, David Bleiman, Matthew Haigh, Lee Campbell, Zaina Ghani and Lynn Valentine. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Born to an Italian mother and Scottish father, Giovanna MacKenna grew up on Scotland’s west coast where the written word formed a lifeboat that carried her safely through childhood difficulties. After lengthy careers as an actor and a journalist, Giovanna was tasked to write a poem – and found she was full of them. She is now a published and commissioned poet. You can find her recent words in Southchild Lit,Abridged, Bear Creek Gazette,The Speculative Book 2021, Tether’s End, Brag,Wet Grain and Visual Verse. She is currently working with The Museum of Loss and Renewal Publishing on her first full collection. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/giovmacpoet and you can find out more about Giovanna at…
David Bleiman writes out of Edinburgh in English, Scots, Spanish, Yiddish and a largely imagined dialect of Scots-Yiddish which won him the Sangschaw prize in 2020 for The Trebbler’s Tale. In this first pamphlet The Kilt of Many Colours, published by Dempsey and Windle, he paints a broad canvas, drawing on family heritage and life in Scotland to celebrate the warp and weft of a complex and multilingual identity. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BleimanDavid and you can find out more about his debut pamphlet at…
Matthew Haigh’s debut collection, Death Magazine, was published with Salt in 2019 and was nominated for the Polari First Book Prize. His debut pamphlet, Black Jam, was published with Broken Sleep Books. Matthew’s work has been widely published in journals including Magma, The Rialto, Poetry Wales and Poetry London, and highly commended in the Forward Prizes. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MattHaighPoetry and you can find out more about him at
Z. R. Ghani is a ‘Best of the Net’-nominated poet from North London. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. Zaina’s poems have appeared in Magma Poetry, The Willowherb Review, Square Wheel Press, Bind Collective, Hazel Press, and The Adriatic. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/zr_ghani. She is currently the Featured Poet in the Silver Branch series at Black Bough Poetry which you can find at the link below…
Dr Lee Campbell describes himself as ‘a Londoner who makes experimental films and performance poetry about being gay and working class using barbaric wit and humour’. He uses poetry and experimental film as a form of autoethnographic storytelling/sharing of personal narratives often raw, often painful but always generous and authentic. He trained in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London in 2005 and received his doctorate in 2016. He has recently performed at LGBT-centred online poetry events including INCITE!, London Queer Writers, POETRYLGBT,DISTURBANCE, London and BBC Radio. His recent films have been selected for many international queer film festivals including Queerbee LGBT Film Festival, The Gilbert Baker Film Festival, Kansas 2020, HOMOGRAPHY, Brussels and STATES OF DESIRE: Tom of Finland in the Queer Imagination, Casa de Duende, Philadelphia, USA. He has been selected for WICKED QUEER 2021 in Boston, USA, one of the oldest and largest LGBT film festivals in the world and will screen one of his recent films at QUEER LIFE, EdgeZones gallery in Miami in May 2021. Recently interviewed by Hamish Downie for TWO GAY GEEKS. Forthcoming performances include Cruising Dystopia curated by Nouvelle Organon. Lee is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/leejjcampbell and on Instagram at @lndnqueerfilmmaker and you can find out more about his work at…
Lynn Valentine lives on the Black Isle in the Highlands, She is working towards her debut poetry collection which will be published by Cinnamon Press early in 2022, after winning their Literature Award. She will have a Scots language pamphlet A Glimmer O Stars out with Hedgehog Poetry in July 2021, after winning their dialect competition. Lynn was one of five ‘North’ poets to be commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library as part of their Champions project 2020. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dizzylynn
Keep at eye out at The Hedgehog Poetry Press for her launch…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 17th April 2021 and I was joined by poets Isabelle Kenyon, Lee Potts, Simon Maddrell, Lindz McLeod, Zebib K. A and Karlo Seville. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Isabelle Kenyon is a northern poet and the author of This is not a Spectacle, Micro chapbook, The Trees Whispered (Origami Poetry Press) and Digging Holes To Another Continent (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), Potential (Ghost City Press) and Wild Pressed Books (Short Story ‘The Town Talks’). She is the editor of Fly on the Wall Press, a socially conscious small press for chapbooks and anthologies. In 2020, Indigo Dreams published her chapbook Growing Pains, You can find Isabelle on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kenyon_isabelle and on other social media platforms
In 2017, Lee Potts returned to writing poetry after a 25-year hiatus. Before that, he earned an M.A. in creative writing from Temple University. He was an editor of the Painted Bride Quarterly in the late 80’s and early 90s and is currently poetry editor at Barren Magazine. He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife and youngest kid. His chapbook, And Drought Will Follow, was published by Frosted Fire Press. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LeePottsPoet and you can find his book here…
Simon Maddrell is a queer born Manx man, thriving with HIV. Born on the Isle of Man and brought up in Bolton, Lancashire, he now lives in Brighton and Hove after 20 years in London. His debut pamphlet Throatbone was published by UnCollected Press (2020). Queerfella, his chapbook won the Rialto Pamphlet competition in 2020. He describes Queerfella as a ‘journey from shame to unashamed’. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/QueerManxPoet and you can find his chapbook here…
Lindz McLeod is a queer, working-class, Scottish writer who lives in Edinburgh and dabbles in the surreal. Her poetry has been published by perhappened, Allegory Ridge, Hellebore, Grain magazine, and many more. She is represented by Headwater Literary Management. Lindz is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lindzmcleod and you can find out more about her writing at…
Zebib K. A. (she/her) is a writer and psychiatrist. She moved from NYC to Scotland to do a Masters in Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh. She has been published in The Rumpus, The Selkie, Counterclock Journal, Nightingale and Sparrow, and more. She is black, queer, and comes from an immigrant background, and explores these identities in her writing. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/pegasusunder1 and you can find out more about her on medium.com/@pegasusunder and at Selcouth Station…
Karlo Sevilla writes from Quezon City, Philippines and is the author of three poetry collections: “Metro Manila Mammal” (Soma Publishing, 2018), “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017), and “Outsourced!…” (Revolt Magazine, 2021). Twice nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology—by Ariel Chart in 2018 and Collective Unrest in 2019—his poems were first published in Philippines Free Press in 1998, then in Pacifiqa and Philippines Graphic in 2015, and since then he has over 200 poems published in various literary magazines, anthologies, and other platforms worldwide. In 2020, he was one of the contributors to “Pandemic: A Community Poem,” which was nominated by Muse-Pie Press for that year’s Pushcart Prize. He belonged to the first batch of students (school year 2018) of the Certificate in Literature and Creative Writing in Filipino program of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and is a member of the Rat’s Ass Review online poetry workshop.He also coaches wrestling and Brazilian Luta Livre, and won a gold medal in the 2016 ADCC Southeast Asia – Philippine International Submission Fighting Open and in the Greco-Roman wrestling event of the 2011 Philippine National Games. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KarloSevilla2 and you can follow him at his blog…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This special Parisian episode aired on 10th April 2021 and I was joined by poets Sue Burge, David Leo Sirois, Mary Cummins and Paul Stephenson. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Sue Burge is a freelance creative writing and film studies tutor based in North Norfolk. Her poems appear in a range of publications including The North, Mslexia, Magma, Under the Radar, Strix, Tears in the Fence, The Interpreter’s House, The Ekphrastic Review, Lighthouse and Poetry News. She has featured in themed anthologies with poems on science fiction, modern Gothic, illness, Britishness, endangered birds, WWI and the current pandemic. Her first collection In the Kingdom of Shadows (Live Canon) and debut pamphlet Lumière (Hedgehog Poetry Press) were published in Autumn 2018, followed by her second pamphlet The Saltwater Diaries in 2020. Her second full collection, Confetti Dancers, is forthcoming with Live Canon. You can find out more about Sue at her website…
