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, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 15th January 2022. The guests were Charlotte Oliver, Eoin Devereux, Devika Mathur, Nathaniel Dowd Horowitz, Kyla Houbolt and Lennart Lundh produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Charlotte Oliver
Charlotte Oliver is a writer who lives by the sea in Scarborough, England. She was the commissioned poet for BBC Radio York’s Make a Difference campaign and has poems published or forthcoming in Spelt, Dream Catcher,Pendemic, The Tide Rises,Greenteeth’s Yorkshire Anthology,Black Bough’s Christmas and Winter 2021, Cold Moon Journal, Poetry & Covid, The Daily Drunk, Nymphs and Thugs, Neuro Logical, One Hand Clapping, Poetry Pea Journal,Not4UCollective’s Poems from Home and Ice Floe Press’ Pandemic Love Anthology. She is a member of Fevers of the Mind’s Wolfpack and was a Top Tweet Tuesday host for Black Bough Poetry. She was guest poet for Messrs AP & Pickering’s Spoken Word Evening. Her debut chapbook, How To Be A Dressing Gown, is out now, published by Dreich. She is happiest by, or preferably in, the sea.
Eoin Devereux is a writer from Limerick City, Ireland. He co-writes and co-performs The Cedarwood Chronicles with Gavin Friday on U2 X-Radio which is broadcast monthly in the USA and Canada on the Sirius Platform.
Currently completing his first poetry collection, Eoin’s poetry and short fiction has been published The Irish Times; Janus Literary Magazine; The Stony Thursday Book, Southwords; The Poetry Bus; HCE Review and broadcast by RTE’s The Poetry Programme, The Bookshow on One and Sunday Miscellany.
A professor by day, Eoin leads the module Creative Writing In The Community on University of Limerick’s MA in Creative Writing. As an academic, he has published widely on media and music, most notably on David Bowie, Joy Division and Morrissey. He has also written detailed sleevenote essays for the re-issued versions of The Cranberries albums ‘Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?’ and ‘No Need To Argue.’
and for the Centre for the Study of Popular Music and Popular Culture, University of Limerick follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CSPMPCatUL
Davika Mathur
Devika Mathur resides in India and is a published poet, writer, editor. Her works have been published in Madras Courier, Modern Literature, Two Drops Of Ink,Dying Dahlia Review, Pif Magazine, Spillwords, Duane’s Poetree, Piker Press, Mojave heart review, Whisper and the Roar amongst others. She is the founder of the surreal poetry website “Olive skins” and writes for https://myvaliantsoulsblog.wordpress.com/ She recently published her book “Crimson Skins” and her five poems were also published in SundayMornings River anthology recently and has her works upcoming in two more fierce anthologies.
Nathaniel Dowd Horowitz was born and raised in the USA, writer / teacher / translator/ proofreader Nathan D. Horowitz has a BA in English and an MA in Applied Linguistics. After four years in Latin America and fifteen in Austria, he lives with his wife and daughter in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of at least two volumes of creative nonfiction about Ecuadorian ayahuasca shamanism and the translator of three volumes of Ecuadorian fiction, one volume of Venezuelan poetry, and the autobiography of the last shaman-chief of the Siekopai people of the Amazon Rainforest. His work has been published in Ashé, the Cenacle, Dragibus, Driesch, Psychedelic Press UK, Qarrtsiluni, Kritya, Maquina Combinatoria, WordCityLit, Global City Review, and the Michigan Quarterly Review.
Kyla Houbolt (she, her), born and raised in North Carolina, currently occupies Catawba territory in Gastonia, NC, USA. Her first two chapbooks, Dawn’s Fool and Tuned were published in 2020. More about them on her website, https://www.kylahoubolt.com/. Her individually published pieces online can be found on her Linktree: @luaz_poet | Linktree. Dawn’s Fool is still available from Ice Floe Press, and Tuned from Sedition Editions/CCCP Chapbooks.
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.
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
Pre-sales are now open for In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press…
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 arriving on the 17th Jan 2022 which will be followed by 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, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 8th January 2022. The guests were Darren Donohue, Arden Hunter, David Nash, Margaret Royall, Neil Fox and Amanda McLeod, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Darren Donohue
Darren Donohue is a poet and playwright living in Goresbridge, Co. Kilkenny. His poetry is widely published in journals and newspapers including Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, Irish Times, Sunday Independent, Banshee Press, Strokestown Poetry Anthology, The Blue Nib, Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Dedalus Press (Anthology, Local Wonders), The Sea (Anthology, Rebel Poetry), fathers and what must be said (Anthology, Rebel Poetry), Pandemic.ie, Sixteen Magazine, The Universe Inside (Anthology, Poehemian Press), Poeming Pigeons (Anthology, The Poetry Box), Miracle, Poems of Adventure (Anthology, edited by Jessica Clark and Stephanie Hanson), Kilkenny People, Poetry Ireland (A Bowl of Mysteries).
His work was nominated for a Hennessy Literary Award in 2012, 2014, 2017, 2020 and he received the Dennis O’Driscoll Literary Award, 2020. Darren was writer-in-residence at Carlow College, St Patrick’s, 2019, and the Science Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, 2020.
His debut poetry collection titled; Secret Poets will be published by Turas Press in April, 2022.
Arden Hunter is originally from the UK but they currently lives in Indonesia. They are an aroace agender writer, artist and performer. With an eclectic range of interests from the horrific to the whimsical, the theme tying all of their work together is an inexplicable and unconditional love of the ridiculous beast that is called ‘human’. They write poetry, flash fiction, short stories and are currently working on their first novel, ‘Wilde Haven.’ Arden also likes to mess around with form, experimenting with erasure poetry, audio poetry, collage, found and digital visual poetry. Arden is entirely self-taught.
David Nash is a poet and writer from County Cork, Ireland, who lives and works between Europe and Chile. His poetry has appeared in various publications such as The White Review, The Stinging Fly, and Pilot Press’ Queer Anthologies series, and he has won several awards, being the first poet to win Goldsmiths’ Pat Kavanagh Prize. His art texts have appeared in numerous exhibitions and art books thoughout the UK and Ireland, most recently for Wolfgang Tillmans at IMMA. His first children’s book, Bajo Mis Pies, was released in Latin America in 2020, as did two translations of books on the social and cultural history of Chile. He writes a column for Harper’s Bazaar Korea, and other essays have appeared in Elle and the Irish Times. A book of poems written during lockdown is forthcoming in 2022/3, as is another children’s book in Spanish.
Neil J. Fox is a poetry writer that has been featured on the Amazon UK Poetry Best Seller chart with his debut poetry collection Dreamland, Somewhere Else in 2019 and most recently in 2021 at the number 2 spot on the Inspiration Poetry Chart behind Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb. A native of the West of Ireland, he has always been involved and interested in art and its many forms, coming from a creative family. Having emigrated to the United States twice, Neil has experienced what is widely considered “The American Dream”, having resided in Los Angeles and New York, and is a significant inspiration behind his poetry collections.
