Teaming up with Lagan Online, we're delighted to bring you our second audio anthology for Poetry Day Ireland (Thursday 26th April).

The theme is Poetry Surprises! - whether you share a poem, read a poem, or programme your own event, everyone is invited to join in and celebrate on the day. We're marking the occasion with work from fourteen great poets, including Linda McKenna (winner of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing), Jo Burns (winner of the Los Gatos Irish Writers’ Festival's McClure Poetry Prize), Reggie Chamberlain-King, Karen J McDonnell (from This Little World, Doire Press), Marion Clarke, David Braziel, Patricia Devlin-Hill, Darren Reihill, Lynda Tavakoli, Colin Hassard, Siobhan Campbell (from Heat Signature, Seren Books), Phillip Crymble (from Not Even Laughter, Salmon Poetry), Jude Alexzander, and Brian Kirk (from After the Fall, Salmon Poetry).
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We want everyone to read lots of poetry on the day, but we also want to celebrate the act of listening to poetry. So get a cup of tea, sit back and enjoy, or sneak on the headphones and grab a listen while on the bus on or a break. You can also listen back to our first Mix Tape from last year. Many thanks to our our contributors and everyone who submitted, and Happy Poetry Day!
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Poetry Day Ireland is on Thursday 26th April this year, with the theme of Poetry Surprises!

Last year in collaboration with Lagan Online, to mark the occasion, we asked poets to send in recording of their work for a special Poetry Day Ireland Mix Tape, which featured the work of twenty-nine poets from across Ireland. And since we had such a great response in 2017, we thought we would do it again!

Your audio poems will feature on our special ‘Mix Tape Volume 2’, which will be made available to download for free on the day. We will be selecting the best tracks to showcase, so get recording, send us your work, and surprise us!

Regarding this year’s theme, to give you some inspiration, Poetry Ireland states: “Poetry surprises. It knocks on your door and runs away. It greets you on the street with a face you haven’t seen in years. Look in the mirror and poetry shows you the back of your head. It can rearrange the stars and resurrect the past. When your breath snags and your heart thumps; when something strokes your neck and makes you jump: that’s poetry.”

Submission Guidelines
Sign up to our Newsletter, if you are not already a subscriber.
Submission are open to anyone currently living in, or originally from, the island of Ireland.
Please include your name, address, and Twitter handle if you have one, in your submission
All sound files must be in MP3, MP4 or WAV format.
Please submit one poem only, and make sure that the poem is clearly audible.
Each poem must be no more that three minutes in duration.
Previously published poems are acceptable, as long as you have retained the copyright.
Deadline for submissions: Saturday 31st March.

Please find your poem as an attachment, along with a brief biog (third person, 75 words max) to laganonline@theverbal.co

Please help support the Fired! movement and sign this pledge to ensuring gender equality in literature. 

Fired! is doing great work in highlighting centuries of disgraceful dismissal of Irish women writers from the Irish literary canon. Anthologies and academia, claiming to be representative of Irish writing, has for far too long now, being male-focused and male-dominated. 

If you feel that more of a spotlight should be shone on Irish women writers from the past (who would otherwise be left dead and forgotten), and wish to strive and ensure a future of balance and parity, then please sign their pledge:

"I pledge henceforth to withdraw my participation from publications, edited collections, conferences, festivals and other projects which do not make what I consider to be a good-faith effort to adequately represent the contribution women make to literature and literary criticism."

https://awomanpoetspledge.com/

As the Crescent Arts Centre will still be on their holidays come the first Friday in January - and rightly so, they work hard and deserve an extended break! - we're moving to the second Friday, the 12th, just for this month. Usual time: sign-up for readers opens at 8.10pm, event starts 8.30pm. We'll see you there...

Coming later this month:
FourXFour Issue 24

with John Moynes, Jackie Rock, Anesu Khanya Mtowa and John Harding.

Issue 25, out in March, will feature Caimin O'Shea, Darren Reihill, Gaynor Kane and Will Donnelly.

Read the current issue here.