Leah Naomi Green and Jane Robinson
(via Zoom) (in-person)
Leah Naomi Green is the author of The More Extravagant Feast (Graywolf Press, 2020), selected by Li-Young Lee for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of a 2021 Treehouse Climate Action Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, as well as the 2021 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award.
Her chapbook The Ones We Have received the 2012 Flying Trout Chapbook prize. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Paris Review, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Orion, Shenandoah, Ecotone and Pleiades. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and is currently the Sherwood Anderson Distinguished Visiting Writer in Poetry at Guilford College. Green teaches Environmental Studies and English at Washington and Lee University. She lives in the mountains of Virginia where she and her family homestead and grow food.
Jane Robinson lives in Dublin. Her recent collection Island and Atoll (Salmon, 2023), ‘alternates enthralling visions of the natural world with poems that explore how the loss of our environment disorientates us at the level of sense and meaning’ wrote Jessica Traynor in the Irish Times. ‘These are formally ambitious, compelling poems which refine and refresh the Irish eco-poetic tradition.’ Jane’s first collection Journey to the Sleeping Whale (Salmon, 2018) received the Shine-Strong Award. Other recognitions include the Strokestown International Poetry Prize.
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.)
David Nash and Grace H. Zhou
(in-person) (in-person)
David Nash was born in County Cork and lives between Ireland and Chile. He is a poet, writer and translator. His first book of poems The Islands of Chile was published in 2022 with 14Poems, and his second, No Man’s Land, comes out in November 2023 with Dedalus Press. He writes children’s books in Spanish, is a columnist for Harper’s Bazaar Korea, Elle Korea and other publications, and translates work from several languages.
Grace H. Zhou is a poet and cultural anthropologist. Her debut chapbook Soil Called a Country was selected for Newfound’s 2023 Emerging Poets Chapbook series. Her poems appear in The Stinging Fly, Southword, Narrative Magazine, Ninth Letter, Frontier Poetry, Longleaf Review and elsewhere.
Her research and writing have been supported by the Irish Research Council, National Science Foundation (USA), Social Science Research Council (USA), Kearny Street Workshop, Tin House Workshop, and other organisations. She was a finalist for Black Warrior Review’s 2022 poetry contest judged by Diane Seuss and has been nominated for Best of the Net. She received her PhD from Stanford University, and is currently a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow. She resides in Galway with her family, where she serves as an editor for Otherwise Magazine and reader for Tinderbox Poetry.
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.)
the 11th Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Festival of Poetry
Ó Bhéal’s 11th Winter Warmer (and 3rd hybrid) festival will present over 30 poets live at Nano Nagle Place in Cork (and online). The festival will feature a showcase of contributors to Southword: New International Writing, performers from four Cork-based poetry open mics, workshops, music, the shortlist screening and prize-giving for Ó Bhéal’s International Poetry-Film Competition, a selection of poetry films made of Macdara Woods’ poems, and a closed-mic set for new voices – poets who have featured regularly in Ó Bhéal’s open-mic sessions during 2023.
Ó Bhéal is grateful to its sponsors, The Arts Council, Cork City Council, Foras na Gaeilge, Dunnes Stores, Forum Publications, Colmcille, Arc Publications, Cork City Libraries, Poetry Ireland, Paradiso, the University of Vigo and the UCC School of English and Digital Humanities.