Amanda McLeod is an Australian author, poet, and artist. She is the author of flash fiction collection Animal Behaviour (Chaffinch Press, 2020) and has poetry and fiction published in many places both in print and online. Amanda won the Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award and the Australian Writers Centre Furious Fiction monthly contest in 2018, and is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. A lover of good coffee and quiet places, she spends as much time outside as she can.
Margaret Royall has enjoyed several careers as a modern languages teacher, colour and image consultant, aura-soma practitioner, holistic stress manager, freelance languages for business tutor and finally in retirement has settled into becoming a poet and memoirist.
She has been widely published in journals and online, has won or been shortlisted for several poetry competitions including a Laurel Prize nomination and has five publications to her name. This one, her sixth, Immersed in Blue,is a travelogue-cum-journal of poetry and prose documenting her nine years of writing on retreat on the Inner Hebridean Isle of Iona under the tutelage of author and poet Angela Locke MA and David William Clemson.
Margaret is a cat lover and francophile. She lives in a quaint listed cottage by the river Trent in Nottinghamshire, where she leads a women’s poetry group. She is a regular performer at open mic evenings on and offline. Currently she is in the throes of writing a first novel but admits that poetry comes more easily to her.
See Upcoming Events for the launch of Margaret’s collection Immersed in Blue
Upcoming Events
Immersed in Blue, poetry collection launch for Margaret Royall
An Evening Poetry Launch with Margaret Royall and Friends. Margaret Royall will read from her new book along with host Damien B Donnelly and guests Kerry Darbishire + Kelly Davis, Patricia M Osborne + Brian McManus, Steve Cawte, Jo Weston, Paul Brookes and Simon Royall. Immersed in Blue is published by Steve Cawte for Impspired. Sunday 9th Jan at 7pm GMT
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
Pre-sales are now open for In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press…
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 arriving on the 17th Jan 2022 which will be followed by 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, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 1th January 2022. The guests were Daniel McCosh, Nora Blascsok, Mike Gordon, Margaret Viboolsittiseri and Polly Oliver, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Daniel McCosh
Daniel McCosh writes poems in Bavaria, Germany and enjoys exploring the lakes, forests and mountains when he is not writing, tinkering with typewriters or making experimental electronic music. Seldom Croak the Hawk is Daniel’s latest collections of poems that sets out to find joy in diversity in the human world and among nature. His previous publications include Escaping, Ausgang, Dream Catcher, Da Capo and Aspire. In January 2021, Daniel joined the Poetry Society Stanza for Germany, where he is proud to contribute to a caring and constructive community of poets and will be co-editing the group’s anthology. Daniel’s poetry has been published by Dreich, Sarasvati Magazine and Beautiful Dragons. Daniel is also a translator from German into English and works in higher education.
Nora Blascsok is a Hungarian poet based in the UK. Her most recent poems can be found in Atrium, Acumen, Selcouth Station and has work forthcoming in the Broken Sleep Books ecopoetry anthology. A selection of Nora’s poems titled ‘Headspace’ was published by Broken Sleep Books imprint Legitimate Snack in September 2021. Her first full pamphlet will be out with BSB in June 2022.
Follow Nora on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NBlascsok and on Instagram at @brighton_indoors
Mike Gordon
Mike Gordon is 73. He and his wife, Penny, have lived in London for the last 42 years. He has three grown up stepsons, a daughter-in-law, and one grandson, a young man, whom for the last 13 years, “has kept the sun in our eyes”. He was the inspiration for the poem “The Vanishing Point”. Since childhood he has been writing and “collecting” words, poems, aphorisms, quotes, haiku. All are words. They have offered and given to him, a perspective of the world around him. His sole criteria for choosing the words for The Walking Bird has been if he felt that they still resonate today. These thoughts, prompted by ideas, places, relationships and humour, the prerequisite to everyday living, can and do only reflect one person’s life. The desire is that they will contribute to what we share in common. They are his attempt at making simple that which, at times, seems complex.
Find out more about Maggs at her website: maggsvibo.com
Polly Oliver
Polly Oliver is a Broadcast Journalist and Communications freelancer from Wales. She has two children for whom she finds herself both mother and PA, and a needy cat. She writes poetry in the rare between spaces, when inspiration and time come together. Polly only started writing poetry in the last few years when her voice began to fledge and when she was inspired by the atmosphere and quality of work at local open mic nights in Swansea. She has been published online by Black Bough Poetry, The Tide Rises, Falls, Wombwell Rainbow and Spillwords, and is pushcart nominated. Most recently she was the featured writer in the “Silver Branch” series by Black Bough Poems.
Immersed in Blue, poetry collection launch for Margaret Royall
An Evening Poetry Launch with Margaret Royall and Friends. Margaret Royall will read from her new book along with host Damien B Donnelly and guests Kerry Darbishire + Kelly Davis, Patricia M Osborne + Brian McManus, Steve Cawte, Jo Weston, Paul Brookes and Simon Royall. Immersed in Blue is published by Steve Cawte for Impspired. Sunday 9th Jan at 7pm GMT
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 arriving on the 17th Jan 2022 which will be followed by 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, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 18th December 2021. The guests are listed below. Produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly.
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.
Paul Adam Short lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. The North East of England is a major influence on Paul’s writing, especially the multitude of varying landscapes, history, culture and industrial working-class heritage. Paul has been published online in Flight of The Dragonfly’s Third Issue of Flights, Stymie Magazine, The Daily Drunk Mag, Dark Poets Club, came third in a micro-poetry competition held by Black Bough poems and won the April 2021 ‘Press 53’ 53-Word Story Contest. He’s currently finalising his chapbook based on his youth and a crime novel. Every day in December up until the 24th, he is releasing a new haiku, on his website, as an alternative advent calendar.
Marion Clarke is a writer and artist from Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland. She has been studying and writing short form poetry for over a decade. Her work—which includes the forms haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka and haiga—has been published in numerous international journals dedicated to these forms, in addition to mainstream literary journals.
Marion’s short film ‘Time Slip’ was recently produced for the International Page and Stage event “From Opposite Corners of the Earth 4”. It features Marion’s artwork and a haibun—a literary form originating in Japan that combines prose and haiku. ‘Time Slip’ was first published in the journal Drifting Sands.
Amantine Brodeur’s poetry and fiction has appeared numerous online and print journals, among these, in paragraphplanet, December 2019, Deep Time, Volume One, 2020, published by Black Bough Poetry, iamb- quarterly journal and poet library, wave three, summer 2020, Pink Plastic House Journal, July 2020, Pendemic.ie, August 2020, and in theonline and print anthology 100 Words of Solitude, edited by Philippa and Simon Holloway and published by Rare Swan Press 2021. In The Scattering of Tongues, Beckettian Women in Four Acts is featured in Thrice Fiction, Volume 2, Issue No 1, December 2020. alongside Ann Bogle, Eckhard Gerdes and Franny Forsman. Her piece Solitude is part of the Alternative Stories and Fake Realities Podcast featuring the 100 Words of Solitude project edited by Philippa and Simon Holloway, directed, and produced in the UK by Chris Gregory. Numbered, Limited Edition and softcover published by Rare Swan Press in 2021. Falling Slowly is published by Book Hub Publishing and was released in November 2021. Forthcoming projects are still secretly under wraps…
Wendy Allen’s first pamphlet came out in September as a legitimate snack from Broken Sleep. She had been published in Northern Gravy, Atrium, Damnation, Dear Reader and Poetry Wales. She is studying for an MA at Oxford Brookes.
