Barney Sheehan
You can listen to the early part of Barney’s reading here.
Barney Sheehan was born in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary in 1934. He is responsible for the Poetry Revival in the now nationally and Internationally recognised White House Pub in O’Connell Street in Limerick City. In his capacity as Director and MC he has maintained this Festival of Poetry every Wednesday for 13 weeks short of 500 events. He is a self-taught Craftsman in Silver, Gold and Stone but works primarily in Leather Appliqué. He rides race horses, writes poetry and was an Independent Political Candidate.
Barney has been writing poetry for many years and has had poems published in Revival and Microphone on, and he both edited and published Desmond O’Grady’s poetry collection My Limerick Town.
Jessie Lendennie
You can listen to Jessie’s reading here.
Jessie Lendennie was born in Arkansas, USA. After years of travel, she settled in Ireland in 1981. Her previous publications include a book-length prose poem Daughter (1988); reprinted as Daughter and Other Poems in 2001. She complied and edited: Salmon: A Journey in Poetry, 1981-2007; Poetry: Reading it, Writing It, Publishing It (2009) and Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (2010). Her latest collection of poetry is Walking Here (Salmon Poetry, 2011)
Jessie is co-founder (1981) and Managing Director of Salmon Poetry (www.salmonpoetry.com). Her poems, essays and articles have been widely published and she has given numerous readings, lectures and writing courses in Ireland and abroad, including Yale University; Rutgers University; The Irish Embassy, Washington D.C; The University of Alaska, Fairbanks and Anchorage; MIT, Boston; The Loft, Minneapolis, MN; Café Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark; the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; The Irish American Cultural Centre, Chicago and The Bowery Poetry Club, New York City. She is currently working on a memoir, To Dance Beneath the Diamond Sky.
Ó Bhéal’s Sixth Anniversary
(300+ nights of Poetry) celebrates with
an Only Other Poets’ Poetry Night
and the launch of Five Words Volume VI
You can listen to contributors from Five Words Vol VI here.
Ó Bhéal’s Sixth Anniversary is being celebrated with the launch of Five Words Volume VI, a mini-anthology of poems written during the Five-Word Challenges of the last fifty Ó Bhéal events. Poets reading from the anthology will read contributions by poets other than themselves. As per previous years, there is to be a double-round open-mic on the night, where anyone is invited to read only other poets’ poetry, so bring a couple of your favourite poems, classical, contemporary or whatever you enjoy!
Ó Bhéal in association with Foras na Gaeilge presents
Derry O’Sullivan
You can listen to Derry’s reading here.
Derry O’Sullivan is from Bantry, Co.Cork and now lives in Paris, France where he teaches at the ISEP engineering school. He was awarded The Times Stephen Spender Prize 2012 for Kaarina Hollo’s English translation of his Irish-language poem Marbhghin 1943, the prize being open to all the languages in the world and to poems from every period of history (previous winners were Victor Hugo, Dante, Ovid, and Rilke). He was the first living poet to be present at the awards ceremony.
His poetry collections in the Irish language are: Cá bhfuil do Iudás? (Dublin, Coiscéim, 1987) – winner of four Oireachtas Literary prizes and the Seán Ó Ríordáin Memorial Prize; Cá bhfuil Tiarna Talún l’Univers? (Dublin, Coiscéim, 1994); An Lá go dTáinig Siad (Dublin, Coiscéim, 2005), a long poem about the Nazi occupation of Paris, and An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, más é do thoil é? (Dublin, Coiscéim, 2009). He has participated in literary festivals in Ireland, France, the US and Canada and his work has been published in numerous literary reviews and anthologies.
O’Sullivan’s poems have been translated into English and French and several of them can be consulted in Harvard University Library. His work appears in English translation in The King’s English (Paris, First Impressions, 1987). En Mal de Fleurs (Québec, Lèvres Urbaines 30 1988) is a suite of poems written directly in French.
Deirdre Hines
You can listen to Deirdre’s reading here.
Deirdre Hines was born in Liverpool. She moved to Belfast shortly thereafter, and from there to Letterkenny in Co. Donegal, where she now lives. She graduated from Trinity in 1989 with a double honours degree in English and Theatre Studies. She was awarded a T.E.F.L certificate from Sheffield Polytechnic and a Certificate in Equality Studies from UCD. She has written several plays, of which Howling Moons, Silent Sons (produced by Pigsback Theatre Company) won the Stewart Parker Award for Best New Play in 1992. She went on to write Ghost Acreage at Vixen Tine for Passion Machine’s Songs of the Reaper Festival in 1994. Other plays include A Moving Destiny (1996) produced by Yew Theatre Company and Dreamframe produced for Fishamble’s Y2K Festival. Plays for children include Golden Moon (1997) and Borrowed Days (1999) produced and performed by the children of Kilmacrennan National School, Co. Donegal. She received two Arts Council Grants in 1994 and 1998 respectively.
