Dan Disney
You can listen to Dan’s reading here.
Dan Disney is the winner of the 2014 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. He teaches in the Literature program at Sogang University (Seoul). This year, his critical writing appears in Orbis Litterarum and Axon; co-translations appear in World Literature Today; book reviews appear in Antipodes and Verse; poems appear in The Warwick Review and Postcolonial Text. He is in Ireland as a recipient of the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, and expects to complete his next collection (a book of villanelles) while here.
and then when the (John Leonard Press, 2011) is his first full-length collection. Disney was born in 1970 in East Gippsland, Australia, where he grew up. He has worked in psychiatric institutions, paddocks, warehouses and universities, and currently divides his time between Melbourne and Seoul, where he lectures in twentieth-century poetries at Sogang University.
“and then when the is an intriguing first collection from a poet who, unconventionally and bravely, seems prepared to tackle head-on the vexed relationship between thinking philosophically and poetically.” – Caitriona O’Reilly
Suzanne Roberts and June Sylvester Saraceno
You can listen to June’s reading here and to Suzanne’s reading here.
Suzanne Roberts is the author of the award-winning memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award), as well as four collections of poetry, including Three Hours to Burn a Body: Poems on Travel (Cherry Grove Collections, 2011). She was named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic’s Traveler magazine, and her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader and The Best Women’s Travel Writing. She works for the low residency MFA program in creative writing at Sierra Nevada College. For more information, please visit her website at www.suzanneroberts.net
June Sylvester Saraceno is the author of two poetry collections, Of Dirt and Tar (Cherry Grove Collections, 2014) and Altars of Ordinary Light (Plain View Press, 2007), as well as a chapbook of prose poems Mean Girl Trips (Pudding House Publications, 2007). Her work has appeared in various journals including Poetry Quarterly, Southwestern American Literature, and Tar River Poetry. She is English program chair at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, as well as MFA faculty and founding editor of the Sierra Nevada Review. For more information visit www.junesaraceno.com
Dónall Dempsey
You can listen to Dónall’s reading here.
Dónall Dempsey was born in the Curragh of Kildare and was Ireland’s first Poet in Residence in a secondary school. He has read on Irish radio and appeared on RTE where he was called the ‘Soldier Poet’ because he was a young volunteer in the Irish Defence Force – known to his fellow army recruits as “Shakespeare” after he held them spellbound with tales from the plays of the Bard of Avon! Dónall moved to London in the 1980’s and completed his university degree there. He continued to be a prolific poet and became well known on the London poetry scene for his poems, particularly those on the themes of love, death and the innocence of children’s vision of the world. His poems were inspired by his work as a care-worker for the elderly and mentally infirm and his experiences as a London school-teacher, and as a loving father.
Dónall’s poems have been published in numerous magazines, anthologies and journals, both online and in print. Recently his work has been used by the Overlook Academy to make teaching videos. In 2012-13 Dempsey & Windle published two collections of his poems: Sifting Sound into Shape and Being Dragged Across the Carpet by the Cat. His most recent collection, The Smell of Purple (Dempsey & Windle, 2014) was launched at the Delhi International Poetry Festival where he was invited to feature. Dónall hosts a successful monthly performance poetry night in Guildford, Surrey, UK, where he now lives. He is well known as an inspiring and prolific poet and teacher of poetry.
Trista Hurley-Waxali
You can listen to Trista’s reading here.
Trista Hurley-Waxali grew up a wild child in a small Canadian town, before heading to the University of Windsor and receiving a BA in Criminology and Sociology. Trista’s writing has been influenced by some of her favorite authors: Charles Yu, Cormac McCarthy and Eloise Klein Healy. She has performed at Avenue 50 Studios, Beyond Baroque and Moonday. Trista is currently working on a short chapbook and on her first novel The Crawls of Life. She lives in West Hollywood, California, with her loving husband, and lap cat Blue.