Thomas McColl lives in London. He’s had poems published in magazines such as Envoi, Iota, Prole, Riggwelter, Atrium, London Grip and Ink, Sweat & Tears, His first collection of poetry, Being With Me Will Help You Learn, was published in 2016 by Listen Softly London Press. One of the poems from the book, The Chalk Fairy, was subsequently included in the Shoestring Press anthology, Poems for Jeremy Corbyn, and ended up getting quoted in the Evening Standard. He’s read and performed his poetry at many events in London and beyond -including Celine’s Salon, The Quiet Compere, Birkbeck Writer’s Room and Newham Word Festival – and has been featured on East London Radio, Wandsworth Radio and TV’s London Live. Grenade Genie published by Fly on the Wall Press from which he read Security Pass, The Phoney War and Literal Library on this episode.
M.S. Evans is a Pushcart nominated poet and visual artist. Originally from Seattle, she currently resides in Butte, Montana. Her work has appeared in Ice Floe Press, Black Bough Poetry, Green Ink, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fevers of the Mind, and Feral, among others. Evans is currently at work on her first book.
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 (upcoming). In the Jitterfritz on Neon, her poetry pamphlet co-written by Damien B. Donnelly with be published on the 20th January 2022 by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Matthew MC Smith is a writer from Swansea. He is a Best of the Net nominated poet, and his work has featured in The Broken Spine Artist Collective, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, The Lonely Crowd, and Seventh Quarry Press. Matthew is also the editor of Black Bough Poetry and the organiser of #TopTweetTuesday which encourages poets the world over to share their work on Twitter. In 2020, Black Bough’s Deep Time 1 and Deep Time 2 held the top two positions on Amazon’s poetry chart. His collection Origins 21 Poems was published in 2018 and is available on Amazon. His Black Bough Anthonogies include Crhsitmas and Winter Edition Vol 1 and Vol 2, along with Deep Time Vol 1 and 2 and Dark Confessions and Freedom Rapture, two anthologies inspired by Jim Missions.
Rhona Greene is a Dubliner mad about the arts, wild about nature and besotted with poetry reading and boosting poets on social media. She is thrilled that her first two publications are with Black Bough Poetry.
Mairead Carroll is a Singer/songwriter, Fiddle player and poet. She is currently working on her first Ep and poetry collection.
You can follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/MauneyCarroll and on Instagram at @maireadcarroll12 and she would love to share her journey with you there.
Jude Marr
Jude Marr is a nonbinary poet who writes to survive. Originally from Scotland, Jude lived in the United States for the last ten years but is now back in the United Kingdom. They have an MFA from Georgia College in Milledgeville, a Ph.D. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and worked for Florida State University as Director of the Reading-Writing Center and Digital Studio. Jude’s first full-length collection We Know Each Other By our Wounds came out in November, 2020 from Animal Heart Press and they also have a chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds (FLP, 2017). Jude’s work has appeared in many journals, including The Cortland Review, Cherry Tree, and ONE Magazine, and their poem “To the Man Who Left a Jar of Bees at the Bookstore” was recently nominated for a Pushcart 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, Hencroft Hub and Spelt Magazine. Follow Sarah on Twitter or on her website for her Advent Poetry Calendar.
Christmas & Winter Edition Vol 2 is now available at your nearest and friendliest Amazon published by Black Bough Poetry and you can find out more about Black Bough here https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/about-3
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 arriving on the 17th Jan 2022 which will be followed by 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, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This Live Show aires on Zoom, with tickets via Eventbrite on Tuesday 14th December 2021 at 7.30pm GMT. Produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly and below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Ness Owen
Ness Owen is a poet and FE lecturer from Ynys Mon. She has been widely published in anthologies and journals including in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Mslexia, Red Poets, Poetry Wales, The Atlanta Review, Culture Matters, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Interpreter’s House, Black Bough Journal and Mother’s Milks Books. Her first collection ‘Mamiaith’ (Mother Tongue) was published by Arachne Press in 2019 and her second collection will be published by Parthian in October 2022. She is currently co-editing an anthology themed on the A470 road through Wales and sub-edited a summer edition of Black Bough Journal together with other poets. Some of her work has been recently translated into German, Dutch and Romanian.
Lauren Thomas is currently doing a masters in poetry writing with Newcastle University at the Poetry school London. She has been published in various online and print publications, most recently Black Bough poetry, Magma and has work forthcoming in Lighthouse. Her debut pamphlet Silver Hare Tales is imminent with Blood Moon Poetry.
Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet who lives in Texas. His books include Boulevard (Beir Bua Press, 2021); (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020); Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017); and Distance (Ginninderra Press, 2015). His poetry has appeared in journals & anthologies published in fourteen countries, including Anthropocene, Bealtaine, Beir Bua, Cordite, Headstuff, Mascara, Skylight 47 and Westerly. He is the poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.
Fidel Hogan Walsh a native of Dublin now living in Cavan has written and performed her poetry to a wide audience. Fidel’s first collection of poems ‘Living with Love’ was launched on the 8th February 2020. Her second collection of poetry ‘Time‘ in collaboration with conceptual photographer Julie Corcoran, launched on Culture Night 2020 on the 18th September from Bailieborough Courthouse. Time was named in the top 10 non-fiction of 2020 by Dublin City Libraries.
Appearences: Her poem ‘2020, Memories’ was published 12th May 2020 Pendemic.ie online literary magazine. Two of Fidel’s poems have been selected for ‘Poetry Town — Pocket Poems’ booklet 2021 September 2021 Guest poet at Poetry Town – Poetry Ireland, Bailieborough. 29th April 2021 guest poet on The Artist Room, Iontas Theatre, Monaghan. Guest poet on Eat the Storms Podcast for National Poetry Day October 2020, the Christmas Special, December 2020 and Valentine’s Special 13th February 2021 for Season 2. 16th October 2020 – Inaugural Winner of the Enlighten Prize by Hambly & Hambly, Enniskillen with her poem ‘What Peace Feels Like’, and again in September 2021 with her poem ‘for you’. She has performed at Intercollective (Dublin), during Poetry Day Ireland 2019, Heritage Week, The Next Chapter, Monaghan Arts Network, Culture Night and at ‘A Haunting’, a theatrical event organised by Bailieborough Creative Hub of which Fidel is a founding member. Imagine: Arts Unlocked at Hambly & Hambly Dunbar House, Enniskillen and ‘Culture by Candlelight’ with Fermanagh Omagh Arts Office.