David Leo Sirois is a Canadian-American poet who has had 99 publications in 7 countries (the US, France, England, India, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg & Zimbabwe) in 2 languages. He lived & performed in Paris for 7 years, & now hosts from his native New Brunswick, Canada, the global open mic Spoken World Online (SpokenWord Paris after the quarantine). He won Third Prize in Winning Writers’ Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest & his poetry has appeared in journals such as The Bombay Review, The Poetry Village, One Hand Clapping, The Sunday Tribune Online, THE BASTILLE, & Terre à Cièl (which also published his translations from the French of Paul Valéry & two contemporary French poets). He is currently submitting two manuscripts for publication, & writing five more. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DavidSirois3 and you can follow him at his website…
Mary Cummins is from Drogheda, in Ireland but has lived and worked in Paris for over 20 as a journalist and is currently a sub editor at Bayard Presse. She has a son Liam and has published a limited edition poetry collection called Chicken Wings and Other Stories. She has read her poetry many times at the famous Au Chat Noir in Paris. She often posts her poetry on Facebook and you can follow her here…
Mary and I back at the end of the 1990’s in Paris…
Paul Stephenson grew up in Cambridge. He was a Jerwood/Arvon mentee and did an MA with the Manchester Writing School. He has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written while living in Paris during the terrorist attacks of November 2015, and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He co-edited Magma (issue 70 ‘Europe’) and co-curates the Poetry in Aldeburgh festival.You can follow him on twitter here https://twitter.com/stephenson_pj and on his website here…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 3rd April 2021 and I was joined by poets Victoria Kennefick, Kiera J Delerue, Raine Geoghegan and David Russell Mosley. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Victoria Kennefick is on twitter at https://twitter.com/VKennefick and is a poet, writer and teacher from Co. Cork but now based in Co. Kerry. Her pamphlet, White Whale was published by Southword Editions in 2015 and won the Munster Literature Centre Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Her first collection Eat or We Both Starve is published by Carcanet Press. Her work has appeared many places including The Poetry Review, PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Poetry News, Copper Nickel, The Irish Times, Bath Magg and Banshee. You can find more about her at her website…
Kiera J Delerue is an autistic lesbian writer who lives in Cornwall, in a caravan with her sidekick dog Sylvia. She is a poet, writer and performance artist and sometime song writer. She runs the project Letters to the Lost, which is open to anyone to submit to. It’s an open project for people to write to their lost loved ones. A space for grief and space to write. You can find out more Keira and her project and her poetry and her song writing at her website…
Raine Geoghegan is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RaineGeoghegan5 and already has two pamphlets published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press; Apple Water: Povel Panni and they lit fires: lenti hatch o yog. Her full collection will be called The Talking Stick: O Pookering Kosh and will be published by Salmon Poetry Press in March 2022. She has been nominated for The Forward Prize, Pushcart Prize (twice) the Best of the Net and Apple Water was chosen as a Selected pamphlet in the Poetry Book Society 2019 List. You can find more about Raine at her website…
David Russell Mosley is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/elflandletters HIs upcoming collection is called The Green Man and will be published by the Resource Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. He is a theologian, Roman Catholic, poet, writer and speaker. He has already published two books; On the Edges of Elfland: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups and Being Deified: Poetry and Fantasy on the Path to God. You can find out more about him on his website…
Elisabeth Horan’s latest collection Just to the Right of the Stove opens by the fridge, a cold beginning perhaps to counter the heated conversations that will unfold from our two protagonists, one already doomed and the other trying to decide. The first poem is voiced by both Sylvia Plath and our own Elisabeth, wondering if the only way to make it on the page is to step away from the flesh. Sylvia promises to help and so the timer is set and on we go…
The first half of the collection is entitled Welcome to the Kitchen, the heart of most houses though certainly the place most haunted in one particular Primrose Hill home. Identity, depression and an acceptance of it are key themes here along with an understanding of what it takes to be true to oneself and how that truth can be isolating, discomforting and how quickly you can be removed from society and turned into a Pollack canvas of mixed acrylics that nobody really wants to understand. The kitchen is the heart of the home just as the mind is the control centre of the body and the collection walks barefoot across a razor-sharp, frenzied fear of what happens when control falls away.
The mind and the oven here are inseparable. They both heat, bake and burn, require constant monitoring, tease with thoughts and scorching flames. The question that resides between each carefully chosen, and often fragmented, word is how far one is willing to go to document one’s rises and descents? Following on from Bad Mommy, Stay Mommy and Alcoholic Betty, Just to the Right of the Stove further examines those demands of fame against what it means to be an artist, to have a voice and to be brave enough to share that voice, no matter what comes out. Between the icon and the eager student are toss ups, teasing’s and taunting’s all bordering on how truthfully we must be when revealing who we are, how we got here, who bent us backward or who we climbed over. ‘She is so bad, she yells at her kids. She ate her own heart…’ this collection devours, destroys and often dismisses the soul while trying to figure out how best to save it when faced with society’s attitude towards strong, demanding, willing, broken, battered, unstoppable women clinging on to either creation, medication or bipolarisation.
Here, Horan walks the line of motherhood, trying to balance crazy and creative, fathers, sons and Freuds, all in kitchens and clinics, alongside children looking for answers to questions our author is trying to break down into edible parts while Plath’s ghost makes its way around the kitchen and its distractions as the timer winds its way down to that ever-important stove.
In the end, we are left to dig out hope from the ashes after their final scurry towards that stove; the broken teeth, the skin that could not hold and the message one left the other, before the future of one or both is enveloped, all just to the right of the stove that Horan has stoked with her own exquisite touch of unequivocable honesty. Riding the fine line between the beast and the better, there is a rawness here to the flow and form that is as addictive as the tick of the timer. This is not a comfortable ride, so I suggest you buckle up, as it’s also a ride you won’t want to miss.
Here we are given the perfect opportunity to examine what we worship, how we worship and how, with time, understanding and self-worth, the student can become the standalone talent and the icon can become human again.
