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...
I’ve known Karen Mooney for over two years now, first introduced to her as she read her poem I Touched You, as part of the Women Aloud NI event at the Eastside Arts Festival in Belfast, now available to watch on YouTube, a poem at the height of Covid about touch that leapt over the 4th wall of the computer screen and trembled itself along my entire being. Since then, I’ve heard her read many more times at many open mic nights on zoom, devoured the poignant collection she co-wrote with Gaynor Kane Penned In and was in awe of her ability to put everyone at ease and stir the conversation so eloquently when she was co-host, also with Gaynor Kane, of the launch of In the Jitterfritz of Neon, the conversational poetry pamphlet co-written by Eilín de Paor and myself, recorded together in Belfast which was the first time I met Karen in person, although at that point, having known each other online for so long, it felt like we’d known each other for years. However, having just finished reading Missing Pieces I’m aware that my knowledge of Karen has only just begun and what better place to start than joining her for this collection examining the cracks, fissures or missing pieces that cannot be returned to the soul, no matter how much we want to be whole again. This is a collection of poems coming to terms with loss, looking back to the attachment before it was torn away to see if there was a suggestion of how it was going to hurt. Karen, putting every wound under the microscope of these lines, writes with immense intimacy here, each word carefully selected to fit the page, the person depicted or to set the scene – from kitchen, heart of every home, to the car, the bedside, the rose garden and inside the offerings of a jewellery box. There is a gentle but welcomed deception amid all these words, a gift of light before the flame blows out, especially in the opening poem – pastoral and patient till the final stanza appears with its empty carrycot in the corner. From routine wash days to coming in to see how to light a fire, to understanding what it takes to keep it going and learning how to put it out again, if necessary. Memories here are ripples, coming in and out of focus on the viscus of a reduction that leaves us wanting more. Even in the preparation of a vegetable soup, the simple details are what draws us into what’s really happening behind the pealing and stirring and trying to find ways to taste again – the refusal to chop onions so tears won’t fall, the soup-stained ceilings, the unfamiliar territory – finding your way around someone else’s kitchen without them as you use their recipe to make their final supper. In Search of the Right Note, a very short poem, lays out the entire focus of this collection- a song that was once sung now repeated, but no longer in the right key. The loss here comes in all forms, in all shades, winter falling in the garden, a season of Princesses -lilies of the valley leaving too soon, though not all endings here could be buried, some were separations – there were no flowers or cards of condolence, yet there was a death, the death of us.
The overriding connections here to mother and father are a testament to a bond unbreakable, despite all that is missing. Again and again we are shown the struggle of preparing to move on, father and daughter trying to see the route ahead, trunk weighted down by all they couldn’t bring with them. Alpha-male widower, trying to a teach a teenage girl to grow, live, proceed with caution, drive down roads without mothers, how to check under cars before turning on ignitions in Northern Ireland in the 80s and later, daughter becoming the epitome of Care, Curtesy and Consideration as she becomes carer despite its own challenges – but today, you were exasperation like a dry shave with a blunt blade while never forgetting those tiny tender details that make this collection so surprisingly comforting, despite the sadness, like an unexpected embrace. Even in poems like Last Rites, there are such microscopic nuances, reflections of the life that has been lived along with all it takes to let it pass on – her cradling your face in pillow-soft breasts; prompting memories.
Light trickles throughout all the cracks, the connection, the consideration, the comfort despite the loss and bursts through the open wounds, like the roots Mum grew before she was cut down after the first blush in early summer which brings us back to the cover art, those golden fractures of love and life that may also be roots – replanted, solidifying new connections as evident in the final poem for Stanley, a vessel of hope in itself, despite its jagged edges. Some things you lose, some things get lost, and some things come back in – odd bits coming together to make, perhaps, some things feel, almost, whole again.
This is an earnest collection of honesty that goes beyond how to cope and explores, beautifully, how we break. Missing Pieces delicately examines the parts we’re often not given the time to consider. This is Karen Mooney, showing all that has broken and, by doing so, the fragments have become poems that are her very best.
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 21st May 2022. The guests were Helen Openshaw, Ciaran O’Rourke, Christine Stoddard, Shailja Sharma, Anne Daly, Jay Rafferty, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Helen Openshaw
Helen Openshaw is a Drama and English teacher, from Cumbria. She enjoys writing poetry and plays and inspiring her students to write. Work in Green Ink Poetry magazine, Words and Whispers magazine, The Madrigal, Fragmented Voices, Loft Books and The Dirigible Balloon magazine..
Ciarán O’Rourke is an Irish poet. His first collection, The Buried Breath, was highly commended by the Forward Foundation for Poetry in 2019, and his second collection, Phantom Gang, is forthcoming from The Irish Pages Press. His extended essay on the work William Carlos Williams, American Epic: On Paterson, is available as a pamphlet from Beir Bua Press.
Island’s Edge was founded by Ciarán in 2018 as a place for poets in Ireland to share their thoughts about their work and craft https://www.islandsedgepoetry.net/
Christine Stoddard
Christine Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American writer, director, performer, and multi-hyphenated artist creating books, films, plays, murals, etc. She founded Quail Bell Magazine and Quail Bell Press & Productions. Her books include Heaven is a Photograph, Hello, New York: The Living And Dead, Naomi & The Reckoning, Desert Fox by the Sea, Belladonna Magic, and Water for the Cactus Woman, among others. She recently premiered her first feature film, Sirena’s Gallery, after directing several shorts. Her writing/directing credits in theatre include shows for the Gene Frankel Theatre, Theater Alliance at Anacostia Playhouse, Broadway Comedy Club, and others. Previously, she was the first-ever artist-in-residence at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House in Manhattan and served as an inaugural AnkhLave Arts Alliance artist fellow at the Queens Botanical Garden. Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, The Huffington Post, Portland Review, Bustle, and beyond.
Dr. Shailja Sharma (Ph.D.), USA, is a mental health provider and a multilingual author. Apart from scholarly publication and editorial service, her literary writings have been nationally and internationally published and anthologized. She is the author of a poetry book, “Dear Mama: An Immigrant’s Secret Cry,” by Pittsburgh-based, Setu. Her next collection, “Sip the Roses” is upcoming via ABP Press. Dr. Sharma’s publications have appeared in many literary journals/forums of repute across USA, Canada, UK, and Asia. Recent Credits: Beautiful Space, Spillwords, Literary Heist, Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Life in 10, Masticadores, Setu, among other forums. In addition to writing in English, Dr. Sharma is a widely published multilingual author. She was awarded a special literary honor for her writing contributions in international languages
Anne Daly is a writer who lives in Co. Meath, Ireland. Her short fiction and poems have appeared in a number of online and print journals. Her writing has recently featured in The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon and Ellipsis Zine. She won second place in the Allingham Fiction Prize, 2021. Her debut pamphlet Triptych was be published by Alien Buddha Press in April 2022.
Jay Rafferty is a redhead, an uncle and an eejit. He is the Poetry Editor at Sage Cigarettes Magazine His debut chapbook, Holy Things, was released from The Broken Spine in March 2022 and you can read his work in several journals including Capsule Stories, Lights on the Horizon and the Daily Drunk Magazine. When not losing games of pool he, sometimes, writes stuff.
‘The Return’ by Helen Grehan, in Boyle’s King House, Co Roscommon, Ireland at 2pm on Sunday 29th May
Fahmidan Journal Celebrates
Join host and producer Damien B Donnelly as he reads alongside fellow poets who all had work appearing in the wonderful Fahmidan Journal on Saturday 28th May at 7.30 GMT on zoom. For zoom details, DM Fahmidan on Twitter at https://twitter.com/fahmidanjournal
Damien B Donnelly, Producer, Host and Poet
Damien B Donnelly is a 46-year-old Irish, adopted, gay, writer and podcast producer who spent 23 years living in Paris, Amsterdam, and London, returning to Dublin in 2019. In 2020, his debut pamphlet Eat the Storms appeared on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize followed by a Stickleback collection, and second Pushcart Prize nomination, in Jan 2021, both published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. He produces and hosts the poetry podcast Eat the Storms, now in its 5th season with 300+ international guests on over 12 platforms. In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a poetry pamphlet co-written with Eilin de Paor, was published in Jan 2022 followed by his first full collection Enough! in July 2022, for which he was awarded an Agility Award by Arts Council, Ireland. The Fingal Arts have funded his next collection Back from Away, due in 2023. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, both online and in print. In May 2022 he opened submissions to the inaugural issue of The Storms, a journal of poetry, prose and visual art.
