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. We've just about recovered from our road trip to Dublin Book Festival on Friday: a traffic accident and closed motorway outside Newry meant that we almost didn't make it at all! Many thanks to Kate Cunningham and Arnold Fanning of Irish Writers Centre for making it a special night for us and all our visiting poets: Linda McKenna, Mel Bradley, Amy Wyatt Rafferty, Mel McMahon, Carla McGaharan, Helen Hastings, Paul Daniel Rafferty and Tory Campbell. Special thanks also to Rob Doyle for being a gentleman and agreeing to open up while we were stuck in traffic, it's a great regret that we missed him read! Thanks to all the Dublin poets who read as well, most of them new names to us; it was a delight to discover your work. Remember, since we were away on Friday, Purely Poetry open mic night is now on this Friday coming, at Crescent Arts Centre, see you soon! The Irish Writers Centre's Takin the Mic is joined by Poetry NI for a special edition of the monthly spoken word open-mic on Friday 3rd November at Smock Alley Theatre. We're bringing poets down from NI for a Northern Takeover (completely friendly, mind you!) with Helen Hastings, Mel McMahon, Amy Wyatt Rafferty, Paul Daniel Rafferty, Carla Rachel, Mel Bradley, Csilla Toldy, Linda McKenna and co-headliner Tory Campbell. They will be joining hosts Geraldine Dardis O'Kane and Colin Dardis alongside Dublin's co-headliner Rob Doyle and a bevy of local talent, including the usual open-mic for writers, spoken-word artists, comedians and musicians. Please note that Purely Poetry at Crescent Arts Centre is now on Firday 10th November, moving to the second Friday just for this month. |
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