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 27th March 2021 and I was joined by poets Samantha Terrell, Steven J Burke, Mary Ford Neal and Charles K Carter. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Samantha Terrell is the author of Vision, and Other Things We Hide From which was published by Potter’s Grove Press. She has been widely published with poems in various publications including Anti-Heroin Chic, Dissident Voice, Fevers of the Mind, In Parentheses, Misfit Magazine, Open Journal of Arts & Letters, Poetry Quarterly and many others. You can find her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/honestypoetry and also here at her website…
Steven J Burke is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Steven_J_Burke and is a historian and a history lecturer and currently completing his PhD thesis. He writes poetry about landscape, environment, nature travel and mental health, while running, walking and taking photographs. He has been published in many journals including The Adriatic and Black Bough’s Deep Time. You can find out more about Steven at his website…
Mary Ford Neal, from Glasgow in the United Kingdom, is a writer and academic specializing in medical law and ethics. Her debut collection called Dawning will be out later this year, published by Indigo Dreams. She is the assistant editor of 192 Magazine and Nine Pens Press. She was Pushcart nominated in 2020 and has been published in many journals including Long Poem magazine, Dust poetry press, Icefloe press, Dodging the Rain, Twisting time, Ink Sweat and Tears. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/maryfordneal. You can find the links to Mary’s work on Linktree below…
Charles K Carter is a queer poet and educator from the American Midwest. He shares his home with his artist husband and their spoiled pets. He enjoys film, yoga, and live music and Melissa Etheridge is his ultimate obsession. He has an MA in creative writing with a poetry concentration from Southern New Hampshire University and an MFA in writing from Lindenwood University. He is the author of the chapbooks Chasing Sunshine from Lazy Adventurer Publishing,Splintersfrom Kelsay Books, and Salem Revisited, coming soon from WordTech Editions. Charles is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CKCpoetry and you can find links for Charles’ work at Linktree…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 20th March 2021 and I was joined by poets Stuart McPherson, Anne Casey, Stuart Rawlinson and Anamaria Crowe Serrano. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Stuart McPherson is a poet from Leicester in the United Kingdom and his work has appeared in online journals and anthologies, including Beir Bua Journal, After the Pause and Selcouth Station. His debut pamphlet ‘Water Bearer’ will be published in December 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. You can often find him reading his poetry online and he will be appearing soon at theCheltenham Poetry Festival,May 26th 2021. You can find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/theeabsentee and also on his website…
Anne Casey is an award-winning Sydney-based Irish poet and writer. A journalist, magazine editor, legal author and media communications director. Her work ranks in The Irish Times‘ Most Read, and is widely published internationally. She is author of the critically acclaimed collections, Where the lost things go and Out of emptied cups, which was selected for Best Dressed in 2020 by Sundress Academy for the Arts in the USA (curators of the prestigious Best of the Net awards) and for Books of the Year 2019 by The Lonely Crowd magazine in the UK. Her third collection will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2021. Anne has won poetry awards in Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Technology Sydney, supported by an Australian Government Scholarship. You can find her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/1annecasey and at her website…
Stuart Rawlinson is a Brisbane-based writer, focused on poetry and currently writing his debut novel. His debut poetry collection came out in 2015 called Encyclopaedia of Trees, a 19-poem collection on a theme of time and memory and each poem accompanies a piece of original music. Stuart’s poems have appeared in various publications, such as Black Bough Poetry, Adelaide Literary Magazine and Wellington Street Review. Stuart is an established composer and musician, with a back catalogue of five studio albums. You can find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mrsturawlinson and on his website…
Anamaría Crowe Serrano is a poet and translator born in Ireland to an Irish father and a Spanish mother. Languages have always fascinated her to the extent that she has never stopped learning or improving her knowledge of them. She enjoys cross-cultural and cross-genre exchanges with artists and poets. Much of her work is the result of such collaborations. With a B.A. (Hons) in Spanish and French from Trinity College Dublin, Anamaría went on to do an M.A. in Translation Studies at Dublin City University. Since then, she has worked in localization (translating hardware and software from English to Spanish), has been a reader for the blind, and occasionally teaches Spanish. For over 15 years she has translated poetry from Spanish and Italian to English. Anamaría is the recipient of two awards from the Arts Council of Ireland to further her writing as well as funding from Culture Ireland for her attendance at the Poemaria festival in Vigo, Spain, 2018. Her translations have won many prizes abroad and her own poetry has been anthologised in Census (Seven Towers), Landing Places (Dedalus), Pomeriggio (Leconte) and other publications. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CroweSerrano and you can find about more about her books at Turas Press…
Dai Fri is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/thnargg and his new collection is called Under Photon Crowns, Selected Writings and my review is posted over at Talk About Books here at EatTheStorms and it is published by Black Bough Poetry…
Vicky Allen is a poet whose debut collection Broken Things and Other Tales published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is celebrating its one year anniversary on Tuesday 23rd March. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bringonthejoy and below is the Eventbrite link below…
Under Photon Crowns, Selected Writings of Dai Fry is the first individual chapbook collection published by Black Bough Poetry and is an incredible kaleidoscope of journeys, bright black waves of twisting movements that take us far beyond the glories of ‘Majorelle skies’ and down deep into the ‘wild-green waters’ to ‘the breath of the Kracken’ with the understanding of how all things are connected and yet, equally, as displayed in the opening poem, how we are held like single stars burning in solitude; ‘tears cried alone… in quiet rooms… of a wondrous infinity.’
I have long been a fan of Swansea-born poet Dai Fry since discovering him on Black Bough Poetry’s weekly #TopTweetTuesday, who incredibly only began writing a few years ago and yet, to see his delicately carved poems come together here is quite magical. I say delicately carved but they are not of a delicate nature, they are big, bold, bright adventures which stretch far beyond our tiny claims to this little spec we call home, for a time, within the Universe.
Dai writes with a seer’s knowledge as if he himself had walked this earth and stepped underland to seek out echoes of the ‘dark imaginations’ of Neolithic warriors and hear their dreams and disasters, as if it were possible to be a neutrino and yet understand the essence of everything ‘its presence as absence revealed’, as if he had been beyond the Rapture and time travelled back again with his visions which bring us to the beautiful balance of this book of two parts; the opening section of poetry and the closing section of prose.
The poetry transports us up and out, with all the knowledge Fry has acquired, as if he had swallowed all the stars, all the planets, all the photons hurtling through space and then the prose brings us back to the beginnings of all things; Fry’s youth in Tycoch, in Wales and its tissue-wrapped Angels, bottles of sleep setting ‘Oblivion’, duffel-coated interstellar spaceship troopers and a box of fireworks where he possibly first began to reach out and touch the magic of a star he was able to light himself. This entire prose section is, as Dai himself says, when waking to a dreamy snow-covered morning… ‘a magic Kingdom unspoiled and pure as things always are in the beginning.’
This chapbook of both the extraordinary and the elemental is perfectly woven together with a series of illustrations from French astronomical artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, deepening that sense of infinity with eclipses of the sun, the moon and the shimmers of the Milky Way.
Dai says, in the brief introduction, that ‘I am at heart a chaos poet, I seek the underlying pattern…’ and that is indeed what this collection of selected writing achieves; stretching out as far as possible in order to bring it all back in, back home, back down to the pen and the page.
And here we have the impossibility of infinity captured beautifully. Out there, in the universe, the light is dark but here, in the poetry of Dai Fry, the sound is sensational.