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 14th May 2022. The guests were Lucy Heuschen, Maeve McKenna, John D Kelly, Susana H Case, Margo Taft Stever, Daniel Hinds, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Lucy Heuschen
Lucy Heuschen (she/her) is a British poet living in the countryside of the Rheinland in Germany. A former lawyer, breast cancer survivor, avid reader and poet, Lucy is the founder of The Rainbow Poems, the online poetry community for anyone going through major life change. She is co-editor of the Sonnets for Shakespeare Anthology Project (set up during lockdown to support the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the Globe Theatre). Lucy also leads the German Stanza of the Poetry Society. Her debut pamphlet We Wear The Crown, will be published by Hedgehog Press in August 2022.
Maeve McKenna is a poet living in Sligo, Ireland. Her poetry has been placed in several international poetry competitions including iYeats, Red Line, Hanna Greally, Trim and The Allingham. Her work is published in print in Mslexia, Orbis, Sand Magazine,Fly on the Wall, Boyne Berries, One Hundred Words of Solitude, Sonder, Channel, Cutlure Matters, The Cormorant among others and widely online. Her work is anthologised in several books. Maeve was a finalist in the Eavan Boland Mentorship Award 2020, third in The Canterbury Poet of The Year, 2021, and a Pushcart nominee, 2022. Maeve was part of a collaboration with three poets and their pamphlet won the Dreich Alliance Pamphlet Competition, published, October, 2021. Maeve has received two literature bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland. Her debut pamphlet was published in February, 2022, by Fly On The Wall Press. A second pamphlet will be published in September, 2022, by Rare Swan Press.
John D. Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. His work has appeared in various literary publications including Poetry Ireland Review, Magma, Southword, Cyphers, Skylight 47, Boyne Berries, Crannog, The Honest Ulsterman, The Cormorant, Poetry NI, etc. In 2020 he won the Listowel Short Collection Award and the Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition. His poetry was highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2016; achieved Silver Medal in the International Dermot Healy Poetry Competition in both 2015 and 2014. His first collection The Loss Of Yellowhammers (Summer Palace Press) was published in 2020.
Susana H. Case has authored eight books of poetry, most recently The Damage Done, Broadstone Books, 2022. Dead Shark on the N Train, Broadstone Books, 2020 won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, a NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. The first of her five chapbooks, The Scottish Café, Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press. She co-edited, with Margo Taft Stever, the anthology I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, Milk and Cake Press, 2022. Case worked several decades as a university professor and program coordinator in New York City and currently is a co-editor of Slapering Hol Press.
Margo Taft Stever’s latest of three full-length books is The End of Horses (Broadstone Books, 2022), Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019). Her latest of four chapbooks is Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019). She is an adjunct assistant Professor in the Bioethics Department of the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and teaches a poetry workshop at Children’s Village, a residential school for at risk children and adolescents. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Plume, Verse Daily, “Poem-A-Day” on poets.org, Prairie Schooner, Connecticut Review, Cincinnati Review, upstreet, and Salamander. She is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. She lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Daniel Hinds lives in Newcastle. He won the Poetry Society’s Timothy Corsellis Young Critics Prize 2018 and his prose poem review of Jay Bernard’s Surge was one of the winners of the Shortlist Book Review Competition 2020, held in celebration of the Dylan Thomas Prize by Swansea University. His poetry was commended in the National Centre for Writing’s UEA New Forms Award 2021. He was also one of the winners of The Broken Spine’s Flash Fiction Competition. He was shortlisted for the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize 2019 and the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize 2018, and longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2021. Two of his poems were highly commended in the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts Water Poetry Competition, judged by W. N. Herbert and John Burnside. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The London Magazine, The New European, Wild Court, Poetry Salzburg Review, Stand, Southword, Prairie Fire, The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Blackbox Manifold, The Honest Ulsterman, Fly on the Wall Press Magazine, The Morning Star, Finished Creatures, Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology, Newcastle University’s One Planet Anthology, Amethyst Review, Perverse, Streetcake Magazine, Riggwelter, Orbis, The Seventh Quarry, New Contrast, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, York Literary Review, Poetry and Covid, Bind, Acid Bath Publishing’s The Worst Best Years: A Student Life Anthology and Travels & Tribulations, Fenland Poetry Journal, StepAway Magazine, The Lake, Visual Verse, The Wilfred Owen Association Journal, Selcouth Station, Nightingale & Sparrow, Black Bough Poetry, Abridged, The Poetry Bus, Confluence, Fragmented Voices, Fevers of the Mind, Spellbinder, Creative Ireland’s 2022 Poetry Anthology, Cardigan Press’s Byline Legacies anthology, Milk and Cake Press’s Dead of Winter II anthology, and BFS Horizons. He has also had an essay published in Pre-Raphaelite Society Review. He was part of a panel of judges for the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts Belonging Poetry Competition and contributed to New Writing North’s Dawn Chorus collective sound poem, which premiered at the Durham Book Festival. He graduated from Newcastle University with a first class degree in English Literature, and a Distinction in his English Literature 1500-1900 MA, for which he won two prestigious scholarships, the School Bursary Award and Excellence Scholarship. He was commissioned by New Creatives, a talent development scheme supported by Arts Council England and BBC Arts and delivered by Tyneside Cinema, to produce an audio piece based on his poetic sequence The Stone Men of Newcastle. The audio piece is forthcoming on BBC platforms, including BBC Sounds and BBC Introducing Arts with Huw Stephens on BBC Radio 6 Music.
I am deeply saddened by the passing of our beloved Kari Flickinger on 2nd May 2022. A wonderful light in the poetry community and the author of The Gull and the Bell Tower by Femme Salve Books and The Ceiling Fan by Rare Swan Press. RIP Kari, may the skies be brighter with your company
Upcoming Events
Live at the Cultural Quarter which will feature former guest poet Jessamine O’Connor among others And Jessamine will be back as a guest very soon on Episode 4.
Damien B Donnelly is a 46-year-old Irish, adopted, gay, writer and podcast producer who spent 23 years living in Paris, Amsterdam, and London, returning to Dublin in 2019. In 2020, his debut pamphlet Eat the Storms appeared on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize followed by a Stickleback collection, and second Pushcart Prize nomination, in Jan 2021, both published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. He produces and hosts the poetry podcast Eat the Storms, now in its 5th season with 300+ international guests on over 12 platforms. In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a poetry pamphlet co-written with Eilin de Paor, was published in Jan 2022 followed by his first full collection Enough! in July 2022, for which he was awarded an Agility Award by Arts Council, Ireland. The Fingal Arts have funded his next collection Back from Away, due in 2023. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, both online and in print. In May 2022 he opened submissions to the inaugural issue of The Storms, a journal of poetry, prose and visual art.
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 7th May 2022. The guests were Marie Marchand, Phil Vernon, Renee Liang, Raegen Pietrucha, Emilie Collier, Catherine Gander, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Marie Marchand
Marie Marchand is Poet Laureate of Ellensburg, Washington. She has been published in Catamaran Literary Reader, California Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Tiny Seed Journal, High Plains Register, and numerous chapbooks. Her new book Gifts to the Attentive will be published this Spring by Winter Goose Publishing. Her 2018 book Pink Sunset Luminaries features 100 poems about love, nature, and transcendence. As a mental health advocate and person with lived experience, she believes that poetry is a testament to the triumph of hope over despair. She is a community leader with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and The Stability Network. She graduated from Naropa University and The Iliff School of Theology where she studied psychology, religion, and peacemaking.
Phil Vernon lives in Kent, with his wife Tebo. He works Internationally on humanitarian, development and peace initiatives. His first collection Poetry After Auschwitz (Sentinel) was published in 2020, followed by Watching The Moon Landing (2022) from Hedgehog Poetry Press. He is working on a new series of poems exploring the connections between place, conflict and peace.
