& special guest Partridge Boswell
(640+ nights of Poetry)
celebrates Five Words Volume XIII and an open-mic for Only Other Poets’ Poetry
Ó Bhéal’s 13th Anniversary event celebrates the launch of Five Words Volume XIII and the winner of our 7th Five Words International Poetry competition, Derek Sellen. We will also have a reading from special featured guest Partridge Boswell. Other shortlisted poems will also be read on the night – as will poems by contributors to Ó Bhéal’s Monday night Five Word Challenges held over the previous 12 months. The anniversary open-mic is only for poems written by other poets, so bring a favourite or two!
winner of the 7th Five Words International Poetry Competition
Derek Sellen lives in Canterbury, UK, and his writing has won awards including first prizes in Poets Meet Politics, Poetry Pulse, Rhyme International. He was Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year after winning the international competition in 2018. He won the Ó Bhéal Five Words Competition in 2015 and is thrilled and amazed to do so again. His work has also won prizes in Poetry on the Lake, Bristol International Short Story Award and the National Poetry Competition among others.
He has written poetry on topics as diverse as Spanish painters, Korean musicians, a Chinese street vendor and the cave-paintings at Ajanta. He enjoys performing his work and has taken part in readings in the UK and abroad in Ireland, Russia, Slovakia, Germany and Italy. His collection The Other Guernica was published by Cultured Llama Publishing in 2018 and has been favourably reviewed in several places – ‘This is a work of outstanding richness and variety, imagination, thought, storytelling, full of vivid imagery and the pleasures of language.’ – Professor Janet Montefiore
Partridge Boswell is the author of Some Far Country (Grolier Poetry Prize). Recent recipients of the Edna St. Vincent Millay, Red Wheelbarrow, Gemini and Lascaux Poetry Prizes, his poems and essays have surfaced in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Salmagundi, The American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Plume, Prairie Schooner, The Moth, Southword and Forklift, Ohio, and been anthologized in Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry and Vermont Poets and Their Craft.
Co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival, he troubadours widely with the poetry/music group Los Lorcas, performing in such diverse venues as Poetry Center San Jose, Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Burlington Book Festival, New Orleans Poetry Festival, Tucson Book Festival, Bookstock Literary Festival (w/ Robert Pinsky’s PoemJazz), Montreal’s Yellow Door, Chandler Music Hall, Bowery Poetry Club and Nuyorican Poets Café, as well as stages in Ireland and Slovenia. The recipient of fellowships from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Vermont College of Fine Arts, the University of New Orleans, and the Vermont Studio Center, Boswell teaches at Burlington Writers Workshop and the Vermont Poetry Center.
Ó Bhéal is thrilled to announce its 1st virtual event, 8.30pm-midnight+ GMT on 13th April 2020.
The event is to be hosted on Zoom and will be limited to 100 people. We will also attempt to live stream this Zoom session on Ó Bhéal’s facebook page. Note to Participants: As the events are recorded, they remain viewable as videos on our FaceBook/YouTube channels.
The link to join the session will be posted on our facebook and twitter pages, no later than 8.15pm on Monday evening, as will a link to a free .pdf version of Five Words Vol XIII. The session is expected to run for 3 – 3 1/2 hours.
(Entering a Zoom meeting is all explained here >>>. This link provides you with a step-by-step guide and YouTube tutorial if necessary. You should check this out if you’re unfamiliar with the Zoom platform – it also shows you where to download the zoom client/app for your computer/phone. Please Make sure to know where the chat box is and how to mute yourself to reduce background sound.)
1. Five Word Challenge (max 25 – the first 25 who are ready to read after 15 mins);
2. Five Words Vol XIII Contributors & Shortlistees (35 max);
3. Featured Guests (Derek Sellen and Partridge Boswell – 8 mins each);
4. Open-Mic (Only Other People’s poetry – 30 max).
1. Five Word Challenge. At 8.30pm we’ll welcome everyone and run through the usual proceedings. Once we’re underway, we’ll call for five words and the first acceptable five words typed into the Chat Box will be chosen for the challenge. These will be repeated verbally and retyped into the chat box, and everyone will be muted for 15 minutes so they can write. When time is called, the first 25 to type Five Words + (Name) into the chat box will be selected to read. Attendees will then be asked to select their favourite poem and to type in Winner + (Name). Names will be counted up to discover the winner (including any extra FB votes). The winner will be called upon to read their poem again at some point during the contributor session. We’ll also post out two books to him/her/them.