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, PlayerFM, Overcast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 6th March 2021 and I was joined by poets Zoe Brooks, Andy MacGregor and Fiona Perry. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Zoe Brooks’ collection “Owl Unbound” was published in October 2020 by Indigo Dreams. She has been widely published in print and online magazines and appeared in the anthology “Grandchildren of Albion” Her long poem for voices “Fool’s Paradise” received the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition’s award for best poetry ebook 2013. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ZoeBrooks2. You can buy her book here…
Andy MacGregor is an ecologist, philosopher, poet and al fresco guitarist and cuttlefish fancier. You can find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/macgregor_andy and on Instagram at http://instagram.com/macgregor_andy and for his more of his music follow his videos on You Tube at the link below…
Fiona Perry was born and brought up in Northern Ireland but has lived in England, Australia, and New Zealand. Her short fiction won first prize in the Bath Flash Fiction Award 2020 and was shortlisted for the Australian Morrison Mentoring Prize in 2014 and 2015. Her poetry has been published widely in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, India and New Zealand. She contributed poetry to the Label Lit project for National Poetry Day (Ireland) 2019. You can follow Fiona on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Fionaperry17 . Her poetry collection Alchemy was published by Turas Press and you can buy it here…
For everything you need to know as a poet and a look at my Spotlight interview (and a feast of other featured poets) check out the fantastic Poets’ Directory…
To take part in Catherine Ann Cullen‘s Poetry Prompts at part of her Poet in Residence series at Poetry Ireland, you can find all the details on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tarryathome
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 27th February 2021 and I was joined by poets Róisín Ní Neachtain, Linda McKenna, Luke Morgan, Cathy Carson, Kathy D’Arcy, Mairead Carroll and musical guests Daria and Matthew Shiels. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Róisín Ní Neachtain is an Irish Scottish artist, poet and translator who was born in Geneva and can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/starsandmud and for more information on her poetry and artwork please check out her website…
Linda McKenna is an award winning poet and can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mckennalinda She was the winner of the Seamus Heaney award and the Red line book festival poetry competition in 2018. Her debut collection In the Museum of Misremembered Things was published by the Doire Press in 2020 and she was the winner of the An Post Awards Listowel Writer’s Week Poem of the Year. You can find her book here…
Luke Morgan is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/LukeMorganPoet and is the author of Honest Walls published by Arlen House in 2016. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, the Irish Independent, Cyphers, Crannóg and more. His second collection, Beast is forthcoming also from Arlen House. His book is available here…
Kathy D’Arcy is currently involved in the Wake Up Irish Poetry a movement which challenges sexual misconduct and other abuses of power in the Irish arts sector. For more on this check out their website wakeupirishpoetry.ie. She is a poet, workshop facilitator and youth worker who trained originally as a doctor and has a PhD from UCC in creative writing. Her poetry collections are The Wild Pupil published by Bradshaw and Encounter published by Lapwing. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KathyDArcyCork and you can find more about her and her collections at her website…
Cathy Carson is from Northern Ireland and is a front line cancer nurse and a spoken word performer. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ourweekathy73 and don’t miss her on Facebook for announcements to see her live. This is the third time we have been graced by Cathy on the podcast.
Mairead Carroll is a mother, poet, fiddle player and psychotherapist who loves writing and dancing around her kitchen table. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MauneyCarroll and is on Instagram at Maireadcarroll12
Daria and Matthew Shiels are nutritional experts, mindset navigators and singer/songwriters. They performed their own song today called Under the Crescent Moon and you can find them on Facebook below…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 20th February 2021 and I was joined by poets Oz Hardwick, Leena Batchelor, Frances Corkey Thompson, Peter A and Elisabeth Horan The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Oz Hardwick is a writer, photographer, musician and professor of English at Leeds Trinity University and the author of Wolf Planet, The Lithium Codex (both from The Hedgehog Poetry Press) and his prize-winning chapbook Learning to Have lost (Recent Work Press). He can be found at his website and also at Valley Press, who published two more of his collections; The House of Ghosts of Mirrors and The Ringmaster’s Apprentice…
Leena Batchelor is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/pixie_dragonfly She has three collections which you can find on her website titled Under the Stones, With Summer by my Side and A Tune with no Name. She is the Worcester Poet Laureate 2020/21. Below is the link to her website…
Frances Corkey Thompson is the winner of the Sentinel Poetry Prize for her collection Watching the Door published by SMP. Her first chapbook was published by HappenStance called The Lobg Acre and her debut collection titled Wild Gooseberries of Hailung was published by Indigo Dreams. She was born in Ireland but now lives in Devon. Below is the link to her collection at SMP…
Peter A was the winner of the Paisley Spree Fringe Poetry Competition in 2016, has been published widely in I am not a Silent Poet, Pandemic, Dreich, Poets against Trump, Surfing (From Federation of Writers, Scotland), Words from Battlefield. His is based in Scotland, an avid consumer and creator of things made of words and will have his debut collection Art of Insomnia published shortly by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. Yo can follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/VeryPerryKelly and find out more about him at his blog here…
Elisabeth Horan is a poet, mother, and small press publisher living in the wilds of Vermont. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks and collections, and the Editor-In-Chief of Animal Heart Press. Elisabeth is passionate about discovering new voices and mentoring emerging poets. She is also a fierce advocate for those impacted by mental illness.Her latest collection Just to the Right of the Stove is published by Twist in Time. She is on Twitter athttps://twitter.com/ehoranpoet and you can also find her at her website…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This special episode celebrating all sides of LOVE aired on 13th February 2021, the eve of Valentine’s Day and I was joined by poets Eilín de Paor, Fidel Hogan Walsh, Matt Duggan, Maria Castro Dominguez, Ceinwen Haydon, Gaynor Kane, Amy Barry, Cathy Carson, MANNY, Darren J Beaney, Vic Pickup, and singers Kevin Hynes and AfterGlow Duo Rhiannon Howys and Reese Smith. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Eilín de Paor is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/edepaor and has been widely published including Pandemic.ie, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Organic Poet and Algebra of Owls. She writes micro-poems on Twitter under the hashtag #bitofapoem
Fidel Hogan Walsh is the author of two poetry collections; Time, in which she collaborated with photographer Julie Corcoran and her debut collection Living With Love. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dragonslayerma and you can find out more about Fidel at BBCreative hub under the link below and below that is the link to buying her books…
Bristol born Matt Duggan (who now lives in Wales and will be returning to the podcast in the coming weeks reading more of his poems) and can be found on Twitter here https://twitter.com/mjduggan71 and Maria Castro Dominguez, based in Gran Canaria, are the prize-wining authors of 10 Truths from Wonderland published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, a bilingual collection in English and Spanish. You can order their book here from Matt’s site where you can also read more of his poetry…
Gaynor Kane is the author of Memory Forest, Venus in Pink Marble, a Stickleback and also her most recent collection Penned In, which is a joint collection co-written with Karen Mooney, all published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. You can find Gaynor on Twitter at https://twitter.com/gaynorkane and find out more about her work and also buy her collection at her website below…
Vic Pickup is a poet, writer and reviewer. Her debut collection, nominated for the Michael Marks award and a Pushcart Prize, is entitled Lost and Found, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press and she on Twitter at https://twitter.com/VicPickup and you can find more about her work and buy her book at her website below…
Amy Barry is based in Athlone, in Ireland and is the Pushcart nominee author of the much-celebrated poetry collection Spearing Dreams. She has been widely published journals including A New Ulster, Live Encounter, Galway Review. She was recipient of the Westmeath County Council Bursary 2017. She took 1st and 2nd prize in the English Poetry at PAU World Poetry Day in 2017 and 2018 and was the recipient of Neruda Award 2017 (Poetry) Crispiano, Italy and Highly Commended in the Francis Ledwidge Award 2019. She was featured in the RTE Radio One Extra in Reverberations Series 2, Nov.2019. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AmyBarry12 where you can DM her for details on buying her collection and you can read more of her poetry here at I am Not A Silent Poet…
Ceinwen E C Haydon is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CeinwenHaydon and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She writes short stories and poetry and has been widely published online and in print anthologies. She was Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Chapbook Competition Spring 2018, won the Hedgehog Press Poetry Competition ‘Songs to Learn and Sing’ August, 2018 and was shortlisted for the Neatly Folded Paper Pamphlet Competition, Hedgehog Press, October 2018. She is a winner in the Nicely Folded Paper Pamphlet Competition (July 2019). Her first Chapbook is due to be published shortly, ‘Cerddi Bach’ (Little Poems), a Stickleback by Hedgehog Press.
