GALWAY: Poetry Extravaganza

Friday, May 7th, 2010, 8pm, FREE
Sheridan’s Wine Bar,
14-16 Church Yard Street,
Galway

Over The Edge presents readings by poets Chris Agee, Louis de Paor, Chris Nikkel and Kevin O’Shea.

Chris Agee was born in 1956 in San Francisco and grew up in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island but since 1979 has lived in Ireland. He is the author of three books of poems, In the New Hampshire Woods (The Dedalus Press, 1992), First Light (The Dedalus Press, 2003) and Next to Nothing (Salt, 2009), as well as the editor of Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia (Bloodaxe, 1998, Poetry Society Recommendation). He is currently completing a collection of essays, Journey to Bosnia. He reviews regularly for The Irish Times and is the Editor of Irish Pages, a journal of contemporary writing. Next to Nothing was shortlisted for the first Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, funded by the Poet Laureate and organized by the Poetry Society in London.

Born in Cork in 1961, Louis de Paor has been involved with the contemporary renaissance of poetry in Irish since 1980 when he was first published in the poetry journal Innti which he subsequently edited for a time. A four times winner of the Seán Ó Ríordáin/Oireachtas Award, the premier award for a new collection of poems in Irish, he lived in Australia from 1987 to 1996. He is the recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award 2000, the first poet in Irish to achieve that distinction. His bilingual volume agus rud eile de/and another thing was published recently by Cló Iar-Chonnacht.

Chris Nikkel was born in Canada, and grew up in Winnipeg. In 2003 he moved to Ireland to be with his wife, and currently lives in Fahan, Co. Donegal. A poet and non-fiction writer, his work has been published in Canada, Ireland and the UK, for magazines such as Fortnight, Prairie Fire, Canada's History, and most recently the anthology Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland. He is currently completing his first book, a creative non-fiction story set in the boreal forest in Canada. Chris holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and a BA from the University of Winnipeg. He works for Five Door Films as documentary screenwriter and researcher.

Kevin O’Shea lives in Moycullen within earshot of the old Galway-Clifden Railway line. He recently retreated from the world of technology to consult the imagination and the garden. He is a survivor, reasonably intact, of multiple Creative Writing Classes with Susan Millar DuMars and Kevin Higgins. In 2009 he was selected to participate in the Cúirt poetry masterclass with Jane Hirshfield and greatly enjoyed the experience. He was shortlisted in the 2009 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition and for the 2010 Cúirt Festival Over The Edge Showcase reading. Kevin is currently a participant in the Advanced poetry workshop at Galway Arts Centre.

All welcome. For further information contact 087-6431748.