for the Online Cork Harbour Festival
a virtual event featuring
Mick Delap and Alice Lyons
Mick Delap is London based, but from a Donegal family. His grandfather was reared on Valentia Island, Co. Kerry, where Mick shares a much loved summer house. He waited till he had retired from the BBC World Service in 2000 to turn seriously to his writing, which focuses on family life and stories, the natural world, and his passion for sailing the West of Ireland. From Valentia he sailed his own small, brown canvassed gaff cutter up and down the West Coast and the Shannon, and over to the West of Scotland for 11 years.
As sailor-poet he celebrates the magnificence of the Atlantic coast, and chronicles different aspects of its history. In 2002 he won Best First Collection at Listowel for River Turning Tidal, which was published the following year by Lagan Poetry Press, Belfast. In June 2015 Arlen House (Dublin) brought out his second collection, Opening Time. He is a member of the Irish Cruising Club.
Typically they are crafted, capable, and there’s a delicacy of perception, a harmony with the natural world that makes them a particular pleasure. – Sally Festing
Photo by Anna Leask
Writer and artist Alice Lyons was born in Paterson, New Jersey and has lived in the west of Ireland for twenty years. Oona, a novel, will be published by Lilliput Press in March 2020. Lyons is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Breadbasket of Europe (Veer Books, London, 2016). Her writings have appeared in publications such as Tygodnik Powszcheny (Kraków) and Poetry (Chicago), as poetry films, public artworks and in gallery contexts.
Among the honours she has received are a Radcliffe Fellowship in Poetry & New Media, Harvard University, the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry, and an IFTA nomination for The Polish Language, her poetry film co-directed with Orla Mc Hardy. Her amphitheatre for introverts (and others), a permanent public art work, was recently launched in Castlebar, County Mayo. She lectures on the Writing + Literature BA course at Yeats Academy of Arts, Design & Architecture, IT Sligo.
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 (Mick Delap and Alice Lyons – 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.)
a virtual event featuring
Daragh Breen and Jonathan Davidson
Daragh Breen currently lives in West Cork. His latest collection, Nostoc, was published by Shearsman Books in January 2020. His previous collection, What the Wolf Heard, was published by Shearsman Books in 2016. An e-chapbook, The Lighthouses, was published by Smithereens Press in 2016, and is available to read Online Here.
Prior to that, November Press published Whale in 2010 and Across the Sound: shards from the history of an island in 2003. His poetry has appeared extensively in Irish literary journals, and more recently in UK journals such as Blackbox Manifold, Tears in the Fence, Long Poem Magazine and The Fortnightly Review.
Jonathan Davidson has spent a lifetime finding ways to release poetry into the wild. He has curated festivals, made poetry-theatre performances for the stage and radio, and published books and pamphlets. His most recent books are A Commonplace: Bricks, Apples & Other People’s Poems (Smith|Doorstop, 2020), On Poetry (Smith|Doorstop, 2018) and Humfrey Coningsby: Poems, Complaints, Explanations and Demands for Satisfaction (Valley Press, 2015). He won a Gregory Award in the 1990s, and won the BBC Proms Poetry Competition in 2013 and the Café Writers Poetry Competition in 2015.
He has produced six touring poetry-theatre shows with Bloodaxe Books and has had many radio plays and adaptations broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4. He has read his poems at events and festivals across the UK, and also at Festivals in Kerala (south India), Kyev (Ukraine) and Granada (Nicaragua). He had a month’s residency at the International Writers’ & Translators’ House in Ventspils, Latvia in 2017. He currently divides his time between the Hockley Port and Digbeth districts of Birmingham. He has two grown-up children.
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 (Daragh Breen and Jonathan Davidson – 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.)