She has also been involved in two Cross Border Peace IV Projects and has written poems for both, ‘Peaceful Photography’ August 2019 Bailieborough Development Association and Dungannon & Cookstown Camera Club funded by Peace IV and SEUBP and ‘Empowering Women’, Next Chapter.
Marcelle Newbold’s poetry explores place and inheritance. Pushcart Prize nominated and winner of the Poetry in the Arcades competition in 2020, her poems have been published in online and print magazines, and in recent anthologies by Black Bough Poetry, Maytree Press, and Indigo Dreams. She is managing editor of Rare Swan Press, editor for Nightingale & Sparrow, and Infinity Books UK. Marcelle lives in Cardiff, Wales where she trained as an architect.
Ryan Gibbs is an English professor who lives in London, Canada. His poems have appeared in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. His children’s poetry has been included in the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness.
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 published novelist, poet, and short fiction writer. She has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Patricia has three poetry pamphlets published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, Taxus Baccata, The Montefiore Bride and Sherry & Sparkly, the latter, co-authored with Maureen Cullen. Future publications with The Hedgehog Poetry Press include ‘Symbiosis’, a poetry conversation co-authored with Brian McManus, and a mythical nature poetry collection titled, ‘Spirit Mother’. When she isn’t working on her own writing, she enjoys sharing her knowledge, acting as a mentor to fellow writers.
Find out more about Patricia on her website whitewingsbooks.com
Beth Brooke
Beth Brooke is a retired teacher. Born in the Middle East, she now lives on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast with her husband and cat. The cat is in charge. Her debut collection, A Landscape With Birds will be published by Hedgehog Press in 2022. She has recently had poems published in Obsessed With Pipework, Marble, Dreich and Poetry Bus.
Mari Maxwell’s work featured in the Poetry Jukebox STARS Curation as part of the 2021 Belfast International Arts Festival, ‘Branching Out’ with Brilliant Flash Fiction and is forthcoming in Inkroci Magazine. Her work has featured in Northern Ireland’s Light Theatre Company’s Dickens Festival 2020; Live Encounters Poetry & Writing; Pendemic.ie; Headstuff.org; Her Other Language, an anthology with Women’s Aid Northern Ireland; Libartes.net (translated to Serbian); Healing Words Exhibition, London, and University College Dublin’s Poetry Wall in 2018 and 2019. She received a 2020/21 Professional Development Award with the Arts Council of Ireland and a 2019/2020 Words Ireland, Mayo County Council Mentorship.
Mari is absolutely thrilled to be a part of this amazing Deck the Halls party. Massive thanks to Dami for the invite and the honour. So happy to be among an amazing line up of wonderful voices and friends I treasure. All the very best to everyone for 2022.
Andy Breckenridge
Andy Breckenridge lives in Brighton but is originally from Oban, Argyll. His pamphlet, The Liquid Air is published by Dreich, and he has had poems in Green Ink, Nutmeg Magazine, Acid Bath, Kristin Anderson’s poetry blog on The Common Breath, The Poetry Map of Scotland, the Shoreham Wordfest Anthology 2020 as well as the Summer Anywhere and Zoo anthologies from Dreich. He is currently looking for a home for his first collection and writing poems about fish, music and other humans. The Chris Riddell illustrated version of The Liquid Air in the offing, also from Dreich.
Margaret Royall’s work has featured in publications such as Hedgehog Poetry, Impspired, Dreich, Black Bough Poetry and the acclaimed Gloucestershire Pandemic Poetry Anthology. She has five books of poetry to her name. She won Hedgehog Press’ full fat collection competition in July 2020 and ‘Where Flora Sings’ was nominated for the Laurel Prize. Her popular childhood memoir ‘The Road To Cleethorpes Pier’ was published by Crumps Barn Studio in May 2020. She has been s/listed in several competitions and published widely online. Her new collection ‘Immersed in Blue’, from Impspired, is out on 5th December 2021 and will be officially launched on 9th January at a poetry party evening hosted by Damien B Donnelly and featuring guests readers. Margaret is a regular performer at open mic events and leads a Nottinghamshire poetry group. She is currently writing a first novel.
Read about poet Margaret Royall’s six books, including her latest publication ‘Immersed in Blue’ from Impspired Press and pick up your invitation to her free January launch party by visiting her website: https://margaretroyall.com/
Mairead Carroll is a Singer/songwriter, Fiddle player and poet. She is currently working on her first Ep and poetry collection. You can follow her on Instagram @maireadcarroll12 and twitter https://twitter.com/MauneyCarroll and she would love to share her journey with you there.
Vic Pickup
Vic Pickup has won the Café Writers and Cupid’s Arrow Competitions, and been shortlisted for the National Poetry Day #speakyourtruth prize on YouTube. Lost & Found is Vic’s debut pamphlet and features Pushcart-nominated poem ‘Social Distancing’. She has a micro-pamphlet ‘What colour is my brain?’ due out in January. For more info or to buy Lost & Found complete with ribbons and wax seals 🙂
Find out more about Vic at her website www.vicpickup.com where you can also buy Lost & Found complete with ribbons and wax seals.
Brian McManus
Brian McManus is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet from a small town just to the north of Glasgow. Happily married with children and grandchildren he has now stepped away from a long career in public service and spends his time writing, reading and researching. He has three volumes of poetry published and a forth volume forthcoming.
Sue Burge is a poet, freelance creative writing tutor, mentor and editor based in North Norfolk. Her poems appears 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 as well as in themed anthologies on science fiction, modern Gothic, illness, Britishness, endangered birds, WWI and the pandemic. Sue’s four poetry collections are: In the Kingdom of Shadows (Live Canon 2018), Lumière (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2018), The Saltwater Diaries (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2020) and Confetti Dancers (Live Canon 2021). She is currently working on a new collection which explores the alter ego she left in Paris three decades ago.
Find out more about Sue by following her website www.sueburge.uk
Ankh Spice is a queer-identified, sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (New Zealand). His work has appeared in a range of online and print publications over the last year and a half, with nearly 100 publications to date, and two of his poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and two nominated for Best of the Net. His poetry is rooted in the natural, and finds its heart exploring the deeply personal relationship between humans and their external and internal environments, examining mental health and identity, climate change, colonialism, and the constantly-evolving puzzle of how to navigate through the anthropocene as a decent human animal. He co-edits at Ice Floe Press and is a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. His debut collection The Water Engine was published by Femme Salve Books from Animal Heart Press
Amy Barry writes poems and short stories. She is published globally including Southword, The Blue Nib, Sunday Tribune, Paris Lit Up, The Poets’ Republic, Silver Apples and Live Encounters. Her poems have been translated into many languages including Italian, Turkish, Spanish, Azerbaijani, French, Romanian, and Persian. She is featured on the Radio and TV in Ireland, Italy, Canada, Australia and UK. Her poems have been Shortlisted, Longlisted, and Highly Commended and won local and international awards. Nominated for the Pushcart 2021 Poetry Prize. Amy is an Honorary member of the Neruda Association, Italy, and founder of Global Writers. Amy loves to travel, trips to Mumbai, Paris, Beijing, Falkenberg, Strasbourg, Bali have all infused her work. She has been awarded literature bursaries from The Arts Council Ireland and Words Ireland. Amy has performed her work in Ireland and internationally.
