CAMBRIDGE: Allographic – Other Voices featuring Martin Figura and Justina Kehinde

Sunday, May 26th, 2013, 7.30pm for 8pm start, £5, £3.50 concessions

The Fountain,

12 Regent Street,

Cambridge

CB2 2DW

Open mic poetry and storytelling with free snacks. Martin Figura is many other things, but mostly a poet. His show Whistle was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry http://www.martinfigura.co.uk

Justina Kehinde is a jazz singer, public speaker, poetic dreamer, social warrior, award-winner...

Contact details: events@allographic.co.uk; 07904 488009

Website address: http://www.allographic.co.uk

LONDON: Camden Poetry Series

Friday, 7th June, 2013, 7pm (doors open 6.30pm), £5/£4, WINE

Trinity United Reform Church,

1 Buck Street,

Camden Town

1-2 mins. Camden Town tube

Ruth O'Callaghan presents The launch of the Poets from the Floor Anthology, courtesy of Soaring Penguin. Poets from the floor very welcome. Please bring a copy of your poem if you wish to be considered for the new anthology.

LONDON: Velvet Tongue

Monday, 3rd June, 2013, Doors open 7pm; show starts 7.30pm, £5/£3, free to participants

Bar Kick,

127 Shoreditch High Street,

E1 6JE,

London.

Old Street/Liverpool St. tube stations; Shoreditch High Street overground.

http://velvettongueuk.blogspot.co.uk/

Featured authors and performers for spring 2013 are: 

SEASON BUTLER (live art), SHAUN LEVIN (fiction), AMY NEILSON SMITH (poetry), MICHAEL DARLING (boylesque) 

…and a special appearance by VAN ROBERTS (fiction/poetry), all the way from Australia

Plus the usual five-minute Open Mic slots.

Hosted by Erotic Award winning poet, Ernesto Sarezale 

(http://www.sarezale.com/)

THINGS PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT VELVET TONGUE:

"Velvet Tongue had the perfect mix of engaging and mesmerising wordplay and pure hilarity" Thisiscabaret.com

"I was really impressed with the night in total. I feel like I expanded my mind, took in some culture and best of all got inspired." thingsipickedupontheway.blogspot.co.uk/

"For literature really laid bare, poet Ernesto Sarezale’s Velvet Tongue in Shoreditch is just the titillating ticket." metro.co.uk

"Fun, diverse and so sexy!" (Five stars) Remotegoat.co.uk

"Whether you're a performer, a poet, or just like listening to other people's fantasies, Velvet Tongue offers a place to hear and be heard." Erotic Review Magazine

"Velvet Tongue is the word-spinning sister of the burlesque revival that has stormed London - humorously titillating with tongues very firmly in cheeks" "...a wonderfully entertaining way to spend the night" thisislondon.co.uk

"...exploratory literary night of performance and poetry with a raunchy edge" Time Out 

“It's the perfect place to try new work and show off your talent with a room buzzing full of writers and fans of poetry and word. It's not simply readings though, the performers that it attracts are hands on, hansom and props and interaction with the audience often occur...” eroticmeet.net

Velvet Tongue is dedicated to erotic writing and performance, with poetry, fiction, spoken word, plays, stand-up, comic strips, cabaret, monologues,… Velvet Tongue celebrates the hot, the sweet, the viscous, the carnal, the sexy, the racy, the provocative, the lustful, the voluptuous, the libidinous, the playful, the flirtatious, the teasing, the suggestive, the explicit, the cheeky, the bold, the brash, the brassy, the flashy, the risque, the pervy, the licentious, the queer, the depraved and the downright kinky.

LONDON: Lumen Poetry Series

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013, doors open 6.30 for 7pm, £5/£4, WINE

LUMEN

88 Tavistock Place

WC1 

Tubes: Russell Square, Kings Cross, St Pancras

Ruth O'Callaghan presents Anne Stevenson and Richard Berengarten.

Poets from the floor very welcome. Please leave the  poem you read to be considered for the next anthology.

LISTOWEL: Sue Hubbard

Friday, 31st May, 2013, 1.30pm

The Plaza Centre,

Listowel,

Ireland

The Irish launch of Sue Hubbard's third poetry collection, The Forgetting and Remembering of Air.