Cathy Carson is from Northern Ireland and a front line worker as a cancer nurse and a spoken word performer. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ourweekathy73 and don’t miss her on Facebook for announcements of seeing her live. She was already on the podcast this season and will be back again in two weeks for the Poetry in Ireland episode…
MANNY is a writer & performer who loves to work on artwork/posters for his written work since he is a visual person. He is from London and a graduate from Roehampton University. He says his work is very imaginative. He loves to take the reader/audience on a journey and writes pieces which people find inspiring and motivating. He runs a creative campaign called #BeTheChange which is a solo campaign he started while at university. He collaborates with other creators/artists, works on projects and film videos for creative work along with live performances around London. He is on Instagram at manny_harmony11. You can find his projects here
Darren J Beaney is the author of HoneyDew which is his debut collection published by The HedgeHog Poetry Press. He is onTwitter at https://twitter.com/DJ_Be_An and is one of the creators and hosts of Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word. You can find out more about him and buy his book at his website…
AfterGlow Acoustic Duo are the dynamic team of Rhiannon Howys and Reese Smith who were also the musical guest stars on our recent Christmas episode. You can find out more about them both here at their website and check them out on Facebook for live online events.
Forever After, Between the Pages of Poetry Collections A Series of Interviews with poets on how their collections came together & what followed after.
When my debut poetry pamphlet was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in September 2020 there were two things I started to reflect on; the journey it had taken me to get to the point of having a group of poems working together as a collection with a publisher and an audience and then, the second thing, which I hadn’t really considered, what to do next!
Over the course of this series we’ll dive behind the pages of our guest’s collections to see how they came about and what happened after. Funny how all fairy tales end with the kiss at the altar, when we all know the real adventure commences after the walk back down the aisle.
Today’s guest is…Thomas McColl
And so, to forever after, let us begin… Thank you for joining me today, here’s the first question…
1 Tell us a little bit about your last collection; inspirations, directions, wishes and vows.
My last collection, which came out early last year, is Grenade Genie, published by Fly on the Wall Press. Sub-titled 25 brief studies of the Cursed, Coerced, Combative and Corrupted, the book is filled with poems as dramatic as the four C-word headings they’re grouped under – poems with titles such as Shopping With Perseus, Literal Library, Statement by the Pedestrian Liberation Organisation, The Surgery I go to has a Two-headed Doctor and The Greatest Poem (which possibly is my greatest poem, albeit a poem that’s actually about the worst ever poem, and one written by me to boot).
In any event, the poems are more serious than they necessarily sound, and one of the themes, or main points made, in the book is that, ultimately, everyone and everything is expendable, but while that knowledge can generate either a sense of hopelessness or the nothing-to-lose strength to rail against it, one strength of poetry is that even if only the former gets expressed, the latter is automatically achieved.
At any rate, there was a much more deliberate direction taken when compiling this book than there had been with my previous collection, Being With Me Will Help You Learn. That collection, published by Listen Softly London Press in 2016, was a kind of eclectic greatest hits of all my poetry writing over the years since the 90s, and while my poetry has always been, to some degree, engaged with the world around us, the poems in Grenade Genie are definitely much more focussed on issues, both social and political, and I feel fortunate that I found, and was taken on by, the right publisher, Fly on the Wall Press, which, as well as being very much a socially conscious press in terms of the work it publishes, has done a great job in getting my collection into shape, all the way from the accepted manuscript stage to the book then coming out a few months later, in April 2020.
2 How did it feel when you saw your collection in print for the very first time and, perhaps more importantly, how did it feel when you sold your very first book?
It felt great when I saw the collection in print for the very first time, but it was simply relief I felt when I sold the first book, and relief was what I continued to feel as the book continued to sell – for even though I’m extremely proud of the finished item and the poems within, and I believe the book is very much worth people’s money, I never take anything for granted when it comes to achieving sales, and definitely not when attempting to promote my work during lockdown.
3 How did you promote your current collection and what did you learn about yourself and your collection in the days that followed, afterwards, that you hadn’t known before?
Grenade Genie was released right in the midst of the first lockdown, last April. In the months leading up to publication, I’d set about organising various live events and festivals in London and further afield, and with a fair few slots confirmed – included a 60-minute feature slot at the Leamington Poetry Festival in July – I was ready to go on what was effectively my first ever proper tour to promote the book, with featured readings as far afield as Coventry, Birmingham, Rochester and Saltburn – but then, at the end of March, the first lockdown began, and slowly but surely all the dates I’d organised ended up getting cancelled.
Right from the off, however, I was in a position to get straight into the swing of the ‘new normal’, for on the day after the book was published, Winchester Fest (who’d put me on their bill and had decided to go online) facilitated the launch of my book via Zoom with a 60-minute feature – and, with events only able now to go ahead if they went online, opportunities arose which otherwise wouldn’t have happened. For instance, I ended up being a featured poet in the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, which was based in Virginia and which I’d normally have had to travel to in order to participate in but now could be a part of from the comfort of my bedroom in London. And new opportunities arose regarding radio as well: Shows which, previously, I’d have had to travel to in order to talk in the studio, I was able to, now, be a part of without leaving London, and in this way I ended up being on Rick Sander’s Brum Radio Poets show on Brum Radio and on Hannah Kate’s On the Bookshelf show on Manchester FM, and I managed too to get poems from the book featured on BBC Radio Kent and BBC Radio West Midlands. So, over this past year, it seems to have been a case of ‘what one hand taketh away the other giveth’.
Anyway, one thing I learned from this experience is to simply keep on going, even when everything seems to be going wrong or going against you, and all your best-laid plans have gone to waste – for, despite all the setbacks which have undoubtedly occurred since lockdown began (with all live work cancelled and avenues for publicity curtailed, and a general apathy taking over everything), I’m still very glad the book came out when it did, as it’d been four years since my previous collection had been released, and I really wanted to keep some momentum going, and no matter what obstacles you find in your way, you have to simply try and keep on course, no matter what (even if all you can see ahead are even more rocks than you’ve already managed to navigate through), and we’ll just have to see if the good ship Momentum – with a poet at the helm who’s more Captain Pugwash than Captain Cook – is actually going to make it through these troubled waters intact.