Deirdre was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2010, and won the Listowel Poetry Collection in 2011. She has had articles published in various magazines such as The Countryman, Ireland’s Own and Escape. She has held various posts, which have included being Playwright in Residence with the Verbal Arts Centre, Community Development Worker for Travellers, assistant Manager of the George and Pilgrim Hotel in Glastonbury, Sub Primary School Teacher in Scoil Colmcille, Letterkenny and freelance writer. Her full-length collection of poetry The Language Of Coats was published by New Island Books in May 2012.
Ó Bhéal in association with Poetry Ireland presents
Moya Cannon
Moya Cannon was born in Donegal. She began to write in her twenties and her early work is informed by the landscapes and seascapes of Galway, Clare and Donegal, of the ways in which humanity marks and is marked by landscape. Many of her poems reflect preoccupations with archaeology, with music, with language itself and with the history of migration – the migration of birds, of humans, of human culture.
Hands (Carcanet Press, 2011) is her fourth collection and her second with Carcanet. It was shortlisted for the 2012 Irish Times/Poetry Now award. A number of her poems have been set to music by composers Jane O Leary, Philip Martin and Ellen Cranitch. She greatly enjoys working with musicians, amongst them the Con Tempo String Quartet and the traditional musicians, Kathleen Loughnane and Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill. A winner of the Brendan Behan Award and of the Laurence O Shaughnessy award, she was elected to Aosdana in 2004. She has edited Poetry Ireland Review and was 2011 Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University.
In this new collection, Moya Cannon, through intent attention to light and sound and the natural materials that produce them, touches the very principle of life itself. Hands is a profoundly moving set of meditations on what it means to be alive, physically and emotionally. – Bernard O Donoghue
Kate O’Shea and CAH-44
You can listen to Kate’s reading here.
Kate O’Shea lives in Dublin. Most recently she was short listed for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2012. Her chapbook Crackpoet was published by wurmpress in March 2013.
She has been published in Icarus, Electric Acorn, Poetry Ireland Review Issue Number 34 (1992), The Burning Bush, Riposte, Poetry on the Lake – Silver Wyvern Anthology (Italy), Out to Lunch Anthology 2002, Poetry.com, Shamrock Haiku, Bamboo Dreams an Anthology of Haiku Poetry from Ireland, Poetry Bus 3 & 4, Outburst Magazine Issues 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12, First Cut, CANCAN (Scotland), LucidRhythms (U.S.A). Also thegalwayreview.com (10/12/12) nine poems.
Her first published work was a short story, and for this, she won the Prudential Young Irish Writers’ Award 1990. Her humorous sketches were broadcast on Mike Murphy’s Arts Show on RTE Radio 1. She was one of the youngest members of the Dublin Writers’ Workshop, and after that went on to found Chocolate Sundaes at La Cave with William Kennedy and Christopher Daybell in the mid nineties. She was winner of the Gerard Manley Hopkin’s Poetry Award 1991 and took the overall prize for poetry in the 1998 Clothesline Writers’ Festival. Two poems highly commended by Al Alvarez, were published in The Silver Wyvern Anthology in Italy, 2001.
Kate edited and published posthumously, the selected poems of her good friend Christopher Daybell, The Man With The Crowded Eye (2001). She is an accomplished performer and respected on the open mike circuit. She wrote about her experiences in Poetry Ireland Review Magazine (2003), and has read in New York and Rome. She recited in The Palace Bar 2009 to honour Paddy Kavanagh, in 2010 she did a reading/stand up routine, for GLÓR, International Bar. She was one of the poets from Dublin’s lunchtime reading series organised through Bank of Ireland’s Arts Centre and featuring contemporary poetry in Ireland today. The OUT TO LUNCH anthology (2002) featured the works of “…young, emerging poets like Paul Grattan, Conor O’Callaghan, Kate O’Shea, and Enda Wyley.”
CAH-44 is a North American poet living in Dublin. He has performed extensively in the US and Europe, appearing in a wide variety of venues including: SXSW in Austin, Texas; Insomnia Performance Lockdown in Atlanta, Georgia; Exchange Words at The Exchange, Dublin; Electric Picnic, Co. Laois; and the Flat Lake Literary and Arts Festival, Co. Monaghan. His work has also appeared in print in such places as: The Rocky Mountain Review, ACE Magazine, AMP, Rain City Review, and the UpStart Poster Project.
CAH-44 curates and co-hosts Tongue Box, Dublin’s longest running performance poetry showcase. His chapbook still beat/ still beat is published by Wurm Press.
Hugh McFadden
You can listen to Hugh’s reading here.
Hugh McFadden is a poet, critic, and literary editor. His poems have been published widely in literary magazines. He is the author of four collections of poetry, the most recent being Empire of Shadows, published by Salmon Poetry in September 2012. A Selected Poems, Elegies and Epiphanies was published by Lagan Press in 2005.
His first collection Cities of Mirrors was published by Beaver Row Press (Dublin). A second collection Pieces of Time was published in 2004 by Lapwing Press (Belfast). He is the executor of the literary estate of the writer John Jordan, and edited his collected poems and collected short stories, as well as John Jordan: Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2008). He has reviewed for many papers & journals, including Books Ireland, The Irish Book Review, The Irish Press, The Irish Independent, The Irish Times and The Sunday Tribune. He lives in Dublin.