2. After the five word challenge, Five Words Vol XIII Contributors/Shortlistees will be invited to type Contributor / Shortlisted + (Name), and these readers will be called upon to read their poems from the anthology, in the order they sign up.
3. Next, our Guest Poets Derek Sellen and Partridge Boswell will be invited to read in turn, for up to 8 minutes each.
4. Finally, Open-Mic enthusiasts will be given the signal to sign up by typing Open-Mic + (Name), and the first 30 of these will be invited to read. Take note that the Anniversary open-mic session is limited to poems from other poets, so do have a favourite handy.
We hope this works out for everyone, we’ll do our very best to be ready for any technical hiccups that may arise. Unfortunately some may not be able to participate due to the numbers limitation, but we’ll do our best to stream the event via Facebook so at least everyone will have a chance to listen.
The 8th Five Words International Poetry Competition will begin on Tuesday the 14th of April 2020 (at midday GMT) and run for 41 weeks, until the 26th of January 2021.
The judge for for 2020/2021 is Grace Wells. For submission guidelines and previous winners, visit the competition page here.
Ó Bhéal in association with Foras na Gaeilge presents
a virtual bi-lingual event with
Caitríona Ní Chléirchín and Louis de Paor
Caitríona Ní Chléirchín is an Irish-language poet, critic and lecturer originally from Gortmoney, Emyvale in Co. Monaghan. She is an Irish-language and literature lecturer at DCU. Her début collection Crithloinnir won the Oireachtas Prize for New Writers in 2010 and her second collection An Bhrídeach Sí published in 2014 has won the Michael Hartnett Prize 2015. Her work was included in the Calling Cards anthology (The Gallery Press, 2019). Caitríona’s latest collection The Talk of the Town has just been published by The Gallery Press, with translations in English by Peter Fallon.
Mícheál Ó Ruairc has described her as the new love lyricist writing Irish poetry today in Comhar, December 2010. Liam Carson has compared her work to that of the famous Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva, in his review of her first collection in Poetry Ireland Review 104, 2011.
Louis de Paor has been involved with the contemporary renaissance of poetry in Irish since 1980 when he was first published in the poetry journal Innti which he subsequently edited for a time. A five times winner of the Oireachtas prize for the best collection of poems in Irish, he lived in Australia from 1987 to 1996.
Ag greadadh bas sa reilig/Clapping in the cemetery was published by Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 2005 and reprinted in 2006. A second bilingual volume agus rud eile de/and another thing (2010) includes artwork by Kathleen Furey and a recording of poems with musical settings by Ronan Browne. A bilingual selection of his early work, The brindled cat and the nightingale’s tongue, was published by Bloodaxe in 2014. His most recent collection ia Grá fiar (Coiscéim, 2016).
The event will be hosted on Zoom and limited to 100 people. We will also live-stream the session on Ó Bhéal’s facebook page. Note to Participants: As the events are recorded, they remain viewable as videos on our FaceBook/YouTube channels.
The link to join the session will be posted on our facebook and twitter pages, no later than 8.15pm on the Monday evening. The session is expected to run for approximately 3 hours.
8.30pm: Five Word Challenge (max 30 – after the allotted 15 minutes writing time);
9.30pm: Featured Guest Poets (Caitríona Ní Chléirchín and Louis de Paor – 20 mins each);
10:20pm: Open-Mic Session for original poetry (max 30).
(Entering a Zoom meeting is all explained here >>>. This link provides you with a step-by-step guide and YouTube tutorial if necessary. You should check this out if you’re unfamiliar with the Zoom platform – it also shows you where to download the zoom client/app for your computer/phone. Please Make sure to know where the chat box is and how to mute yourself to reduce background sound.)