Ó Bhéal in association with Foras na Gaeilge presents
Seán Ó Leocháin
You can listen to Seán’s reading here.
Seán Ó Leocháin has published thirteen books of poetry to date (with An Clóchomhar, Cló Iar-Chonnacht and Coiscéim), his most recent being Obair Bhaile (Coiscéim, 2013). He has received an Arts Council Award and won the inaugural Michael Hartnett Award for his seventh book of poetry Oiread na Fríde (An Clóchomhar, 1998). Born in Athlone in 1943, he is married with three sons and a daughter. He holds degrees in Latin, Irish and Italian. Most of his working life has been spent teaching in Athlone.
Alyson Hallett
You can listen to Alyson’s reading here.
Alyson Hallett‘s latest book of poems Suddenly Everything has just been published by Poetry Salzburg. Previous publications include The Stone Library (Peterloo Poets, 2007), Towards Intimacy (Queriendo Press, 1999), a book of short stories, collaborative artist’s books and drama for Radio 4 and Sky Television. As well as writing poems for the page, Alyson also enjoys working with poetry in three dimensional spaces. She has a poem carved into Milsom Street pavement in Bath and she has been running The Migration Habits of Stones, an international poetry as public art project, for the past twelve years. In 2010 she gained a practice-based PhD in poetry with research into geographical intimacy. Alyson went on to become the U.K.’s first poet-in-residence in a Geography Department at Exeter University, a post funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She is currently the Charles Causley Poet-in-Residence in Cornwall and an Advisory Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund.
John Foulcher and Teresa Bell
You can listen to John’s reading here and to most of Teresa’s reading here.
Currently Deputy Principal/Head of Campus at Burgmann Anglican School in Canberra, John Foulcher has been a teacher for most of his life.
He has published nine books of poetry and a textbook about writing poetry. His poems were set for study on the NSW Higher School certificate for over 10 years in the 80’s or 90’s. His poetry is described by the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature as ‘simple, direct and convincing’. John received a Young Writer’s Fellowship from the Oz Council in 1981 (Light Pressure came out of that); Australia Council General Writing Grant, 1977; Australia Council Young Writer’s Fellowship, 1980.
He won the National Library Bicentennial Award in 1988, the ACT Book of the Year Award in 1994, received an Established Writers Grant from the Oz Council in 2003, and in 2010-11 was the Oz Council’s resident in the Keesing Studio in Paris. From 1986 to 1994 his poetry was set for study on the NSW Higher School Certificate syllabus. He has been the poetry editor of both The Canberra Times and the Voices, the magazine of the National Library. In 2010, he was awarded a writer in residency in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. His most recent and widely acclaimed book, The Sunset Assumption (Pitt Street Poetry, 2012), was the result. This book is aural – full of voices, bells, music; visual – in paintings, place and architectural landscapes; full of interior spaces – rooms, houses, catacombs, churches, cathedrals. It is tender and loving in the broadest sense of humanity, and full of yearning.
‘His theme . . . is a sceptical faith, complemented by the uneasiness of domesticity. It is the heroism of the modern, isolated individual – the man or woman who remembers to put out the garbage bin for fifty years . . . who stands on the nature strip and looks at the unbelievably violent furnaces that are the stars . . . and asks what place there is for the transcendent impulses that arise within us.’ – Robert Gray
Teresa Bell is a writer, performer, teacher and director based in Sydney, currently in her final year of a doctorate in creative writing at the University of Wollongong where she has an Australian University scholarship. Teresa has been a guest at many festivals including the Sydney Writer’s Festival, Melbourne Writer’s Festival and most recently performing with Kamahl at the Byron Writer’s Festival two years ago with the launch of her last book of poetry; Under a Nightingale’s Wing (Flametree Press, 2011). Teresa’s performances are always unique and combine a blend of music, physical theatre, performance and the poetic.