Renee Liang is a poet, playwright and essayist based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa (New Zealand). Her parents are Cantonese speaking immigrants from Hong Kong. She MCed at Poetry Live 2004-2008 and as Slammistress Renee ran some of Tāmaki Makaurau’s first poetry slams. She has published several poetry chapbooks including Chinglish, Banana and Cardiac Cycle. Some poetry and short fiction are anthologised. As an established writer, Renee has collaborated on visual arts works, film, opera and music, produced and directed theatre works, worked as a dramaturge, taught creative writing and organized community-based arts initiatives such as New Kiwi Women Write, a writing workshop series for migrant women, and The Kitchen, a new program nurturing stories in local kitchens. Her work The Bone Feeder, originally a play, later adapted into an opera, was one of the first Asian-led mainstage works to be performed in NZ. Renee has written, produced and toured eight plays. In 2018 she was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to the arts, and won Next Woman of the Year for Arts and Culture.
Raegen Pietrucha writes, edits, and consults creatively and professionally. Her chapbook, An Animal I Can’t Name, won the 2015 Two of Cups Press competition; her debut poetry collection, Head of a Gorgon, is forthcoming with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in May; and she has a memoir in progress. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she was an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has been published in Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals.
Emilie Collyer lives in Australia, on Wurundjeri land, where she writes poetry, plays and prose. Her work mines the intersection of the personal, the existential and the socio-political. Her writing is widely published both in Australia and internationally. Her debut full-length poetry collection is published in 2022 by Vagabond Press: Do you have anything less domestic? Emilie’s plays have won and been nominated for multiple awards including the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award (London), Queensland Premier’s Drama Award, George Fairfax, Patrick White and Malcolm Robertson. Emilie is a current PhD candidate at RMIT (Melbourne) where she is researching feminist creative practice.
Catherine Gander is a poet, scholar, and critic, originally from London and now living in Ireland. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Abridged, Anthropocene, Bad Lilies, Ink Sweat and Tears, Literary Mama, On the Seawall, One Hand Clapping, Palette, Poetry London, Prole (runner up: Prole Poetry Laureate 2021), Verve (commended: Verve Poetry Competition 2022), West Trestle Review, and many others. Nine of her poems feature in Sea Between Us, a Nine Series Anthology with Georgia Hilton and Anna Kisby (Nine Pens Press, 2022).
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, both with poems nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The conversation pamphlet he co-wrote with fellow Irish poet Eilín de Paor called In the Jitterfritz of Neon arrived on the 17th Jan 2022 and this will be followed by his first full collection documenting his love affair with Paris called Enough!
You can follow him and buy his Eat the Storms debut pamphlet and his Stickleback micro collection and Jitterfritz at is websitehttps://deuxiemepeaupoetry.com/
Backing music for Eat the Storms is from Purple Planet Royalty Free Music, with thanks…
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 first airs on Thursday 28th April 2022 from 5pm GMT. Produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly, below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Jen Herron – County Antrim
Jen Herron won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2022. Her work has been published in The Irish Times, The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Jukebox, Lumpen Magazine and BBC Radio Ulster. She lives in Larne, County Antrim.
Glen Wilson is a multi-award winning Poet from Portadown. He won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing in 2017, the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award in 2018, the Trim Poetry competition in 2019, the Padraic Fallon Poetry competition and Slipstream Open Poetry competition in 2021. His poetry collection An Experience on the Tongue is available with Doire Press.
Simon Lewis’ first collection, Jewtown, published by Doire Press, was a finalist in the Shine/Strong Award in 2017. He was the winner of the Hennessy Prize and runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2015. His second collection Ah, Men! was published in 2019. Both books are available in all good independent book shops or directly from Doire Press.
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.
Appearances: 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.
Grace Wells is an award-winning eco-poet and environmental writing currently celebrating the launch of her third collection of poems ‘The Church of the Love of the World’, (Dedalus Press, 2022). Nature, spirit-of-place and ecological concern have been large themes in writing since the publication of her debut children’s novel ‘Gyrfalcon’ which was a Bisto Prize winner, and an International White Ravens’ Choice. She lives in Ennistymon, County Clare.
Matthew Geden is a poet living in Kinsale, Co Cork. He has been widely published throughout Ireland and abroad and his collections include Swimming to Albania (Bradshaw Books, 2009), The Place Inside (Dedalus Press, 2012) and Fruit (SurVision Books, 2020). A new collection is forthcoming from Doire Press in the autumn of 2022. He was Writer in Residence for Nanjing Literature Centre, China in 2019 and is currently Writer in Residence for Cork County Library and Arts Service.
Kendra Reynolds is an international literature academic, Arts Council of Northern Ireland-funded poet, and former Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Tulsa Community College and the University of Tulsa, Kendra is currently working as Research Associate in Literature for The Verbal in Derry, Northern Ireland. Whilst she has won multiple awards for her academic writing and research, Kendra turned to creative writing, particularly poetry, after completing her PhD at Ulster University in 2018. Her poetry is therefore heavily based on the feminist and literary theories that make up her academic research and often revolves around the themes of identity, empowerment, boundaries, magical-realism, social change, ecofeminism, ecocriticism, and ‘otherness’. She is currently editing her debut full-length collection of poetry. Kendra has individual poems published in various journals and anthologies, including The Bangor Literary Journal (2019); The Paperclip (2019); The Honest Ulsterman (2018); North Star: An Anthology of Literature by Northern Irish Women (2020); and Leschenault Press’ new anthology Forgiveness is the Hardest Thing (2022).
Lorraine Carey’s from Greencastle, Donegal. Widely published in anthologies and journals, her poems feature in The Stony Thursday Book, Gyroscope Review, Orbis, Prole, Poetry Ireland Review, Bindweed, Ink Sweat &Tears, One, The High Window, Rust+Moth, Vita Brevis, One Hand Clapping, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Birmingham, Epoque Press and Atrium among others. Her art and photography have appeared in Barren, Olentangy Review, Skylight 47, North West Words and Three Drops From A Cauldron. Runner up in both Trocaire Poetry Ireland and The Blue Nib Chapbook Competitions 2017, she was shortlisted for The Allingham Prize (2019, 2020 and 2021) Longlisted in The National Poetry Competition 2019, she’s working on a second collection. Her debut, From Doll House Windows was published by Revival Press in 2017. She now lives in Fenit, Co. Kerry.
Amy Louise Wyatt is a poet, artist and lecturer from Bangor in Northern Ireland. She edits The Bangor Literary Journal. Amy was shortlisted for The Seamus Heaney Award in 2018 and 2020; won The inaugural Poetrygram Prize and The 2021 Waterways Poetry Competition. She recently completed her MA in Creative Writing and has been nominated for both a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award. ‘A Language I Understand’ is her debut poetry pamphlet published by Indigo Dreams. Amy is working on her first full poetry collection.
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin. She works in services for people with disabilities and is studying towards a PhD in that field. Her poems have appeared in The Stony Thursday Book, The Waxed Lemon, Abridged, An Capall Dorcha, The Raleigh Review and Dedalus Press’ Local Wonders Anthology, among others. Her debut pamphlet, ‘In the Jitterfritz of Neon’, a collaboration with Damien B. Donnelly, was recently published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Trish Bennett grew up on the border in Leitrim during the Troubles. She worked as an engineer for years before beginning to write and perform. She writes poetry and memoir about the landscape of her people and the antics of her family and other creatures. Bennett’s won The Leitrim Guardian Literary Award for Poetry twice. In 2021, she received a Poetry Ireland Poetry Town Bursary, was a Winner in the Dedalus Press Local Wonders Poetry Postcard Competition, Runner-Up in the New Roscommon Writing Award and was listed or placed in several others including, The National Poetry Competition, Mslexia, Allingham, Trim, Mono, and The Bangor Literary Journal.
She’s widely published in print and online. In 2019, she received an Arts Council of Northern Ireland SIAP Award. Hedgehog Poetry Press published her micro-pamphlet,Borderlines. She’s currently working on her debut poetry collection.
Bennett loves to connect through her words. She was an invited performer at numerous events in Ireland and the UK including, The London Irish Centre, Cúirt Spoken Word Platform, North West Words Culture night, The Poetry Programme on RTÉ, and BBC Radio Ulster.