Merril D. Smith lives in southern New Jersey near Philadelphia, where she watches birds and planes fly over the Delaware River–usually during an early morning walk. She is a historian, and is the author/editor of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published most recently in Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Sledgehammer, Dead Skunk, Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. She hopes to have a full-length poetry collection published in the spring of 2022, and she has other collections in progress. Or this could be her imagination. Stay tuned and see.
Lucy Holme Roberts is a poet and mother from Kent, living in Cork, Ireland. Her poems have featured in The Liminal Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Re-Side, Southword, An Capall Dorcha and Marble Poetry, and are forthcoming in Poetry Bus, The Waxed Lemon and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. In April 2021 she was a recipient of a Munster Literature Centre Mentoring Fellowship with the poet Grace Wells and she is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at UCC. Her debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis, which was shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award, will be published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2022.
Mary Ford Neal is an academic specialising in Law and Healthcare Ethics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. She lives in her native Renfrewshire with her young son and has been publishing poetry since 2020. Her poems have been published in a range of print and online journals and have been Pushcart nominated. Her debut collection, ‘Dawning’, was published by Indigo Dreams in August 2021, and her second collection will be published in summer 2022. Mary is assistant editor of Nine Pens Press and 192 magazine.
Catherine Ann Cullen is the inaugural Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland. Her term finishes at the end of the month. She is an award-winning poet, children’s author and songwriter and will publish her seventh and eighth books in 2022. Her three poetry collections include The Other Now: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus 2016). She has also written three children’s books including The Magical, Mystical, Marvellous Coat (Little, Brown, 2001) which won a gold award for poetry and folklore from the American Parents Association. She was shortlisted for Irish Poem of the Year 2020. Catherine Ann holds a PhD in Public Works from Middlesex University on creative writing and ballads, and an M. Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin. She was born in Drogheda, Co Louth, and lives in Dublin.
Christmas & Winter Edition Vol 2 is now available at your nearest and friendliest Amazon published by Black Bough Poetry and you can find out more about Black Bough here https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/about-3
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 arriving on the 17th Jan 2022 which will be followed by his first full collection documenting his love affair with Paris called Enough!
Some of the poetry collections and pamphlets that arrived this year to ensure my life at Storms Stayed Bloody Poetic
Loud Stigma, Silent Leaf from Martin McKenna Eat or We Both Starve from Victoria Kennefick Unmuted from Nigel Kent Dawning from Mary Ford Neal Confetti Dancers from Sue Burge I always wanted to be a Bond Girl from Ryan Norman Under Photon Crowns from Dai Fry Under a Mind’s Staircase from Robin McNamara The Kitchen Sink Chronicles from Adele Cordner Splinters from Charles K Carter Earth Magicke from Margaret Royall And Drought will Follow from Lee Potts Whalers, Witchers and Gauchos from Julie Irigaray Art of Insomnia from Peter A Solastalgia from Brian McManus Pale Mnemonic from Stuart McPherson An Capall Dorcha, anthology issue 3Death Magazine from Matthew Haigh Mind Mathematics from Elizabeth Kelly Feverfew from Anna Saunders The Water Engine from Ankh Spice The Machinery of Life from Darren J Beaney Walking off the Land from Anne McMaster Sherry and Sparky from Maureen Cullen and Patricia M Osborne 2 Meter Review Winter Edition 2021 anthology Stickleback from Jack B Bedell Dark Confessions and Freedom-Rapture anthologies from Black Bough PoetryThis Kilt of Many Colours from Davis Bleiman These are not my Dreams and anyway nothing here is Purple from Michael Conley Eden from Robert Frede Kenter After the Riot from Neil Young Christmas & Winter edition vol 1 & 2 anthologies from Black Bough Poetry
Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Breaker, Player FM, Radio Public, OverCast, PocketCast, CastBox, ITunes, Podbean, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 11th December 2021. The guests were D’Or Seifer, Tony Garner, Michael WIlson, Anna Chorlton, David Leo Sirois and Ankh Spice, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
D’Or Seifer
D’or Seifer lives in Limerick. She contributes to poetry gatherings such as Filí an Tí Bháin and Over The Edge. D’or co-runs the online poetry series Lime Square Poets. Her work has recently appeared in Skylight 47, Abridged,Ink Sweat & Tears, and is upcoming in The Banyan Review.
Tony Garner lives in Glasgow where he teaches English as a Second Language as well as writing poetry teaching resources and occasionally running poetry workshops. He has previously had short stories published in New Writing Scotland and poetry in Read This Magazine, Green Ink Journal, and Southwark Library website. He has also written a historical crime novel set in Japan, for which he is currently seeking a publisher.
Michael Wilson is a national award-winning published performance poet. His writing is a balance of light and shade. He is a multi-national slam finalist and winner of several slams, including Cheltenham Lit UK slam and Belfast Book Festival slam the Belfast Book Festival slam. He was a finalist in the BBC Radio 4 Slam, and the Ireland Slam Final. He most recently won the All-Ulster Slam in October of this year. His first one person show, and book were performed during a full run at the Edinburgh Fringe, gaining a five-star review from Bouquets and Brickbats. His first full book, Bedlam’s Best and Finest is an experimental poetic expose of mental illness and health. His pamphlet After All Tomorrows After Parties is published by Knives Forks and Spoons. His second one-person show is called Fix and is a poetic memoir of his battles with, and victories over drug addictions. Michael has toured the UK and Ireland extensively and toured central and east Canada. He has headlined many events, arts centres and festivals. He also facilitates workshops for all walks and ages. He has been published in numerous publications such as Best of Manchester Poets 1, Citizen 32, Abridged and The Ugly Tree. Michael often performs his poems along with sign language. He has been broadcast on BBC Radio regional and national as well as RTE Radio 1 in the Republic of Ireland. He has been organizing events for years and cut his teeth in Manchester. He hosts Lit Up a monthly poetry event which encourages open mic performers and headliners to read a mixture of original work and poems by poets they admire and are inspired by. He most also won the NZ At Your Place slam and qualified for the Hammer and Tongue UK Final performing at the Royal Albert Hall. Michael is representing Ireland in the Euro Poetry Slam in December in Brussels. He resides in Portstewart, Northern Ireland.
Anna Chorlton writes in the Cornish wilds. She lives with her husband, young daughter, and surfing son. Anna’s poems have been published in Wild Court and Atlanta Review. Anna is author of ‘Cornish Folk Tales of Place’ (The History Press, 2019) The Silver Ball, her audio drama, is released by Alternative Stories and Fake Realities Podcast. She is a member of Liskeard Poets. Anna is working on her first poetry collection and has a pamphlet in submission.
