New Creative Writing from UCC
Hannah Myers, Rob Worrall, Gabbi Dufrene, John McLeod,
Alice Barry, Kemi George Simpson and Fiona Tracey
You can listen to all seven poets reading here.
Each February, Ó Bhéal presents poets and short fiction writers engaged in UCC’s MA Creative Writing programme, who read from their new work. This event will be held both in-person, hosted in the Hayloft bar, upstairs in Long Valley, Winthrop St Cork, as well as on Zoom.
Hannah Myers is originally from British Columbia and grew up in Glasgow. She is studying for an MA in creative writing at UCC. Hannah adores writing narrative for games, flash, scripts for animation, lyric writing, poetry and musicals. Authors she is interested in and influenced by are Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Sylvia Plath and Mary Shelley.
Rob Worrall has been writing poetry since he was 15 years old. He has performed at De Barra’s spoken word events, as well as at Poetry Town events which led to him being awarded a Poetry Town bursary from Poetry Ireland. This project has subsequently evolved as a performance piece with poetry and narrative – a piece of theatrical memoir on identity, relationships, love and loss – with the working title Love Child.
Gabbi Dufrene is a poet and writer of creative nonfiction; she is currently in the Creative Writing MA program at University College Cork in Ireland. She is originally from the American South, and her work often focuses on the interactions between religion, sexuality, place and acceptance.
John McLeod is an English-born writer and poet raised in the American South currently completing the Creative Writing MA at University College Cork. His current collection-in-progress extends the arch of strained family life, mid-twenties existentialism, and grief over a foundation of alcoholic recovery and personal growth. Often spotted in strange forests or on park benches, John spends his days writing to contribute to the literary tradition that has saved his life on countless occasions.
Alice Barry is from Cork and has returned here after working nationally and internationally as a writer, actor, producer and director. She graduated from The Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College in 1995 and has worked extensively in theatre, radio and television. She has a certificate in screen writing from UCLA. Theatre work includes Fruitcake, Violet Gibson: The Woman Who Shot Mussolini and Livwhich were all performed at The Everyman Theatre as part of a national tour. Alice is Artistic director of Noggin Theatre and creative director on Boo at Ballymaloe. She is currently studying a masters in creative writing at UCC.
Kemi George Simpson lives in Cork and has been a Stay at Home Mum since before the iphone was invented. She has four sons so her house and nerves are wrecked. Kemi is excited to read her poetry as she doesn’t get out much. Poetry is a distraction from teenage tantrums and from the fear of aging. Her next door neighbour but one found one of her poems inspiring and shared it on Facebook once. Urban trees, and the steep inclines contribute to her health and wealth.
Fiona Tracey is a poet from West Virginia. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Shepherd University and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Creative Writing at UCC. Her writing explores women, place, and identity, and has been published in The Naugatuck River Review, Orchards Poetry Journal, The Stonecoast Review and The Blackwater Review.
This event will be both in-person, hosted in the Hayloft bar, upstairs in Long Valley, Winthrop St Cork, as well as on Zoom (which is limited to 100 people). Participation in the open-mic session and five word challenge is open to both in-person and virtual attendees. The session will be live-streamed at obheal.ie/live and via Ó Bhéal’s Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels. Note to Participants: Our hybrid events are recorded and remain viewable on video via these same channels.
We are no longer posting the zoom link via our social media channels. Upon written request to info@obheal.ie with a sentence outlining your reason for participation, a link to join the session will be emailed to you on the evening of the event, which is expected to run for between 2-3 hours.
7-7.45pm: Poetry-Films (random play from Ó Bhéal’s Poetry-Film comp archives – NOT STREAMED);
8.30pm: Five Word Challenge (max 30 – after the allotted 15 minutes writing time);
9.30pm: Featured Guest Poets (will read for up to 8 minutes each, or 40 minutes total);
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.)
Jodie Hollander and Adam Wyeth
(via Zoom) (in-person)
Jodie Hollander‘s work has appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, PN Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry London, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The Best Australian Poems of 2011, and The Best Australian Poems of 2015. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, was published with Liverpool University Press & Oxford University Press.
Her second collection, Nocturne, will be published with the Liverpool & Oxford University Press in the spring of 2023. Hollander is the recipient of a Macdowell fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship in South Africa. She is also the originator of ‘Poetry in the Parks’ in the US.
Adam Wyeth is a poet, playwright and essayist with five books published with Salmon Poetry. In 2019 he received The Kavanagh Fellowship Award. Wyeth’s first collection Silent Music (2011) was Highly Commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His second collection, The Art of Dying (2016) was an Irish Times Book of the Year. In 2013 Salmon published his essays, The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic Mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry.
Adam’s plays have been performed across Ireland and in New York and Berlin. His play, This Is What Happened was published by Salmon in 2019. His latest book about:blank (Salmon, 2021) is an experimental hybrid piece, mixing poetry, prose and dramatic text. about:blank also premiered at Dublin Theatre Festival 2021, in association with the Civic Theatre, performed by Olwen Fouere, Owen Roe and Paula McGlinchey. In 2021 Adam was a recipient of the Live Music & Performance Scheme for there will be no silence, a new music and text work, in collaboration with Emmy-nominated composer David Downes. Wyeth lives in Dublin where he works as a freelance writer and teaches online creative writing correspondence course at adamwyeth.com and fishpublishing.com. He is an Associate Artist of the Civic Theatre.
This event will be both in-person, hosted in the Hayloft bar, upstairs in Long Valley, Winthrop St Cork, as well as on Zoom (which is limited to 100 people). Participation in the open-mic session and five word challenge is open to both in-person and virtual attendees. The session will be live-streamed at obheal.ie/live and via Ó Bhéal’s Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels. Note to Participants: Our hybrid events are recorded and remain viewable on video via these same channels.
We are no longer posting the zoom link via our social media channels. Upon written request to info@obheal.ie with a sentence outlining your reason for participation, a link to join the session will be emailed to you on the evening of the event, which is expected to run for between 2-3 hours.
7-7.45pm: Poetry-Films (random play from Ó Bhéal’s Poetry-Film comp archives – NOT STREAMED);
8.30pm: Five Word Challenge (max 30 – after the allotted 15 minutes writing time);
9.30pm: Featured Guest Poets (20 minutes 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.)