Luke Morgan’s second collection, “Beast”, is published by Arlen House 2022. His debut, “Honest Walls”, was published in 2016. He has published work in Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, the Irish Independent among others. As well as poetry, he is also an award-winning filmmaker and theatre director. He lives in Galway.
Ciarán O’Rourke is an Irish poet. His first collection, The Buried Breath, was highly commended by the Forward Foundation for Poetry in 2019, and his second collection, Phantom Gang, is forthcoming from The Irish Pages Press. His extended essay on the work William Carlos Williams, American Epic: On Paterson, is available as a pamphlet from Beir Bua Press.
Island’s Edge was founded by Ciarán in 2018 as a place for poets in Ireland to share their thoughts about their work and craft https://www.islandsedgepoetry.net/
Leanne Quinn – County Louth
Leeanne Quinn’s debut collection of poetry, Before You, was published by Dedalus Press in 2012 and highly commended in the Forward Prize for Poetry 2013. Her second collection, Some Lives, was published in 2020 and noted as a Book of the Year by The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. Her poems have been widely anthologised, appearing in The Forward Book of Poetry 2013, Windharp: Poems of Ireland Since 1916, Hold Open the Door: A Commemorative Anthology from The Ireland Chair of Poetry, and Queering The Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry. Originally from Drogheda, Co. Louth, she now lives in Munich, Germany.
Dr Arthur Broomfield is a poet, short story writer and Beckett scholar from County Laois. His current collection is Ireland Calling. Revival Press. Arthur is poet laurate of Mountmellick.
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.’
He is the curator of April Is The Cruellest Month – a poetry broadsheet for National Poetry Day featuring work by Denise Chaila, Donal Ryan, Emily Cullen, Kerrie O’Brien and many more.
and for the Centre for the Study of Popular Music and Popular Culture, University of Limerick follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CSPMPCatUL
Patrick Dexter – Special Musical Guest
Patrick Dexter is a globally-renowned cellist from Ireland. Though Patrick spent much of youth in Dublin, he now lives in a tiny stone cottage in County Mayo with his wife and daughter, surrounded by immense amounts of nature. The remoteness provided both solace from the business of city life and excellent fodder for writing music. During the Coronavirus lockdown, Patrick developed a habit of practicing the cello outside. One day, he posted a video of himself online, and the Internet took the wheel (as it tends to do).
His performances started to rack up millions of views, and messages from people all over the world who had taken comfort in his rich, expansive playing flooded in. He was invited to do a talk on the healing power of music for TEDX Stormont, and his virtuosic arrangements of classical, traditional Irish folk and contemporary pop music saw him skyrocket to international notoriety, all while he wasn’t allowed more than 5 kilometres from his front door.
Patrick released his debut album, Solace, in April 2022. Exploring themes of home, the natural world, and the dichotomy of despair and joy found in both the landscape of the west of Ireland and the sonic depth of the cello (one of classical music’s most arresting instruments), Solace weaves through a complex and fascinating history of traditional Irish music, as well as Patrick’s own personal history. It’s a vast, accomplished, and incredibly life-affirming body of work that comes during one of the darkest moments in human history, from an artist who has much more to offer.
Edward Denniston, a retired teacher of English and Drama, was born and grew up in Longford, where many of his family continue to live and keepshop.
He lives in Waterford, the city in which his Longford ancestor came to live and preach as a dissenting Presbyterian minister in the early 18th Century.
Edward has published three poetry collections and a collection of drama scripts. Recently he has been collaborating with an Irish composer on a text with the working title, ‘Song For A Civil War’.
Mairead Carroll is an emerging Singer /Songwriter, Poet and Fiddle player from Newbridge, Co. Kildare. She is currently working on her first EP and Poetry Collection.
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), Kildare Nationalist, Kilkenny People, Poetry Ireland (A Bowl of Mysteries). His work was nominated for a Hennessy Literary Award on four occasions 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 is published by Turas Press.
Victoria Kennefick‘s first poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. It was a book of the year in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Irish Times, The Sunday Independent and The White Review. She is the poet in residence at the Yeats Society in Sligo.
Anne Walsh Donnelly lives in Co Mayo. She is the Poet Laureate for Belmullet in Co. Mayo. She writes poetry, prose and plays and describes her writing process as: “Bungee jumping, naked, off the Cliffs of Moher.” Her debut poetry collection, Odd as F*ck, was published by Fly On The Wall Poetry Press in 2021. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook, The Woman With An Owl Tattoo, also published by Fly On The Wall Poetry Press. It was awarded second prize in the International Poetry Book Awards in 2020.
Orla Fay is the editor of Drawn to the Light Press. She is the Poetry Town Laureate for Dunshaughlin, County Meath. Recently her work has appeared in Southword, Crow of Minerva and Abridged. She is working on her second chapbook, What Became of the Horses, and received a professional artist development bursary from Meath County Council Arts Office and Creative Ireland earlier in the year.
Poet and fiction-writer Mary O’Donnell’s work is often cited as key in expanding the horizons of Ireland’s formerly male-dominated literary world. Fiction includes the novels The Light-Makers (1992 & 2018), The Elysium Testament (1999), and Where They Lie (2014). She has just completed a fifth novel. Short fiction includes Storm Over Belfast.
She has published collections of poetry since 1990, including Unlegendary Heroes (Salmon, 1998), and Those April Fevers (Arc UK, 2015). Massacre of the Birds was published in October 2020. She was part of Poetry Ireland’s Poet Town Laureate scheme last autumn and was selected as Naas Town Poet Laureate.
A collection of essays on O’Donnell’s work appeared during 2018: Giving Shape to the Moment: the Art of Mary O’Donnell, Poet, Novelist, Short-story Writer (Peter Lang), edited by Prof Elena Jaime de Pablos.
She has held many residencies, including at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, and next autumn will take up a residency in KU Leuven. She has recently completed a new novel and is represented by the Marianne Gunne O’Connor Literary Agency. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing and taught for many years on Carlow College Pittsburgh’s MFA programme, and at Irish universities. During 2019, she contributed to the Irish Literature programme at the University of São Paulo and is interested in the expansion of Irish Studies in South America.
She is a member of Ireland’s affiliation of artists, Aosdána.
Cormac Lally is one of Ireland’s top spoken word artists. Originally from Tullamore, he moved to Skibbereen in 2015 with his family and put roots down. His work has been featured on RTE and is a familiar face at the country’s top festivals, (remember them!) He has performed with Mick Flannery, Blindboy, Linton Kwesi Jonson, Luca Bloom, Ronan O Snodaigh, Liam O Maoilai, and Stephen James Smith. In 2016 himself and his poetry wife Julie Goo wrote a show called Me, Myself and Ireland, a look back at Ireland her history and culture and have toured the country with it. He was the founder of the Scene Of The Rhyme spoken word night, which still runs, and the Under The Hammers spoken word, music and comedy showcase in the iconic Connolly’s of Leap. In 2021 he was chosen by Poetry Ireland as one of their national poet laureates. He runs his own full time professional speech writing and public speaking business Be Spoke.
His work is a mix of utter lies, hard truths, politics and family life, dropped on the listener with a cutting humour with deep emotional levels, delivered in a flowing rhythm.
“One of a kind”
“The most engaging, hilarious and hard hitting poet in Ireland today.”
Jessamine O’Connor’s latest book “Silver Spoon” is out now with Salmon Poetry. She has lived on the Roscommon Sligo border for exactly half her life, recently held a Countdown festival, tutors English and creative writing, and is an editor with Drunk Muse Press, and Scrimshaw Journal of new writing and visual art, with a launch in IT Sligo on Friday 29th April, 6.30pm. She is part of the new multicultural Women’s Club in Ballaghaderreen, whose last meeting was Friday 22rd April. She is put on her first ever Countdown festival, an all-day contest called Co:Mon!!2022 on Saturday 23rd April and will launch the book “The Return” by local legend Helen B Grehan, in King House, Boyle, on Sunday the 29th May at 2pm.