David Leo Sirois is a Canadian-American poet published 116 times, in 14 countries. His work has been translated into 10 languages (Hindi, Bengali, French, German, Czech, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Chinese, & Doric). He hosts Spoken World Online, the Zoom continuation of SpokenWord Paris. First book is called Humbledoves (poems to pigeons & plants). 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, Indian Periodical, The Sunday Tribune Online, THE BASTILLE, & Terre à Cièl (which also published his translations from the French). He has been featured on international podcasts, such as Eat the Storms. David is also a singer/songwriter, radio DJ, & Film/TV/Theater actor. He is currently submitting five finished manuscripts for publication, & writing several more.
Ankh Spice is a queer-identified, sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (New Zealand). His work has appeared in a range of online and print publications over the last year and a half, with nearly 100 publications to date, and two of his poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and two nominated for Best of the Net. His poetry is rooted in the natural, and finds its heart exploring the deeply personal relationship between humans and their external and internal environments, examining mental health and identity, climate change, colonialism, and the constantly-evolving puzzle of how to navigate through the anthropocene as a decent human animal. He co-edits at Ice Floe Press and is a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. His debut collection The Water Engine was published by Femme Salve Books, an imprint of Animal Heart Press.
Christmas & Winter Edition Vol 2 is now available at your nearest and friendliest Amazon published by Black Bough Poetry and you can find out more about Black Bough here https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/about-3
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 arriving on the 17th Jan 2022 which will be followed by 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, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 4th December 2021. The guests were JP Seabright, Özge Lena, Shiksha Dhera, Brad Beau Cohen and Samantha L. Terrell, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
JP Seabright
JP Seabright is a queer writer (she/they) living in London, with poetry, short stories and experimental work published online and in print. Their debut poetry pamphlet, an experimental conceptual work, Fragments from Before the Fall, will be published by Beir Bua Press in December 2021. A prose chapbook NO HOLDS BARRED will be available for presale from Lupercalia Press also in December 2021, and in early 2022 GenderFux, a collaborative poetry pamphlet, part of the Nine Series, will be published by Nine Pens Press.
Özge Lena is an İstanbul-based writer and poet and an English language teacher. She has got a published novella in Turkish titled Otopsi (The Autopsy). And her poems in English have appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Green Ink Poetry, Fahmidan Journal, Off Menu Press, One Art Poetry Journal, and elsewhere and forthcoming in After Poetry and Fragmented Voices. Her poetry was shortlisted for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize 2021.
Shiksha Dheda is a South African of Indian descent. She uses writing to express her OCD and depression roller-coaster ventures. Sometimes, she dabbles in photography, painting, and baking lopsided layered cakes. Her writing has been featured(on/forthcoming) in Brittle Paper, Daily Drunk Magazine, Door is a jar, Luna Luna Mag and Versification, amongst others. She is the Pushcart nominated author of Washed Away (Alien Buddha Press, 2021)
Brad Beau Cohen (they/them, he/him) is a working class, queer poet born in Guernsey and based in London. Cohen’s poetry has been published by Fourteen Poems and American literary journal Versification Zine, anthologised twice by Fincham Press, exhibited in SomosArt House and alongside Maurizio Bongiovanni in The Hilbert Raum. His debut poetry pamphlet, Sugar Water will be published by Soho City Books on March 15th 2022, wherever books are sold.
Samantha L. Terrell, author of Vision, and Other Things We Hide From (Potter’s Grove Press), and the chapbook Keeping Afloat (JC STUDIO Press), is an internationally published American poet whose work emphasizes self-awareness as a means to social awareness. Terrell’s poetry can be found in a variety of fine publications, such as: Dissident Voice, Dove Tales, Green Ink, In Parentheses, Misfit Magazine, Red Weather, Sledgehammer, and many others. She amd her family reside in Upstate New York.
Christmas & Winter Edition Vol 2 is now available at your nearest and friendliest Amazon published by Black Bough Poetry and you can find out more about Black Bough here https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/about-3
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, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.
This episode aired first on Saturday 27th November 2021. The guests were Dominic Weston, Susan Darlington, Liam Flanagan, Meg Freer and Matthew McGuirk, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Dominic Weston
Dominic Weston produces wildlife television programmes, runs over the Mendip hills and writes poetry. His work often relates to family and the natural world, undercut by a healthy slick of darkness. He has also slipped off the page into Poetry Film. In 2019 Hastings Lit Fest awarded him first prize for ‘Ghost of a Flea’’ and his poems have appeared in many publications including Agenda, Black Bough Poetry, Dreich, Magma Poetry, Poetry Scotland, The North, Under The Radar and The Iron Press Book of Tree Poems.
Susan Darlington’s poetry regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. It has been published in Nymphs, Dreich, Dream Catcher, Anti-Heroin Chic, Hedgehog Press, and Ethel Zine among others. She has two books available: ‘Traumatropic Heart’ (Selcouth Station, 2021) and ‘Under The Devil’s Moon’ (Penniless Press Publications, 2015
Liam Flanagan was born and bred in Galway. He has a degree in English and Philosophy and a Teaching Diploma in IT. He spent 10 years in Dublin during the Celtic Tiger years but moved back across the Shannon to enjoy the wind, rain and the sand! His poetry has been published by Pendemic.ie, Spillwords.com and Write in the Flow amongst other sites with a number of his poems archived in the James Joyce library in University College Dublin.
Meg Freer grew up in Montana and has written poetry since 2015, when she was woken up one night by a complete poem that flashed in front of her eyes, even though she had never written poetry. Since then, poems have arrived less aggressively, and she now wishes she had more time to write them. She studied musicology in Minnesota and New Jersey, where she also worked in scholarly book publishing. She now teaches piano, and enjoys the outdoors year-round in Ontario. Her photos and poems have won awards and have been published in anthologies and journals such as Ruminate, Juniper Poetry, Eastern Iowa Review, Rat’s Ass Review and Arc Poetry. She is co-author of a poetry chapbook titled Serve the Sorrowing World with Joy.
Matt McGuirk teaches and laughs at his puns by day and scribbles somewhat coherent words nightly. He lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee with words in various lit mags(online and print) and his debut hybrid collection is out with Alien Buddha Press and available on Amazon and Lulu under the title: Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities.
Christmas & Winter Edition Vol 2 is now available at your nearest and friendliest Amazon published by Black Bough Poetry and you can find out more about Black Bough here https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/about-3
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 Halloween special episode aired first on Saturday 30th October 2021. The guests were Arden Hunter, Polly Oliver, Catherine Ann Cullen, Gaynor Kane, Matthew Haigh, Merril D Smith, Sarah Connor, Jane Dougherty, Jessica Drake-Thomas, Moyra Donaldson, Melody Wang, Robert Frede Kenter and Sarah Wragg. Produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Arden Hunter
Arden Hunter is originally from the UK but currently lives in Indonesia. They are an aroace agender writer, artist and performer. With an eclectic range of interests from the horrific to the whimsical, the theme tying all of their work together is an inexplicable and unconditional love of the ridiculous beast that is called ‘human’. They write poetry, flash fiction, short stories and are currently working on their first novel, ‘Wilde Haven.’ Arden also likes to mess around with form, experimenting with erasure poetry, audio poetry, collage, found and digital visual poetry. Arden is entirely self-taught.