(Photograph by Glenda Cimino)
Diane Fahey and Ali Cobby-Eckermann
Diane and Ali will also be holding a wordshop entitled Seeing around corners: Working with liminal states in poetry (from 7.00pm to 8.30pm). For more details click here.
You can listen to Diane’s reading here.
Diane Fahey grew up in Melbourne and has also lived in Adelaide, London and Colchester. She now lives in Clifton Springs on the Bellarine Peninsula in southeastern Victoria. Diane’s poetry features both distinctively Australian, and European, settings and preoccupations. She has written individual poetry collections on Greek myths, fairy tales and insects. The poetry of place and nature writing, with a special emphasis on birds, are abiding creative concerns. Diane has been chosen, along with Ali Cobby Eckermann, for the Australian Poetry International Tour to Ireland in 2013, funded by the Literature Board of the Australia Council.
Her poetry collections are Voices from the Honeycomb (Milton: Jacaranda Press, 1986), Metamorphoses (Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1988), Turning the Hourglass (Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1990), Mayflies in Amber (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1993), The Body in Time/Nervous Arcs (with Jordie Albiston , North Melbourne, Vic: Spinifex Press, 1995), Listening to a Far Sea (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1998), The Sixth Swan (Woollongong, NSW: Five Islands Press, 2001), Sea Wall and River Light (Carlton, Vic: Five Islands Press, 2006), Winter Solstice and Other Poems (Warner’s Bay, NSW: Picaro Press, 2008), The Mystery of Rosa Morland (Clouds of Magellan, 2009) and The Wing Collection: New and Selected Poems (Puncher & Wattmann, 2011). The Stone Garden: Poems from Clare is forthcoming from Whitmore Press in 2013.
Diane Fahey’s poetry has appeared in over 60 anthologies and has been published in all the major Australian journals, and in numerous international journals. Her literary awards include The Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize, the John Shaw Neilson Award. Sea Wall and River Light was a winner of the ACT government’s Judith Wright Prize in 2007. The Wing Collection: New and Selected Poems was shortlisted for the John Bray Poetry Award at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 2012.
Diane has received a large number of fellowships, grants and residencies in Australia and around the world. She has given readings at many Australian and international venues, including arts festivals in Melbourne, Adelaide, Mildura, Canberra, Brisbane, Essex and Aarhus. She has also read at the Universities of Venice, Basel, Berne, Klagenfurt, Essex, East Anglia, King’s College, London, Pennsylvania State and Colorado. She holds the degrees of B.A., M.A. and a Dip. Ed. (Sec.) from the University of Melbourne. She was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Western Sydney for her study Places and Spaces of the Writing Life.
Ali Cobby Eckermann is a celebrated poet and writer. She lives in Koolunga, South Australia, where she has established an Aboriginal writer’s retreat. Ali identifies with the Yankunytjatjara / Kokatha people from the north west desert country of South Australia.
Ali enjoyed great success with her first collection of poetry little bit long time in 2009, followed by Kami, published by Vagabond Press, in their Rare Objects series in 2010. Her first verse novel His Father’s Eyes was published by Oxford Uni Press in 2011, as part of the Yarning Strong educational resource kit. Her second verse novel Ruby Moonlight (Magabala Books), won the black&write! kuril dhagun Indigenous Writing Fellowship Award in 2011 and the 2012 Deadly Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. Her poetic memoir Too Afraid To Cry is being released in 2013. Individual poems and short stories by Ali have been featured in various anthologies, journals and magazines, including the Poetry International website, and her poetry has been translated and published in Croatia, Indonesia, Greek and New Zealand. She has been featured on Poetica on ABC National Radio and Message Stick on ABC TV.
Ali has won several awards including First Prize in ATSI Survival Poetry competition in 2006, First Prize Dymocks Red Earth Poetry Award NT in 2008, and was Highly Commended for the Marion Eldridge Award in 2009. She has performed at prominent literary festivals in Australia and also overseas, including Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali in 2010 and Reaching the World Asia Pacific Summit in Bangkok in 2012.
Ali’s work has attracted much praise from the Australian literary community.
Ali Cobby Eckermann gives us a familiar narrative of shared history, but ventures to shift the telling: with her we tread lightly among crystals and shadows and, beyond the sound of water on rocks, learn of love and justice in ruthless times. – Kim Scott (Ruby Moonlight)
… conjures a lyrical and unique imagining of the past. A powerful wordsmith and surgical factotum of the struggle to maintain indigenous voice in Australian writing, she carries a similar torch to the late Oodgeroo. – Samuel Wagan Watson (Ruby Moonlight)
What makes this book sing is not only Ali Cobby Eckermann’s strong and unique narrative voice and her ability to cut to the essence of things in her poetry, but also her astounding courage with which she leads the reader through the complex account of a life in free fall and a journey to wholeness through reconnection with her birth family and its ageless culture and wisdom. – Terry Whitebeach (Too Afraid To Cry)
In Ali Cobby Eckermann’s little bit long time we experience a true poet’s strong and singing voice. – Robert Adamson (little bit long time)