She was the editor of Drunk Muse Press which has its launch on May 29th in Boyne www.drunkmusepress.com
Gerard Beirne – County Sligo
Gerard Beirne lectures on the BA Writing and Literature Program, IT Sligo. He has published three novels, a collection of short stories, and two collections of poetry. A third collection, The Death Poems: Songs, Visions, Mediations is forthcoming from Salt Publishing in October of this year. A Hennessy Award winner, he has been shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award (best first collection of short stories in Canada), the Bord Gais Irish Book Awards, and Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. He is the founder of The Irish Literary Times website promoting Irish writing.
Eleanor Hooker’s third poetry collection Of Ochre and Ash (Dedalus Press) and her chapbook Legion (Bonnefant Press, Holland) were published in 2021. A recipient of the Markievicz Award in 2021, her poetry book Where Memory Lies (Ponc Press)is due for publication later this year. Her sequence of plague poems is forthcoming from Salvage Press. Eleanor is working on a novel. Eleanor holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin, an MA (Hons) in Cultural History from the University of Northumbria, and a BA (Hons 1st) from the Open University, UK. She will begin studies for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick in September 2022. Eleanor is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London (FLS). She’s a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She began her career as an Intensive Care Nurse and trained as a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin.
Colin Dardis is a neurodivergent writer, editor and sound artist from Northern Ireland. His most recent book is All This Light In Which To See The Dead: Pandemic Journals 2020-21 (Rancid Idols Productions, 2022).
His work, largely influenced by his experiences with depression and Asperger’s, has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and USA, and shortlisted for the Erbacce Prize, Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, and Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Award, amongst others.
Previous collections include Endless Flower (Rancid Idols Productions, 2021) The Dogs of Humanity (Fly on the Wall Press, 2019, shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet, Saboteur Awards 2020), and the x of y (Eyewear, 2018). The latest sound release from his DARDIS sound project is THING (4-way split album, attenuation circuit, 2022)
Jackie Gorman is from Athlone. Her poetry has been published in a number of journals including Poetry Ireland Review and The Honest Ulsterman. She received the Listowel Writers’ Week Single Poem Award in 2017 and in the same year was commended in the BGEIBA Poem of the Year. She completed an MA in Poetry Studies at the Irish Centre for
Poetry Studies at Dublin City University in 2019. Her debut collection “The Wounded Stork” was published in 2019 and was described by Martin Dyar as an “engrossing and ecologically attuned debut.” She recently featured in the Ireland Chair of Poetry Anthology “Hold Open The Door”, published by UCD Press. She was awarded an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2021 to develop a short collection of new poems exploring the ecology of Westmeath.
RJ Breathnach is a Wexford-born journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland. His work has been published in The Madrigal, Tír na nÓg Magazine, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. His debut poetry chapbook, I Grew Tired of Being a Zombie, is available from Alien Buddha Press.
Jane Clarke is the author of two collections, The River and When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books 2015 & 2019), as well as an illustrated chapbook, All the Way Home, (Smith|Doorstop 2019). Jane’s awards include the 2016 Hennessy Literary Award for Poetry and the 2016 Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year. Her third collection will be published by Bloodaxe Books in June 2023. Jane lives with her wife in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow.
Eat the Storms has been nominated for Best Collaborative work at the Saboteur Awards 2022 and you can vote for us via the link below. Voting is open until 4th may 2022
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 interests revolve around falling over and learning how to get back up while baking delicious cakes. His work has been published in numerous journals online and in print including Black Bough Poetry, Barren Magazine, Anti Hereon Chic, Icefloe Press , Bealtaine, Adrift, Fevers of the Mind, The Bangor Literary Journal. His debut poetry pamphlet Eat the Storms 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. Both were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. The conversation pamphlet he co-wrote with fellow Irish poet Eilín de Paor called In the Jitterfritz of Neon arrived on the 17th Jan 2022 and will be followed by his first full collection documenting his love affair with Paris called Enough! coming July 2022.
In the back garden here in Lusk, at the edge of Dublin, along Ireland’s east coast, there are many birds, sea gulls due to our proximity to the coast, blackbirds who return annually to build their nests in the chimney despite its metal bars, thrushes more recently and sometimes the sighting of a yellowhammer or bluetit and I get all excited suddenly about these flighty colour bursts on nearby branches. A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers, the debut poetry pamphlet from Pratibha Castle, is very much like that – a burst of bright colour amid the many feathered cloaks of former dourness. From my perspective on the patio to the short distance to the bluetit on the branch, intrigue is sparked while knowing I will never get close enough to examine what dwells between and beneath the feathers.
Thankfully, in A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers, nothing is left at such a distance, instead all is uncovered from nature, nurture to abandonment via examinations within the aviary of real life and its beatings and beauties. It is between the flights of surrounding tits, herons, sparrows, blackbirds, woodpeckers, finches and shoots of forsythia and primrose and the scent of while garlic and dryads that Pratibha explores the world and her journey – from birth in Ireland to upbringing in England, the flight away from father with her mother, from childhood in the cells of boarding school and its confessions ‘Tell me, my child, tongue-click over cracked lips, flicker in the priest’s groin: exactly what did yous do with him?’ to chanting ‘mantras with Ram Dass’ in Kensington in search of self – worth and want.
From the opening ‘heart hankering’ to its final wake – ‘the funeral mourn, damp’ as life is returned to soil, there exists, within these delicate pages, a sensual symphony of microscopic details, feathers amongst the leaves, ‘spider hatchlings swarming over terracotta pots’ to ‘down-at-heel nail files’, all fluttering around the central theme of life, loss and the birds that come and go in between the mother running and the father trying to hold – ‘Vron, I’ve missed you, an ocean streaming down his cheeks,’ the yearning of the child – ‘How could you let her snatch me from you?’ and on to the convent schools before our young Eve falls finally and releases that flaunt of piety before ‘a harpist whose healer’s hands strummed my strings’ in that Kensington flat.
Colour catches scent within these carefully pared down poems, as faithful flounders beneath flirtatious while seeds are planted in back gardens with fathers that will grow invisible. There is a lyricism here, akin to an Irish lullaby that never shuns the truth, despite the longing from the listener for a fairy-tale ending. She may have left Ireland at 3, but Ireland never left her and is evident all the way through this exceptional quest to find oneself worthy of love. A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers, is an audacious flight in the face of all that could have buried, a release, into the air, of the weight no longer wanted. I encourage you to come listen to the song of this bird who has opened the cage wide – behold, the wondrous span of wing.
A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers was the winner of the Nicely Folded Paper Trois competition from The Hedgehog Poetry Press and is available to buy from the link below. I’ve heard Pratibha, whose work has appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, Dreich, Fly on the Wall and The Blue Nib among others, read from this collection at Over the Edge and Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word and each time her reading uncovers another detail I hadn’t caught the first time. Get your copy now and watch it flutter before catching her reading when you can.
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 5th March 2022. The guests were Pey Oh, R.J Breathnach, Joe Haward, Champion Things, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Pey Oh
Pey Oh (she/her) is a Bath-based poet from Malaysia. Her first pamphlet, Pictograph, was published by Flarestack Poetry in 2018. Copies are available direct from the poet or from Toppings & Co Booksellers in Bath. Her recent work can be found in harana poetry, Butcher’s Dog, Long Poem Magazine, Abridged, Iamb, Babel Tower Noticeboard, and The Scores – A Journal of Poetry and Prose. A Legitimate Snack, Bagua was out with Broken Sleep Books in 2021. She is a Sky Arts Royal Society of Literature Poetry Award winner 2021.
R.J. Breathnach is a Wexford-born journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland. He was chosen by the Irish Writers Centre to be a Young Writer Delegate for the 2021 West Cork Literary Festival, and his work has previously been published in Púca Magazine, Beir Bua Journal, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. His debut poetry chapbook, I Grew Tired of Being a Zombie, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021.”
Rev Joe Haward is an author, poet, and heretic. As an opinion piece journalist he regularly challenges religious and political corruption. His poetry collection, Heresy, will be released in March 2022 published by Uncle B. Publications.. Writing horror, noir, and dark fantasy, Joe’s work has been published in a variety of places.