4 What happened after the honeymoon? Writing is rarely about one connection, one love affair, one marriage. Did you feel pressure to start another collection immediately or had you earned time to settle into your new life as an author and have a well-deserved break?
I don’t think I’m at the stage yet to have earned the time to rest on any laurels, and in any way savour and take stock of all that I’ve achieved, as there’s always the danger, if I stop to think too much, of feeling that my modest yet impressive enough achievements are as much as I’ll ever be able to crack, and I don’t want to get to thinking like that, as I think it’s very easy to – especially when you take time to actually look at the situation you’re faced with and, as a result, then see how starkly the odds are stacked against you. So, while I’m able to remain in the state of mind that thinks – in spite of all the signs suggesting otherwise – that I’ve actually got something more to give and enough to reach some higher heights, I’ll continue trying to keep what impetus there might be going, and even as the last collection was coming out, there was already another poetry collection in development, and other forms of writing too, which leads us very nicely on to the next question.
5 Are you exploring other avenues of creativity aside from poetry? Are there other forms of writing or publishing or art that inspires you, that requires time now for exploration and dedication?
Yes – I’ve always written prose in tandem with poetry, and while it might be my downfall that I’ve never solely concentrated on one form or the other, one good thing is that there’s been much cross-pollination, with poems morphing into both flash fiction pieces and short stories, and vice versa. For instance, the first poem in the Combative section of my book, entitled Shopping With Perseus, started out as a piece of prose, a 721-word story that was first published in the urban feminist literary magazine, Geeked, then, edited down to 500 words, won first prize in the Third Annual Stories of SW1 Writing Competition, then, finally, edited a little bit further, ended up as a poem in the book.
I’ve written both a novel and novella, and while neither of these manuscripts have found publishers yet, extracts from them have been published as standalone stories in magazines such as The Ghastling, Sick Lit and Here Comes Everyone. Other short stories of mine have been published in magazines such as Bare Fiction, Smoke: A London Peculiar and Fictive Dream, and, collected into a manuscript, were longlisted in the Mslexia First Drafts Competition in 2017.
6 If you had to pick one piece of your own writing or photograph or artwork that most represents you, at this very moment, knowing we are forever evolving, updating, changing, turning, what would it be and why and would you like to share it with us?
It’s a poem from my book, Grenade Genie, called The Phoney War, that most represents me now. It’s a poem about childhood, and play, and when reality intrudes on play, and though the poem represents me as a child, it also represents me now, as a middle-aged adult, coming to understand much more the significance of how harmless fun in the past wasn’t always such harmless fun for others.
THE PHONEY WAR
Our imaginations at war – with umbrellas for rifles, our enemy invisible – we defended the sofa, had it pulled out from the wall.
Inside this narrow tunnel – with seat cushions overhead – we hid.
With each attack, we watched each other’s backs. You saw the Germans in your mind I could not see, and I saw mine; We shot them all too easily.
With the air-strikes, though, we met our match. Shells – like steel fists – struck, and the seat cushions, punched up into the air, fell about us.
So, we rose and came out fighting – shot down five fighters and three bombers with two umbrellas, then finished off the conflict in close hand-to-hand combat.
By the end, there were a thousand German casualties and, without even a scratch between them, two tired Tommies, smoking pencils, feeling tough.
And now the war was finished, and with both of us famished, we ran from the living room into the kitchen, calling for Gran to serve us up our tea, and found her quietly sobbing at the stove.
7 What are you currently working on? Is there a new pamphlet, a collection, a novel? Where do you want to go next?
I do have enough new poems, just about, to form a new collection, though I’ve, so far, decided to split and submit this material to poetry publishers as two separate pamphlets, as yet without success, but there still remain submissions outstanding – so, who knows, there’s still hope.
If nothing, though, gets through, it may mean that I have to order the poems differently or present them as a collection instead, and, of course, what doesn’t find favour one year may well find favour the next, especially with new publishers continuing to emerge which may be more receptive to what I’m trying to achieve and say with my writing.
Anyway, I also have a horror novel, set in London, out on submission, and there’s a novelette, a collection of short stories, and even a rhyming picture book text, that are all doing the rounds at this moment in time – so watch this space, as they say!
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts, insights and mental workings with us. It’s been a pleasure to dive inside your head from the comfort of our own armchairs.
Before we depart, would you please take a moment to answer the following 9 quickfire questions…
What’s your favourite time of day? The morning (as long as I’m not having to rush into work, and I’ve got time to do some writing). What’s your current favourite song? Slave to the Rhythm – Grace Jones. What’s your current favourite taste? My partner’s homemade dahl, with rice. What’s your current favourite smell? The smell that emanates from an extra-long match as I watch it burn after lighting the gas stove. What’s your current favourite colour? The colour of classic punk – Day-Glo pink. What’s your current favourite distraction? Lavishly illustrated books on the Second World War that were published in the 1970s and, in looking at them, take me back to being a child discovering books for the first time. What’s your current favourite item of clothing? My comfortable chinos. What’s your current favourite poem or piece of writing you recently read? I recently did an interview about the influence of the poet Stevie Smith upon my life and, in preparation, read some of her work again, and one that remains a favourite now, as it was back then when I first got into her in my teens, is a very short but very effective poem, called I Remember. What’s one of the things you have discovered about yourself through writing? That I’m patient when it comes to writing – or, at least, I am in the sense that I’m prepared (and able) to play the long-game, and I fully intend to see it through.