Polly Oliver is a Broadcast Journalist and Communications freelancer from Wales. She has two children for whom she finds herself both mother and PA, and a needy cat. She writes poetry in the rare between spaces, when inspiration and time come together. Polly only started writing poetry in the last few years when her voice began to fledge and when she was inspired by the atmosphere and quality of work at local open mic nights in Swansea. She has been published online by Black Bough Poetry, The Tide Rises, Falls, Wombwell Rainbow and Spillwords, and is pushcart nominated. Most recently she was the featured writer in the “Silver Branch” series by Black Bough Poems.
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.
Gaynor Kane is from Northern Ireland. She came to writing late, after finishing a degree with a creative writing module. Her full collection, ‘Venus in Pink Marble’ was released on her 50th birthday in 2020, published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press. She has three other publications, from that press: a micro collection, ‘Circling the Sun’ (2018), about the early aviatrixes, a chapbook, ‘Memory Forest’ (2019), about burial rituals and last wishes, and a co-authored chapbook of pandemic poetry ‘Penned In’ (2020).Her forthcoming chapbook of love poems ‘Eight Types of Love’ is due to be published in February 2022. Her poems have earned places in several competitions. She has been guest editor of the Bangor Literary journal and has also performed at several festivals, including the Belfast Book Festival, Stendhal Music and Arts Festival and Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
Matthew Haigh is the author of Death Magazine (Salt, 2019) and Black Jam (Broken Sleep Books, 2019). He is the co-editor of Hit Points: an anthology of video game poetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2021). Death Magazine was longlisted for the Polari first book prize in 2020. His work has been highly commended in the Forward prizes, commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize, and published in journals including Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Magma, Fourteen Poems, The Guardian and Poetry London. Further work has featured in anthologies from The Emma Press, Bad Betty Press and Sidekick Books. He has performed at a number of festivals including Cheltenham and Gloucester Poetry Festivals, Swansea Fringe and the European Poetry Festival. In 2021 he was a judge for the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition and interviewed for Edge Magazine on the relationship between poetry and video games. A new pamphlet, Vampires, is published with Bad Betty Press in 2021.
Merril D. Smith lives in New Jersey, near Philadelphia, with her high school sweetheart husband, a retired high school math teacher. They have two grown daughters. She is an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in American history. Her most recent work has focused on women, sexuality, and sexual violence. She also works as a freelance test writer for TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication). For the past few years, she has become more interested and immersed in poetry. Some of her poetry has been published, and she is working to publish a collection. Her blog is mainly a poetry blog and her musings about this and that: nothing stays in one drawer of her inner file cabinet—thoughts and words fall out, get misfiled, and cross genres. She likes to write on a laptop in her kitchen—coffee and cats nearby–while she gazes out the window to watch the birds and ponder about life.
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.
Jane Dougherty lives and works in rural southwest France. Her home is surrounded by fields and woodland and their discreet populations, and she is unhappy anywhere else. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, Hedgerow Journal, Tuck Magazine, ink sweat and tears, Eye to the Telescope, the Drabble and Ekphrastic Review. She is the author of the poetry collections Thicker than Water and Birds and Other Feathers. She is also the author of the Pathfinders, a fictional trilogy of novels about apocalyptic time travels through worm holes.
Jessica Drake-Thomas is an American poet, fiction writer and book reviewer. She’s the author of Burials, a gothic horror poetry collection published by Clash Books, and she’s a poetry editor at Coffin Bell Journal.
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.
Melody Wang currently resides in sunny Southern California with her dear husband and wishes it were autumn all year ‘round. She is a reader for Sledgehammer Lit. She is published in various journals and anthologies including Neologism Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, West Trestle Review, Eclectica Magazine, Hobart After Dark, The Wild Word, and One Art Poetry Journal. Two of her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net 2021. In her free time, she enjoys reading, tinkering on the piano, hiking, baking, and playing with her dogs. Her debut collection of poems, Night-blooming Cereus, is coming out on December 17th, 2021 with Alien Buddha Press.
Robert Frede Kenter is a writer, editor, visual artist, performer and the EIC/Publisher of Toronto & Alabama-based, Ice Floe Press. A new VISPO collection, EDEN, is now available from Floodlight Editions. A Pushcart nominee and multiple-grant recipient, Robert has published work in a wide variety of print and on-line journals, most recently: Scissors and Spackle, Anthropocene, Fevers Of, Talking About Strawberries, Black Bough, Cough, The Failure Baler & Watch Your Head. Robert was a feature reader at the U.K. Cheltenham Poetry Festival in 2020, and has read at many venues including Knife/Fork/Book in Toronto and The Knitting Factory in New York City.
Marlow. Robert Frede KenterDracula. Robert Frede Kenter
Sarah Wragg
Sarah Wragg has had a love of words all her life and is fascinated by how putting a bunch of straight and/or curvaceous black marks in front of a load of others can pull you into a wonderful new world with fully fledged characters, landscapes, actions and emotions. So it’s unsurprising she ended up as a poet as well as a writer of stories of all shapes and sizes. She’s even been dipping her toe into playwriting of late, which resulted in a place in the finals of the Write Here! Write Now! playwriting festival with her black comedy Delira. In poetry terms, she’s only been writing for ten years (barring a few teenage fumblings in that direction). Thanks to various writing groups and festivals, she is now surrounded by an amazing and varied assortment of creative people who are hugely supportive and encouraging, as well as willing to give feedback and suggestions to finesse (and sometimes change) poems to give them a much better chance of making it onto the printed page. For which she is extremely grateful, especially as it’s resulted in getting lots of her precious word-babies out into the world, in anthologies by Beautiful Dragons Press (My Dear Watson; Not A Drop; A Bee’s Breakfast; Noble Dissent; Watch The Birdie; Well, Dam!; Bloody Amazing!; and the soon to be launched Lighting Out) and Indigo Dreams (Mystery). Her first collection is Ghost Walk (Hedgehog Press), a collection of poems about ghosts ‘living’ in the modern world, but inspired by good old fashioned Victorian ghost stories. It was published after being voted for by members of the Cult of the Spiny Hog, and their faith in her work has gone a long way in the fight to banish ‘imposter syndrome’, bringing her closer to feeling like a proper ‘grown up’ 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 final episode of Season 3 aired first on Saturday 16th October 2021. The guests were Beth Brooke, Rachel Coventry, Richard LeRue, Amanda Nicholson and Gary Gautier, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Beth Brooke
Beth Brooke is a retired teacher. She was born in the Middle East and spent most of her childhood there but now she lives in Dorset next to the stunning Jurassic Coast. Her debut collection, Landscape With Birds will be published by Hedgehog Press next year. She has work in a number of online journals, including 192, Barren, Sledgehammer, The Cabinet of Heed and Apex. She has work in the York Literary Review, Dreich Overflow edition, the Pandemic anthology by Gloucester Poetry Festival and in the Folklore Secret Chords Anthology. She is about to be published by Marble, Poetry Bus, Dawn Treader and Obsessed With Pipework.