Champion Things is a group based around Gordon Hewitt (guitar, lyrics and vocals) and Wallace Gibson (Electronic and Acoustic Saxophone) creating groove based music, overlain with songs, spoken word, and chants. Hewitt and Gibson are accompanied by a floating line-up of musicians. The group’s home is Belfast, Northern Ireland
For more information about International Page and Stage (run by Gordon Hewitt) and to keep up to date on their global events connecting poets and spoken word artists, follow them on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Internationalpageandstage
Upcoming Events
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is available to buy here…
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 19th February 2022. The guests were Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Sonya Gildea, Pat Boran, Champion Things, Susan J Farese, Kari Flickinger, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Jeffrey Yamaguchi
Jeffrey Yamaguchi is the author of 52 Projects, Working for the Man, and Anya Chases Down the End. His stories, poems, and photographs have been published in Okay Donkey, Kissing Dynamite, Back Patio Press, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Vamp Cat Magazine, Nightingale & Sparrow, and Black Bough Poetry, among other literary journals. His short films include Unsettled, which premiered at Atticus Review, and Body of Water. Jeffrey has held leadership roles at major publishing houses, including Penguin Random House, Harpercollins, and Abrams Books, and has taught publishing courses at NYU and Mediabistro. He is currently working to build a new books venture at Blackstone Publishing.
Sonya Gildea is winner of the John McGahern Literature Award (2021) · A selected poet for Poetry Ireland’s 2021-22 Introductions programme · Recipient of an Artist Literature Bursary Award (2021) from the Irish Arts Council · Winner of an Ireland Chair of Poetry (post-grad) Student Award (2020-21) · Winner of the Cúirt International New Writer’s Award (2015). She has published in Crannóg; the Irish Times; the Stinging Fly; Tolka journal; the Cormorant Broadsheet; the Night Heron Barks; The Maynard Journal of Poetry; the commemorative anthology Hold Open the Door (UCD & Chicago Press, 2020) and the Poetry Ireland anthology, This Is What You Mean To Me (2021) (edited by Seán Hewitt & Paul Lenehan); and with work forthcoming in The Common (2022); and in Arlen House Publishing’s anthology of contemporary Irish poetry (2022) · Sonya is recipient of DLR Arts Office & Creative Ireland Artist Literature Bursary Award (2021); recipient of an artist residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (2021); and recipient of an Irish Arts Council Agility Award (2021) · Sonya holds an MA in creative writing, UCD (2020) · She is writing a 1st poetry collection, 500 Seconds; and completing the chap book (in collaboration with visual artist, Sorca O’Farrell), The Nine River Beats of Owenea, which is set in Glenties Co. Donegal; She is also completing The Switching Yard, a first book of prose short stories · Sonya lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.
Pat Boran is an Irish poet, editor, broadcaster and filmmaker. He has published more than a dozen books of poetry and prose — among them Then Again (2019), A Man is Only As Good: A Pocket Selected Poems (2017), and Waveforms: Bull Island Haiku (2015), as well as the humorous memoir The Invisible Prison (2009) and the popular writers’ handbook The Portable Creative Writing Workshop. His books have been translated into half a dozen languages. He is the recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Award and the US-based Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award. He is a former presenter of The Poetry Programme and The Enchanted Way on RTÉ Radio and has edited more than 100 books and anthologies. He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s affiliation of creative artists, and since 2020 he’s made more than a dozen short poetry films which have featured in festivals in Ireland and abroad.
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). SJF Communications provides Public Relations, Marketing, Social Media, Websites, Virtual Assisting, Writing, Filmmaking, Acting, Public Speaking, Mentoring and Photography. Clients include theatres, musicians, filmmakers, authors, artists, professional organizations and businesses. 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 the 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 Club, the Southern California Writers Association, the Army Nurse Corps Association. 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 is a group based around Gordon Hewitt (guitar, lyrics and vocals) and Wallace Gibson (Electronic and Acoustic Saxophone) creating groove based music, overlain with songs, spoken word, and chants. Hewitt and Gibson are accompanied by a floating line-up of musicians. The group’s home is Belfast, Northern Ireland
For more information about International Page and Stage (run by Gordon Hewitt) and to keep up to date on their global events connecting poets and spoken word artists, follow them on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Internationalpageandstage
Kari Flickinger
Kari Flickinger is the author of The Gull and the Bell Tower (Femme Salvé Books) and Ceiling Fan (Rare Swan Press). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the SFPA Rhysling Award. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley.
My poem Under the Microscope was inspired by this painting by Vincent Van Gogh, Zeegezicht bij Scheveningen, 1882 (Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather). When viewed under a microscope, you can see sand beneath the paint, trapped when Vincent painted it during the storm). This is my photographs a century later on the same beach…
Upcoming Events
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is available to buy here…
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 19th February 2022. The guests were Georgia Hilton, Róisín Ní Neachtain, James Schwartz, Faith Joanne and William Keohane, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Georgia Hilton
Georgia Hilton is an Irish poet and fiction writer living in Winchester, England. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, such as The Rialto, Prole Magazine,192 Magazine, and Perhappened. Georgia has a pamphlet, I went up the lane quite cheerful (2018) and a collection, Swing (2020), both published by Dempsey and Windle. Her poem, Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize (2018) and her short poem The Lost Art of Staring into Fires was a runner-up in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize (2021). Georgia lives with her husband and three children.
Róisín Ní Neachtain is a disabled artist and writer based in County Kildare, Ireland. She is the editor of the online literary and art journal “Crow of Minerva” and her poetry has been published both online and in print most notably in Poethead and on iamb. She won second place at the Red Line Book Festival Poetry Competition in 2021.
James Schwartz is a poet, writer, slam performer, speaker & author. His book The Literary Party: Growing up gay and Amish in America was published by inGroup Press in 2011 and nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and his poetry has been published in various journals including Silver Birch Series, The New Verse Press, Across the Social Distances, Icefloe Press and Fevers of the Mind and in various anthologies including Among the Leaves: Queer Male Poets on the Midwestern Experience, Milk and Honey Siren, Grand Showcase, Not my President: the Anthology of Dissent.
In 2011 Schwartz joined the Three Rivers Community Players for a production of The Rocky Horror Show, playing a Phantom. He appears in the documentary films The Seahorse + From Pahoa with Lava 4.
A slam performer, Schwartz has read at various venues including The Zoo Bar, This is Fire! Kukuau Studio and La Hiki Ola kava bar. His essays have appeared in RFD Magazine, The Good Men Project and Our Happy Hours: LGBT Voices from the Gay Bars anthology among others. He co-hosts the podcast Plain Rainbows: LGBTQ Amish and Anabaptist Stories with Mary Byler. James Schwartz resides in Detroit.
Faith Joanne is a welsh writer, poet, shop manager and counsellor currently based in Hampshire who has been writing for 17 years and started performing 6 years ago at an LBGTQ event called Inside. Since then she has been published in various journals and performed at Polari and regularly at Flight of the Dragonflies Spoken Word. She is currently working on her first poetry collection coming later this year.
William Keohane is a writer from Limerick. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, received a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland, and was one of ten poets selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series. William holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick.
William can be found on Instagram at william.keohane
Upcoming Events
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is available to buy here…
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 14th February 2022. The guests were Sue Finch, Lennart Lundh, Kyla Houbolt, Patricia M ObEilín de Paor, Lynn Valentine, Gaynor Kane and Aisling Keogh, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Sue Finch
Sue Finch lives with her wife in North Wales. Her first published poem appeared in A New Manchester Alphabet in 2015 whilst studying for her MA with Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines including: The Interpreter’s House, Ink, Sweat and Tears, iamb, Dear Reader, One Hand Clapping and IceFloe Press. Her debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in October 2020 with Black Eyes Publishing UK.
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.
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.
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin and works in health and social care. Her poems have appeared in Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Stony Thursday Book, The Waxed Lemon, The Bangor Literary Journal, Abridged, An Capall Dorcha and Dedalus Press’ Local Wonders Anthology, among other publications. Her debut pamphlet, ‘In the Jitterfritz of Neon’, a collaboration with poet Damien B. Donnelly, was recently published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Link at end of page for In the Jitterfritz of Neon
Patricia M Osborne
Patricia M Osborne is married with grown-up children and grandchildren and lives in West Sussex. In 2019 she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing. She is a published novelist, poet and short story writer. Her short stories and poems have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies and the final instalment of her House of Grace family saga trilogy was published March 2021. Taxus Baccata and The Montefiore Bride (Poetry pamphlets) were published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press 2020.