Thomas McColl is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ThomasMcColl2 and has been featured on radio, newspaper, multiple journals and is the author of two poetry collections Being With Me Will Help You Learn published by Listen Softly London Press in 2016 and Grenade Genie published by Fly on the Wall Press in 2020, both available to buy on his website…
Thomas was recently a guest on my poetry podcast Eat the Storms and you can here him reading poems from Grenade Genie on the 1st episode of Season 2, below is the Spotify link but the show is also on Apple, Podbean , Google Podcasts, PocketCasts and many more platforms…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 6th February 2021 and I was joined by poets Nathanael O’Reilly, Elisabeth Kelly, Theresa Donnelly, Martin Malone and Anne Osbourn. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Nathanael O’Reilly is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nathanael_o. He is the author of many collections including (Un)Belonging published by Recent Work Press and Blue published by Above/Ground Press and also Associate Poetry Editor at Descant. You can read more of Nathanael’s work on Anthropocene Poetry…
Elisabeth Kelly is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/eekelly22 and her upcoming poetry collection entitled Carbon will be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in May 2021. Meanwhile you can keep up-to-date on Elisabeth and her work at her website…
She was also recently published in the anthology Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité now available on her website
Martin Malone is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/malonepoetry and is the author of many collections including Cur, published by Shoestring, The Waiting Hillside, published by Templar and Larksong Static Selected Poems published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. You can find him and his books at his website…
Keep up to date with Martin’s music and his band Innocents Abroad on Soundcloud…
Theresa Donnelly is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/TheresaWriter. She is an Irish/Canadian poet who was born and educated in Dublin. She worked in Hospitality and Culinary Management. Theresa is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and a founding member of the Brooklin Poetry Society. Her work has been published with Beret Days Press, The Copperfield Review, Verse Afire, Buried Horror, Red Claw Press, The Brooklin Town Crier, Surfacing Magazine, UCD Library Poems for the Pandemic, The Caterpillar Magazine, Tales from the Forest, Dreich, Black Bough Poetry and she is a regular contributor to Poetry Ireland, Poetry Prompts. You can also find Theresa at her website where you can also find her two books Reccurence of Blue and Moon Witch…
Anne Osbourn is a plant scientist and can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AnneOsbourn1 and her debut collection Mock Orange was published in Sept 2020 by SPM and won third prize in the Sentinel Poetry Book Prize 2018. You can buy her collection here…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 30th January 2021 and I was joined by poets Phil Vernon, Cathy Carson, Barbara Mercer and A.R. Salandy. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Phil Vernon is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/philvernon2. He is the author of A Quieter Shore published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press and Poetry after Auschwitz published by Sentinel Poetry and there is an interview with Phil and Sentinel right here…
Cathy Carson is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ourweekathy73 and Cathy will perform next week at Crafty Crows on Feb 3rd 2021 from 19.00 GMT and the link is below…
AR Salandy is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/anthony64120 and is the Co-Founder/EIC of Fahmidan Journal @fahmidanjournal (twitter/instagram). Anthony has 1 published chapbook titled ‘The Great Northern Journey’ published by Lazy Adventurer Publishing available here…
Two weeks ago, I sat in the armchair by the window, a wet Wednesday afternoon and opened Serge Neptune’s debut poetry collection These Queer Merboyspublished by Broken Sleep Books and an hour later had finished the last page, one of the few books I’ve sat and devoured in just one sitting. As I dived into the pages of this collection I was reminded of Hedwig and the Angry Inch; the big, bold, brash musical of the German boy willing to become a good girl for the American soldier but left broken, later, with only an angry inch, but beneath the bravado there was a darkness and similarly here, in Neptune’s world, we have the sensory mermen swimming in as a choir, seeking comfort, seeking caresses; ‘…expert hands that know what to do…’ seeking kisses; ‘…our tongues laid out like summer…’ but the waves can drag you down, hands that once hugged can hold you under and kisses come from lips that have teeth beyond the seduction of all that is soft.
Very quickly you realise that this is not just a collection of poems, it is a complete queer narrative coming up out of the ocean; ‘…a merman finds a stranded sock, black scab on the shoreskin, feels for the first time the touch of fabric, juggles it from hand to hand then wears it as a glove to give it words…’ and out of the water and onto shore that can leave you drowning, drying, drinking, dissolving, revising, reshaping, evolving. Looking for acceptance, understanding, splitting ourselves open so as to be loved; ‘…men took us in their arms, cuddled us at first, fastened lips to lips, we begged for hands to hold our throats…’ so as to be equal, so as to be able to walk among the others with two feet instead of fins; ‘…the potion they served us, like surgeons, cut through our blood with irons, parted our spine… scales would fall… each step felt like a pig’s heart skewered with nails…’ but the pain better, perhaps, than the scorn of being different. And yet, even after all that, comes the torture; ‘…the telly blasting SINNERS! SINNERS! You shall not lie with a creature of the sea, for they have no soul…’ the revelations of what we are willing to do for that acceptance; the cutting and folding ourselves into pieces to make us more lovable, more manageable, until finally we become unrecognisable and don’t know how to get back to who it was that we once were; ‘…once the water in my bathtub was all cherry, I tried to stop the flowers of my wrists from blossoming.’ But still we rise, upon the next current; current wave, current attraction, current love; ignoring the ‘…Cassandras nobody ever listens to for fear of drowning & what is it to love a man if not to drag him underneath to steal his last breath.’ This is a journey that never falters, that never panders to convention, an unstoppable, unshakable, uncompromising debut of only 20 poems and yet it reads like a fully developed novel and we are left wanting more and thankfully, dear readers, I do believe that more is on the way. Serge Neptune has started something and we rejoice in the fact that it’s not yet finished!
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, non conformers and non believers, gender X and gender equals, we are back again for Season 2 of Eat The Storms the Poetry Podcast. Thank you for listening and supporting.
This episode aired on 23rd January 2021 and I was joined by poets Vic Pickup, Thomas McColl, Trish Bennet and Sue Finch. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Vic Pickup is the Michael Marks and Pushcart Prize nominated author of Lost and Found published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, the co-founder of Inkpot Writers Group and is on twitter as @VicPickup https://twitter.com/VicPickup and her website is…
Thoms McColl is the author of Grenade Genie published by Fly on the Wall Press from which he read Security Pass, The Phoney War and Literal Library on this episode. He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ThomasMcColl2 and his website is…
Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass published by Black Eyes Publishing. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/soopoftheday and you can buy her collection here…
Trish Bennett, twice the winner of the Leitrim Literary Award, is the author of Borderlines, the Stickleback collection published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/baabennett and can also be found on her website here…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
Eat the Storms, the Poetry Podcast, is back this Saturday 23rd Jan 2021 on your preferred Podcast Platform for Season 2!!! The first episode drops at 5pm GMT on Spotify and then trickles out onto all the other platforms shortly after that. And we have a dazzling line-up of poets joining the show this season, some coming back for a second time and some making their debut…
‘And when I taste the taste of you, it is the layered shell sprinkled-tang of all recorded time.’
The quote above is the last line of the 1st poem in Jane Dougherty’s debut collection, a collection that opens straight away into the sea’s water and the air’s rain falling onto the earth with its rough edges of fragility, thick sweetness of honey and shells of echoed songs. And that is exactly what each poem is here; a finely tuned echo of a song once sung. Nature unravels the truth of its beginnings and the path toward all its endings across these pages; in the great arched sky, the moon and stars, the cry of the owl and the footsteps of the fox. There is a fine line sensuously navigated here balancing the order of life and death, an order reflected in how carefully each poem appears on the page, how it follows the last and makes way for the next. Nature is rampant but not always at peace, like the darting robin and the blackbirds who forget to sing and the lonely whale in the poem Blue Whale Debris- the last witness of the decay, sentinel with nothing left to guard but these endings also bear echoes of the light that sparked joy along the route still shining even if it’s only as bright as laughter in the dark or in the hope that we will drift with the gold of summer sunset in our eyes…as long as it’s together. The acknowledgement is of both love and loss, the burning sun and drowning wave, being alive and knowing death is growing out there, between the blue and the red. Blood, of course, flows through this collection, that which is thicker, or thickest of them all, blue and rich and poisonous, running through the veins of the body, of the Earth, of these poems, all streams, all liquid flowing, floating towards the heavens or roots growing down into the deep, dark dampness of the earth. Blue comes first as a returning colour, not only for the water but also in mourning for all that has passed and then red; for all the suns setting over the land, for all the suns setting fires to all that once roared. The title of the collection cleverly returns throughout the poems to add further flow, albeit with slight turns and twists, always the same water but never the same droplet, with titles like The Thickness of the Water, lines like water dilutes the thickest blood and thicker than water but not clay and the poem Things that are Thicker than Water which exposes the narrator’s understanding, and perhaps acceptance, of all that is almost too much to bear; the tightening of knots, the squeezing of the heart, the fear of losing, the loneliness, the weight that pulls you down into the ocean and the incarnadine stain left behind in the water. When looked at from a certain angle, life can be unforgivable and yet, there is beauty too in this struggle, in this observation of all we cannot control like the fragility, and perhaps the predestined fate, of Ophelia laying herself and her sorrows, with the help of darkness, into death; Take me to the river, she said, where sunlight dances on golden points… So, he did, and they did, for a moment.