Rachel Coventry’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The North, The Moth, Poetry Ireland Review, Stand, Southword, The Irish Times, and The Shop. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her debut collection Afternoon Drinking in the Jolly Butchers (2018) is published by Salmon Poetry.
Rachel is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RachelCoventry and on Instagram at @rachel_coventry
Richard LeDue (he/him) currently lives in Norway House, Manitoba. He is a Best of the Net nominee. His first chapbook came out in 2020, and a second chapbook in 2021. As well, his third chapbook, “The Kind of Noise Worth Writing Down,” is forthcoming in early 2022 from Kelsay Books.
Gary Gautier is the author of the forthcoming book, Schematics and Assemblies of the Cosmic Heart, shortlisted for the Faulkner-Wisdom Poetry Prize which was preceded by his poetry chapbook, Year of the Butterfly (2017). His poetry has appeared in Masticadores (2021), Solid Quarter (2010), Natchez Poetry Anthology (2006), Concrete Wolf (2002), Louisiana English Journal (1998), and The Silver Quill Anthology (1996). His novels and poetry have been shortlisted for the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize, a children’s book featured in the Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Market and a scholarly book selected for Edwin Mellen Press’s Studies in British Literature series. His novel, Hippies was selected for radio interviews on KSKQ Oregon and WRBH New Orleans, and a screen adaptation of his novel, Mr. Robert’s Bones, was selected to the second round (top 10%) at the Austin Film Festival. Born in New Orleans, he has hitchhiked through 16 countries and 35 states, run two marathons, and once, due to a series of misadventures, spent six months as the chef at a French restaurant. He has a Ph.D. (U of Colorado) and MA (UT Austin) in Literature.
Amanda Nicholson is an author, poet, podcast co-host and copywriter from Manchester. She co-hosts the book review podcast Reading in Bed. She writes under the name of Amanda Steel. Her books include Ghost of Me (which was a finalist in the Author Elite 2020 awards), two full length poetry books, and several chapbooks. She has also edited two anthologies; From the Shadows, and Words to Remember. Amanda’s poetry has been broadcast on BBC Radio Manchester, and her story Clown Control was featured on The NoSleep Podcast.
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 9th October 2021. The guests were Megha Sood, Paul Adam Short, Theresa Donnelly, James Nguyen and Elizabeth M Castillio, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Megha Sood
Megha Sood is a Pushcart Nominated Award-Winning Poet, Editor, Author, and Literary Activist based in New Jersey, USA. She is a Poetry Editor at MookyChick(UK), Life and Legends (USA), and Literary Partner in the project “Life in Quarantine” with Stanford University, USA. Works featured in journals, including Poetry Society of New York, American Writers Review, Kissing Dynamite, Rising Phoenix Review, and many more. Author of Chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, Flower Song Press, 2021).Recipient of Poet Fellowship 2021 MVICW (Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing), National Level Winner Spring Mahogany Lit Prize, and Three-Time State-level winner of NJ Poetry Contest.
Paul Adam Short lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. The North East of England is a major influence on Paul’s writing, especially the multitude of varying landscapes, history, culture and industrial working-class heritage. Paul has been published online in Stymie Magazine, The Daily Drunk Mag, Dark Poets Club and won the April 2021 ‘Press 53’ 53-Word Story Contest. He’s currently working on a few projects including a chapbook based on growing up in Northumberland and a crime novel.
James Nguyen is a serial entrepreneur who has previously been featured across CNBC, Sky, ABC and been a contributing writer on Forbes. In JQN, James is able to distil his experience and lessons about life and business through the beauty of spoken word poetry. His topics range from truths about life, love, and spirituality; while he expounds on first principles from business and entrepreneurship in a collection of poems as well.
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.
Elizabeth M Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer, indie-press promoter. She lives in Paris with her family and two cats, where she writes a variety of different things under a variety of pen names. In her writing Elizabeth explores themes of race & ethnicity, motherhood, womanhood, language, love, loss and grief, and a touch of magical realism. She has words in, or upcoming in Selcouth Station Press, Pollux Journal, Revista Purgante, Bandit Fiction, Streetcake Magazine, Fevers of the Mind Press, Melbourne Culture Corner, Feral Poetry, Epoch Press, among others. Her bilingual, debut collection is called “Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras”
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 2nd September 2021. The guests were Koss, Wendy Allen, Helen Ivory, Margaret Royall and Barney Ashton-Bullock, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Koss
Koss (they/them/she) is a queer writer and artist with an MFA from SAIC. She has work in or forthcoming in Diode Poetry, Five Points, Hobart, Cincinnati Review, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, Prelude, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Lumiere Review, Amethyst Review, Chiron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rat’s Ass Review, and many others. They also have work in Best Small Fictions 2020 and Kissing Dynamite’s forthcoming Punk Anthology. Koss just won the 2021 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Award with “My Therapist Sez” and was a finalist in Diode’s 2021 Chapbook Contest.
Wendy Allen has had poems published in Re-Side, Atrium, Northern Gravy and Brunel Writer. Her first pamphlet The Tricolour Textbook is about to be published as a Legitimate Snack from Broken Sleep. Wendy is studying for her MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes.
Margaret Royall is a poet with four published poetry books: a poetry pamphlet, Earth Magicke, (2021 Impspired Press), two poetry collections, Fording The Stream (2017, independently published), Where Flora Sings (2020, Hedgehog Press) and a memoir in prose and verse, The Road To Cleethorpes Pier (2020, Crumps Barn Studio). She has been shortlisted for several poetry prizes, won the Hedgehog Press’ collection competition (May 2020) and her collection Where Flora Sings has been nominated for the Laurel Prize. She has been widely published in journals and online, most recently Impspired, Blue Nib, Open Door, Flights ( Dragonfly) and Dreich. Margaret leads a poetry group in Nottinghamshire and is a regular performer at open mic events. She is currently writing her first novel and working on a third poetry collection.
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. Her fifth Bloodaxe collection The Anatomical Venus(2019. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches creative writing online for the UEA/WCN. A book of mixed media poems Hear What the Moon Told Me is published by KFS, and chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City by SurVision. She has work translated into Polish, Ukrainian and Spanish as part of the Versopolis project. Her New and Selected will appear from MadHat (US) in 2022 and she is currently working on her next collection How to Construct a Witch.
Barney Ashton-Bullock is the poet/librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ queer music-theatre collective whose albums and books are published through Cherry Red Records and he narrates his own verse on the Downes Braide Association albums ‘Skyscraper Souls’, ‘Live In England’ and ‘Halcyon Hymns’. He has poetry published in a wide range of cult poetry journals, in the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, in various Dreich pamphlets, in the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the ‘Soho Nights’ anthologies published by The Society Club Press who also published his first collection ‘Schema/Stasis’ in 2017. His latest books are ‘Café Kaput!’ (Broken Sleep Books, 2020) and ‘F**kpig Zeitgeist’ and ‘Bucolicism’ both released in 2021 through Cherry Red Records mail order.
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 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!
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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…