She has a successful blog at Whitewingsbooks.com where she features other writers and poets. When Patricia isn’t working on her own writing, she enjoys sharing her knowledge, acting as a mentor to fellow writers.
Aisling Keogh is a writer and psychotherapist, who lives in County Galway. Her short stories have been published with The Irish Independent, The Honest Ulsterman, Crannog Magazine, Wordlegs, Ropes, Bangor Literary Journal, A New Ulster, and anthologies in the U.K. and the U.S.A. Her first published short story, “How to Save a Life,” was shortlisted for the Hennessy Irish Literary Awards 2012, and in 2019 she was shortlisted for the Doolin Writer’s Weekend Short Story Competition. In 2020, she was selected, as one of three emerging writers, to read at the New Writers Showcase, as part of Cuirt International Festival of Literature, and has recently finished writing her first novel.
Lynn Valentine’s poetry and flash fiction have been published in a variety of online and print journals including 192 Magazine; Anti-Heroin Chic, Atrium, The Beach Hut; Black Bough Poetry; The Blue Nib; The Broken Spine; Dreich; Firth; Green Ink Poetry; Ink, Sweat and Tears; The Island Review; Lallans; Mineral Lit mag; Northwords Now; Poetry Scotland. She was one of five North of Scotland poets chosen by the Scottish Poetry Library’s guest curator Aoife Lyall in 2020 to write a poem on the theme of vision and was Black Bough Poetry’s featured poet in the Silver Branch series in February 2020. She was the winner of The Hedgehog Press Poetry Dialect Competition 2020 (winner) for her pamphlet A Glimmer O Stars and the Cinnamon Press Literature Award Winner in 2020 who will published her collection Life’s Stink and Honey available for purchase at her website or from Cinnamon Press, Waterstones and other sellers.
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.
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is available to buy here…
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 12th February 2022. The guests were David Hanlon, Chaucer Cameron, Jo Westen, Galia and Joseph Fasano, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
David Hanlon
David Hanlon is a welsh poet living in Cardiff. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Icefloe Press & Mineral Lit Mag. His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press & his next collection Dawn’s Incision is coming in 2022 with Icefloe Press.
Chaucer Cameron is a poet and the author of In an Ideal world I’d Not Be Murdered (Against The Grain 2021) She has been published in journals, magazines, including: Under the Radar, Poetry Salzburg, The North and Tears in the Fence, and was shortlisted for, Live Canon 2021International Poetry Competition for Single Poem. Chaucer is creator of Wild Whispers an international poetry film project, and regularly curates and presents poetry film at events and festivals. She is co-editor of the online magazine Poetry Film Live.
Jo Weston is a poet and writer whose work has been shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, longlisted in the Mslexia Poetry Competition and she was selected in the erbacce prize to be one of their Featured Poets. Her poetry, short fiction and memoir have been published by Left Lion, Fortunate Traveller, erbacce press and IOU Theatre, as well as in seven anthologies, an art exhibition and a festival guide. She has read her work on TV and radio, and as part of several arts festivals. Jo has been a reader for The Nasiona, led writing workshops for cancer charities, and been Writer-in-Residence for both the Maggie’s Centre in Nottingham and the literary organisation Writers Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Her debut pamphlet – How not to multitask – was published by Wild Pressed Books in 2021.
Galia is a writer, musician, crafter, and Head of English, media and film at a school in London. Her poems have recently been published in Bad Lilies, Atrium and Dear Reader. In her capacity as a teacher, she has lectured the Shakespeare Institute, the British Film Institute, the British Library and other venues. She is on the committee for the London Association for the Teaching of English (@LondonLATE). She is currently working on her first full poetry collection.
Joseph Fasano is a poet, novelist, and songwriter. His novels include The Swallows of Lunetto (forthcoming from Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the “20 Best Small Press Books of 2020.” His books of poetry include The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His honors include the Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize, seven Pushcart Prize nominations, and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year.” His work has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Yale Review, The Southern Review, Boston Review, Missouri Review, Tin House, Verse Daily, the Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day program, and other publications and anthologies. He serves on the Editorial Board of Alice James Books, and he is the Founder of the Poem for You Series.
Poets Directory Live! Virtual Poetry Society Stanza
Book now for Sunday February 13th at 19:00 for the Poets’ Directory Live! Virtual Stanzaevent via Zoom. The event is part of the Poetry Society’s network of Stanza groups and brings poetry into your home every month. With readings from the excellent Chaucer Cameron, Julie Mellor, Damien Donnelly, Rory Waterman and Pascale Petit.
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is available to buy here…
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 5th February 2022. The guests were Amanda Bell, Niki Strange, Robin Wright, Mary Leonard, Lawrence Moore and Melody Wang, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Amanda Bell
Amanda Bell is a Dublin-based poet and author. She holds a Masters in Poetry Studies, and is a mentor with the Irish Writers Centre and Words Ireland. In 2020 she was appointed inaugural Writer in Residence for Harold’s Cross, and awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland. She is an assistant editor of The Haibun Journal. Her most recent title is Riptide (Doire Press, September 2021). Previous publications include First the Feathers (Doire Press, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Strong Shine Award; Undercurrents (Alba, 2016),which won an HSA Kanterman Merit Book Award and was shortlisted for a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award; The Lost Library Book (Onslaught, 2017); and the loneliness of the sasquatch, from the Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock (Alba, 2018); Revolution, a chapbook of haiku, is forthcoming from wildflower poetry press.
Niki Strange rediscovered poetry when undergoing treatment for breast cancer in 2019 and is passionate about poetry’s power to support health and wellbeing. She won Arts Council funding in 2020 to create work as poet in residence at Macmillan’s Horizon Centre in Brighton, also devising and delivering 16 poetry workshops for people affected by cancer. It was a significant, and incredibly rewarding, departure from her previous job as a digital innovation consultant! She’s since read at Dragonflies, Second Light and Cheltenham, won a couple of second prizes (Sussex 2019 and Second Light 2021) and been published by Artemis, Lighthouse and Flights. She is currently working on her first collection.
Robin Wright fell in love with poetry twenty years ago when she was a non-traditional (aka old) student at a local university. She hasn’t stopped reading or writing poetry since. She has had poems published in various journals and anthologies, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. When she’s not reading or writing poetry, she’s spending time with her three grandchildren, who have inspired many of her poems.
Mary Leonard taught at Kingston High School (NY) for thirty years and has been a member of the Institute of Writing and Thinking at Bard College for the past twenty years. She has a book being published in April—I Always Knew This—and has previously published four chapbooks.
Her work has appeared in The Naugatuck Review, Hubbub, Cloudbank, Earth’s Daughter and the Rat’s Ass Review. And she was the First Finalist award in the NY State Di Biase Poetry Contest.
Lawrence Moore has lived in the coastal city of Portsmouth, England his whole life and shares a house overlooking Kingston Cemetery with his husband Matthew and their nine mostly well behaved cats. He has felt an affinity for poetry from a young age and wrote periodically down the years before committing to it in his early forties. His poems have appeared in publications including Sarasvati, Pink Plastic House, Fahmidan Journal, Green Ink Poetry, Dreich and The Madrigal. His debut chapbook Aerial Sweetshop was released in January by Alien Buddha Press.
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 and a co-host of the podcast Create to Heal. 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, and one has been nominated for the pushcart prize. 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, was released in December 2021 with Alien Buddha Press.
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is available to buy here…
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 29th January 2022. The guests were Jesse Miksic, Doreen Duffy, Elisabeth Horan, Lynne Jensen Lampe and Mark Antony Owen, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Jesse Miksic
Jesse Miksic is a poet, artist, and graphic designer currently residing in the greater Philadelphia area. Between adventures with his lovable and chaotic family, he writes poems about pop culture, imaginary landscapes, and personal history in a mythic register. He also has a sketchbook where he experiments with surrealistic and symbolic imagery in pen and ink and watercolor. Jesse’s most recent placements include Green Ink Poetry, Punk Noir, Drunk Monkeys, and Cape Magazine, and he was Pink Plastic House’s poet of the week in early January 2022. He is working on his first chap-book, entitled Playing for Keeps, Praying for Sleeps.