Midway through the collection, we hear the storm is coming on gulls slender wings; the pace here is that of the winter wild, running reckless, whether we are getting closer to heaven or to hell, a dystopian landscape unfolding under the blues growing grey coming towards the ocean of mist; and where will we shelter, you and I, when the sky tears its coping from side to side and then, with a nod to James Joyce, we are swept back to the ancient lands of our ancestors where our tongues taste the breath our mothers breathed, still twisting beneath the soil, whispering of smells from the language of the dead; air and rain and turf and corduroy. There are cycles here; not just with life and death but in the movement of the water; running, rising, falling, returning, in the scents that come back through new noses, exploring, hunting, gathering, shedding, a realisation that all things have a time to breathe and, later, a time to sleep as if the narrator has sat in the garden of the Earth and watched how the animals go about their business without questioning or worrying or losing time over the why. As we come to the final poems in the collection, noticeable words rise up that perhaps were not as visible before in the struggle of life; happiness, euphoria, kisses, passion, the singing of blackbirds, desire and the memory of a life lived; when I am old and have no fire’s glow to coax the blood to frozen fingertips I’ll think of those raw days of long ago and how you warmed the magic with your lips. Age brings with it a balance, an acceptance, an admittance of what has been and what must come to an end and with that comes the end of a collection where the reader has been transported, tasted the rain, drowned in the waves, felt beaten, broken and then a breath of air that resuscitated, offered rebirth, brought me back to buoyant. The final poem leaves us perfectly with the Well Water; the red foxes and the horses and a reflection of all that will become stars. I’ve followed Jane Dougherty since the early days of WordPress, have taken up her poetry challenges, marvelled at her knowledge of poetic forms and styles and loved her time travelling novel The Pathfinders, but this is the first time I have had the chance to read her work as a collection and it is an astounding accomplishment. I note the dedication to her mother Mary and her father John and I think she has listened well to their voices from beyond and they will be proud. A poet who is in full control of her flow and that shines throughout every carefully created line, each vision she has painted and the love and respect of nature that we are invited to witness through the eyes of someone who has been paying very good attention. Thicker than Water runs deeper than its simple size suggests. It is light to the weight but buy it now and see how the wait for its arrival will deepen the worth of its contents.
This collection brought me back to jazz nights at Le Duc des Lombards in Paris in the late 90s with its strained light, stifling smoke and those journeys the sounds took me on; joyous, jerking, juvenile, gyrating, discombobulating, dysphoric, destructive, devouring, divine, the mind always running after that next note, never quite able to identify the melody, overthrown by the chorus, broken by the refrain and suddenly raised by an unexpected pause to catch your breath before it dived back down again. The Gull and the Bell Tower by Kari Flickinger is exactly that; an unstoppable, unrelenting and sometimes unforgiving flight into the syncopated jazz beat where words tremble on the page like strings across the double base. Mingus, Davis, Coltrane and even the Duke are already rummaging through their own ashes for ways to transport rough riffs from the dearly departed to accompany this debutant’s outing. I read it first from beginning to end but I’m not sure that’s even necessary or the best way to do it, each poem stands alone, this is not purely a collection but a collaboration of perfected poetic hits. A triumph of words that, as it says itself, defies the organised poem, being too fat with words, with depth, with flow, with movement that carries emotion in waves, floods of water, drowning, reviving and drowning again and sometimes both, back and forth, up and down, over and in between these flights of fancy, fear, folly, force, all of which we meet in the very opening poem- wings jumping towards the truth even if the feathers cannot be trusted and, right there, we have been forewarned; this is a journey into what will keep us afloat and the lies that will bury us under the weight of a feather that can turn to steel, lips that can turn to other mouths while we swallow words that, not always comfortably, spiral down the oesophagus, like love, like loss, like life, like the very best jazz.
‘Sound can tell you before you are gone how it was you went’ and it’s all here, waiting for us to hear it, be seduced by it, deduce it and then reduce it to nothing so we can catch the next flight out. An astounding body of work that does not end when you turn the last page, for it is only then that the questions arise and you are compelled to dive back in to uncover the answers. For like jazz, like life, the rhyme is only accessible when you slip beneath the distractions of the flesh. In the guts of The Gull and the Bell Tower the bones have slipped out from the disguise of the skin and are waiting for you to finally see them. This is not just a debut, it is a revelation.
The Gull and the Bell Tower is published by Femme Salvé Books and is available here…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 12th December 2020 and it was A Merry Little Christmas Episode featuring poetry, short story and festive song. Below are the links to all the Elves and Fairies and Santa’s helpers who joined me to make this final episode of Season 1 Eat the Storms so special. See you all mid January for Season 2…
Lynn Valentine is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dizzylynn and will have her debut Scots Language Pamphlet coming from Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2021 and her full Poetry Collection coming from Cinnamon Press in 2020
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, PocketCast, Podbean and many more platforms
This episode aired on 05th December 2020 and I was joined by poets Eilín de Paor, Therese Kieran and Karen S Moore. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Eilín de Paor is on Twitter at @edepaor and her poem hashtag is #bitofapoem and you can find some of her poetry on Algebra of Owls and Pandemic.ie.
Therese Kieran lives in Belfast. Her work has featured in: Her Other Language, The Honest Ulsterman, Valley Press Anthology, The Blue Nib, Four X Four, Washing Windows? and many others, including Poetry Jukebox’s 2020 climate change curation in Paris & Belfast. She’s twice been long listed for the Seamus Heaney New Writing award. In 2020 she received an Arts Council award to write her debut poetry pamphlet about 1914 Belgian refugees in Monaghan. Just recently she’s been involved in projects with the 26 Collective including, 26 Wild in support of endangered species and A Common Place, a collaborative venture with the Eames Fine Art Gallery, London.
Karen S Moore is on Twitter at @KarenSDavies and can be found at her website…
Karen’s poem Let Down was first published in Skylight 47 July 2020 from her pamphlet in progress: ‘When seaweed is Medusa’s hair’. Trainspotting was first published by The Honest Ulsterman, 2020. Mermaid Princess was first published by Southword, 2017. Both those last poems are from K. S. Moore’s full collection, ‘Eggshell Flesh’, (currently out on submission). Karen’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoaQi6FmVIrvloO08FX9WgQ
My debut collection Eat the Storms is available here…
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker and many more platforms
This episode aired on 28th November 2020 and I was joined by poets Merril D. Smith, Serge Neptune, Kari Flickinger, Annick Yerem. The links to their websites, blogs or Twitter pages are all listed below…
Merril D Smith is on Instagram at @merril_mds and you can find Merril on WordPress with linbks to here books here…