Teresa was Founding Director of Australia’s first national poetry centre, Australian Poetry and prior to this role was Artistic Director for Playworks, the national script development organisation and in earlier roles a producer and arts maker. She has directed performances and toured her work to nearly every state in Australia and overseas. Her directing and writing work have won numerous awards including the Wal Cherry, an AWGIE and the George Fairfax and Shelton Lea awards for performance. She has directed, produced and commissioned original theatre works for The Stables Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, Windmill Theatre and many alternative venues.
Teresa has created works for most festivals in Australia and is most interested in the crossing of art forms and creating theatre within unusual spaces. She has collaborated, produced and/or commissioned works for Kate Champion, William Yang, Melissa Reeves, Verity Laughton, Peta Murray, Melissa Reeves, Nigel Jamison and many more wonderful Australian artists. Teresa has also directed international festivals of poetry and theatre, secured funding for Australia’s national poetry journal and championed many new Australian poets and playwrights. Teresa is appearing at an interdisciplinary conference titled Making Sense of Madness at Oxford University in early September where she will be giving a paper and performing an extract from her new book before coming to Ireland to read her new work.
Ó Bhéal in association with Cork City Council presents a special Friday edition of Ó Bhéal for
Cork Culture Night 2014
John Cummins
You can listen to John’s performance here.
John Cummins is the current All-Ireland Poetry Slam Champion and a regular feature on the poetry showcase nights around his native Dublin. He also contributes regularly to Arena on RTE Radio. He is delighted to visit Cork and share his words and can’t wait to stop talking in the third person…
for 100 Thousand Poets for Change
Edward O’Dwyer
You can listen to Edward’s reading here.
Edward O’Dwyer (b. Limerick, 1984) has poems widely published in journals and anthologies around the world. He just recently completed an M.A. by research in Media & Communications, his thesis an evaluation of the American apocalyptic horror film since 9/11 through Utopian and Dystopian theory. He has been selected by Poetry Ireland for their Introductions series (2010) and edited the Revival Press anthology Sextet the same year. He has been shortlisted for a Hennessy Award, the Desmond O’Grady Prize, the North West Words Prize and the Millwheel Writers Prize. He has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the journal Gloom Cupboard and for a Forward Prize by Revival Literary Journal. In 2012 he was selected to represent Ireland at the Poesiefestival in Berlin for their renshi project involving a poet from each EU member state. His poem Just By Chance was just recently Highly Commended by the Forward Prizes judges and so will feature in the forthcoming Forward Book of Poetry. His first full collection The Rain on Cruise’s Street has just been published by Salmon Press (2014).
Kobus Moolman
Kobus will also be holding a wordshop entitled Memory is a Darkroom
from 7.00pm to 8.30pm at Ó Bhéal. For more details click here.
An award-winning poet and playwright, educator and editor, Kobus Moolman teaches creative writing in the Department of English at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. He is regarded as one of South Africa’s leading lyric poets. He has published six collections of poetry: Time like Stone (UNP, 2000 – winner of the 2001 Ingrid Jonker Prize), Feet of the Sky (Brevitas, 2003), Separating the Seas, (UKZNP, 2007 – winner of the 2010 South African Literary Award for Poetry), Anatomy (Caversham Press, 2008 – winner of the 2009 DALRO Prize), Light and After (Deep South, 2010) and his most recent, Left Over (Dye Hard Press, 2013).
Kobus has also published two collections of his award-winning plays, Blind Voices (2007) and Full Circle (2007). He was the editor of the literary journal Fidelities from 1995 until 2007. In 2010 he edited and published Tilling the Hard Soil: poetry, prose and art by South African Writers with Disabilities. In 2013 he was the Mellon Writer in Residence, courtesy of Rhodes University in Grahamstown. His latest collection Left Over describes the inner world of a man dealing with what Kobus calls ‘being in the flesh, being a body in the world’. Sparse but dense, the prose-like poetry is arresting in its intensity and power.
At the end of 2013 he was awarded the prestigious Sol Plaatje European Union poetry award. Kobus holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. For further information go to: www.kobusmoolman.com.