Doreen Duffy studied creative writing and poetry at Oxford online, UCD & NUIM. Widely published, she won The Jonathan Swift Award and was presented with The Deirdre Purcell Cup at Maria Edgeworth Literary Festival. Shortlisted in Francis MacManus Competition, her story ‘Tattoo’ was broadcast on RTE Radio One. She has recently successfully completed a Masters in Creative Writing at DCU.
Elisabeth Horan is an imperfect creature from Vermont – advocating for those suffering alone and in pain – especially those ostracized by disability and mental illness. She likes goodness in people. She has two sons. They are her life. She is fighting and healing. She speaks with animals. She has books at Fly on the Wall, Twist in Time, Moonchild Mag, Cephalo Press, Femme Salve, and Broken Spine Arts.
Find out more about Elisabeth at her websiteehoranpoet.net
Lynne Jensen Lampe
Lynne Jensen Lampe was born in Newfoundland, grew up in the American South, spent a decade in Seattle, and settled in the midwestern city where she met her musician husband and her other favorite person, his daughter. Lynne’s chapbook Talk Smack to a Hurricane will be published in 2022 by Ice Floe Press. Recent poems appear in Yemassee, Hyades, Anti-Heroin Chic, The American Journal of Poetry, LIT Magazine, One, and an anthology from UK publisher Black Sunflowers Poetry Press. Many of her poems explore sanity, conformity, and family. Lynne also edits books and journal articles. She’s glad to be writing after years away while working various jobs (teacher, activist, receptionist, newsroom graphic designer), navigating marriage and motherhood, and just being scared of what might come out on the page.
Poet and publisher Mark Antony Owen is the author of online poetry project Subruria, as well as creator and curator of poetry journals iamb and After…
Work from Subruriahas been reproduced in several journals and podcasts, nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and featured in the anthology Places of Poetry: Mapping the Nation in Verse.
In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet
In theJitterfritzof Neon, a conversational poetry pamphlet by Eilín de Paor and Damien B Donnelly published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press is available to buy here…
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 special episode aired first on Saturday 22nd January 2022 and it was a celebration of Conversational Poetry Pamphlets. The guests were Dawn Gorman & Rosie Jackson, Amina Alyal & Oz Hardwick, Kerry Darbishire & Kelly Davis, Patricia M Osborne & Maureen Cullen, Eilín de Paor & host and producer of Eat the Storms, Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…
Dawn Gorman & Rosie Jackson
Dawn Gorman is an award-winning poet, creative writing tutor and mentor, who works with poetry in therapeutic settings, including ‘positive thinking’ creative writing workshops for Frome Community Education. She is Poetry Editor of Caduceus magazine, presents The Poetry Place monthly poetry radio show on West Wilts Radio, and runs the poetry reading series Words & Ears in Bradford on Avon. She collaborates widely – her work has been turned into a symphony, films, porcelain artworks and dance. Her four poetry books include two Pushcart Prize-nominated pamphlets – This Meeting of Tracks, published in the four-poet collection Mend & Hone (Toadlily Press, 2013), and Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020), a conversation in poetry with Rosie Jackson.
Rosie Jackson has a background in teaching and therapy and has run writing workshops in universities, communities and health care settings, including Skyros, Cortijo Romero, Ammerdown, summer schools, online and Dorchester Hospital. Her poetry has won numerous prizes including 1st prize Teignmouth 2021, 3rd prize Hippocrates 2020, 1st prize Poetry Space 2019, 1st prize Wells 2018, 1st prize Stanley Spencer 2017. Publications include The Light Box (2016), The Glass Mother: A Memoir (2016), Light Makes it Easy (2021). As well as collaborating with Dawn, she co-wrote with the late Graham Burchell Two Girls and a Beehive: Poems about Stanley Spencer and Hilda Carline (2020), has worked with sculptor Andrew Whittle, artists, photographers and film-makers, and is currently working with Frome composer Helen Ottoway on a Requiem which will address our personal and global losses.
Amina Alyal has published poetry collections The Ordinariness of Parrots (Stairwell Books, 2015) and Season of Myths (Wordspace/Indigo Dreams, 2016), and has appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including The House in the Forest (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020). She teaches Creative Writing and English at Leeds Trinity University and has also published scholarly research, specialising in Renaissance and Victorian literature. She was editor of Dream Catcher magazine in 2020. OZ HARDWICK has published nine full poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Wolf Planet (Hedgehog, 2020), as well as countless individual poems in journals and anthologies. He has performed and held residencies in the UK, US, Europe and Australia. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University and has also published widely on medieval art and literature, and on medievalism. AMINA and OZ are members of the group The Forgotten Works with musician Karl Baxter, performing music and poetry shows at a number of festivals, including online, since 2018.
Oz Hardwick has published nine full poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Wolf Planet (Hedgehog, 2020), as well as countless individual poems in journals and anthologies. He has performed and held residencies in the UK, US, Europe and Australia. He teaches Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University and has also published widely on medieval art and literature, and on medievalism.
Amina and Oz are members of the group The Forgotten Works with musician Karl Baxter, performing music and poetry shows at a number of festivals, including online, since 2018.
Kerry Darbishire lives in Cumbria where most of her poetry is rooted. After her mentorship with Judy Brown in 2013, her first collection: A Lift of Wings was published in2014 followed by Distance Sweet on my Tongue in 2018 with Indigo Dreams Her biography Kay’s Ark was published by Handstand Press in 2016. Her pamphlets A Window of Passing Light with Dempsey & Windle October 2021, and Glory Days – a collaboration with poet Kelly Davis, was also published in October 2021 by Grey Hen Press. Her poems have appeared widely in anthologies and magazines including Mslexia, Artemis, Envoi, Birmingham Journal. She has won and been highly commended in several competitions. Her poems were performed by The Cumbria Opera Group’s Lakeland Cycle in September 2021. She regularly reads via zoom at poetry festivals and open mics. Kerry’s third collection (joint winner of the Full Fat Collection) will be published by Hedgehog Press in Spring 2022.
Kelly Davis was born in London, studied English Literature at Oxford, and worked for Penguin, Longman and BBC Books in the 1980s. She moved to West Cumbria in 1989, where she works from home as a freelance editor. She has had poems published in many anthologies and in magazines, including Mslexia, Magma, The Journal, Southlight and Shooter. She won a Magma subscribers’ competition in 2018 and came second in the 2021 Borderlines Poetry Competition. She has twice been shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and she appears in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019–2021 anthology (Black Spring Press). In 2021 she was longlisted for the Erbacce Prize for Poetry and selected for a series of funded workshops with Kim Moore for Emerging Northwest Poets. She thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with Kerry Darbishire on their recent poetry pamphlet Glory Days (Hen Run, 2021).
Patricia M Osborne is married with grown-up children and grandchildren and lives in West Sussex. In 2019 she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing. She is a published novelist, poet and short story writer. Her short stories and poems have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies and the final instalment of her House of Grace family saga trilogy was published March 2021. Taxus Baccata and The Montefiore Bride (Poetry pamphlets) were published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press 2020.
She has a successful blog at Whitewingsbooks.com where she features other writers and poets. When Patricia isn’t working on her own writing, she enjoys sharing her knowledge, acting as a mentor to fellow writers.
Maureen Cullen was born in West Dunbartonshire and now lives in Argyll and Bute. She is a retired social worker who specialised in fostering and adoption. In 2015, she gained an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University where she studied poetry and short fiction. She has been shortlisted in various competitions, including The Fish Short Story Prize and The Bristol Short Story Prize. In 2016, she was published by Nine Arches Press, along with three other poets, in Primers 1. She has poetry published in a range of magazines, including Shooter and The Interpreter’s House. Her current project is a collection of linked short stories based in a fictional town in the West of Scotland.
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin with her husband, two boys and their dog. She works in a service for people with intellectual disabilities and has recently begun studying towards a PhD. Her poems have appeared in Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Stony Thursday Book, The Waxed Lemon, The Bangor Literary Journal, Abridged, An Capall Dorcha and Dedalus Press’ Local Wonders Anthology, among other publications.
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!
You can follow him and buy his Eat the Storms debut pamphlet and his Stickleback micro collection at is websitehttps://deuxiemepeaupoetry.com/
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…
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.