"There  is nothing safely aesthetic about these poems, beautifully observed though they frequently are. The watching intelligence reaches so far into the places, situations or works of art that it nearly forgets itself, and maybe desires to. The central block of poems on the tragic deaths of women signal that danger, and make it all the more of an achievement when the closing poems journey to the edge of the Atlantic, almost beyond comfort or habitable land, and come back with a final, hard-won ‘...yes’" —Philip Gross

GALWAY: May Over The Edge Open Reading

Thursday, May 30th, 2013, 6.30pm-8pm, FREE

Galway City Library

The Featured Readers are Thomas McCarthy, Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin and Seán Kenny. Sean was the over-all winner of the 2012 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year competition and this reading is part of his prize. This is the final Over The Edge: Open Reading before the summer break.

Seán Kenny’s fiction has appeared in Crannóg, The Irish Times, New Irish Writing in The Irish Independent, Southword and Wordlegs. He won the 2012 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year competition and was shortlisted for a 2013 Hennessy Literary Award.

Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin grew up in the parish of Carna in the Connemara Gaeltacht. She lives and works in Galway city as a social worker and psychotherapist. She has been attending poetry workshops with Kevin Higgins this last two years. Eileen contributed towards a group poetry anthology Wayword Tuesdays in 2012. Her work has also been published by Emerge Literary Journal, The Burning Bush, Aperçus Quarterly, Boyne Berries, The Galway Review and Scissors & Spackle.

Thomas McCarthy was born in Co. Waterford in 1954 and educated at University College, Cork. He has published eight collections of poetry, two novels and a memoir. He has won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, the American-Irish Foundation’s Literary Award, and the O’Shaughnessy Prize for Poetry. He has worked for Cork City Libraries since 1987. He is a member of Aosdána. In a review Pat Cotter has said of him: “McCarthy is a poet primarily concerned with politics and family. His work's importance lies in its unremitting and detailed examination of the Republic's failures and successes as an independent state. Described by Eavan Boland as the first poet born into the Republic to write about it critically, McCarthy has done so from the perspective of a family dedicated and loyal to the state's most successful and powerful political party: Fianna Fail. But his poems are not eulogies to the party or apologies for its policies; they are more like an exploration of the party as an object of loyalty and devotion (like a lover objectified) with all the potential such an object has for empowerment and betrayal.”


As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council & The Arts Council. http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com 

EDINBURGH: Rally & Broad present The Darling Buds!

Friday, 17th May, 2013, doors 7.30pm, cabaret 8pm-11pm, £5

The Counting House,

West Nicholson Street,

Edinburgh

LOU HICKEY:  Lyrical pop with a vintage twist! Lou shares tunes from her latest EP Minutes, Hours, Days.

CAROLINE BIRD: Critically acclaimed poet and playwright. Bird is also, without a doubt, one of the most powerful live poets in the UK, whose readings combine wit, humour and a sense of delivery not always found in poets who write initially for the page. Bird’s most recent collection Watering Can (Carcanet Press) received a Poetry Book Society recommendation.

SOPHIE COOKE: Cooke's work deals with the concealment of truth on various levels, from personal self-deceptions to governments misleading the public. She is the author of the novels The Glass House and Under The Mountain.

Music from the highly recommended LAKE MONTGOMERY!

And the spellbinding VOICEBOX PHYSICAL THEATRE COMPANY

Plus! Introducing his new short story: ‘Red Pills’ by Bram Gieben (The Chemical Poets/ Weaponizer/ aka Texture).

Hosted by award winning poet and promoter Jenny Lindsay (The Big Word/ Is This Poetry?/ BBC Slam Winner 2012) & Rachel McCrum (BBC Slam finalist 2012/ Stewed Rhubarb Press/ Inky Fingers).

GALWAY: May Over The Edge Writers’ Gathering

Friday, May 17th, 2013, 6.30pm, FREE

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop,

Middle Street,

Galway

Readings by Fiona Smith and Kevin Doyle

plus the launch of Jean Folan’s debut poetry collection Between Time

plus The Galway Launches of The Light Knows Tricks by Jo Hemmant

& The First Book Of Frags by Dave Lordan

Fiona Smith is a freelance journalist and translator. She has published a wide range of journalistic work in both Irish and international publications. She currently writes on Irish topics for the German Press Agency dpa and translates from Scandinavian languages into English. She has published poetry in Southword and in the Hennessy New Irish Writing page in the Irish Independent. She won the poetry section of the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition in 2012 with the poem 'At Letterfrack'. She is currently working on a first collection.

Kevin Doyle is from Cork.  His short stories have been published in Cork Literary Review, Stinging Fly, Southwords, Burning Bush, Cúirt Journal, Duality, Liblit and Sunday Tribune.  His work has also been included in anthologies such as Irish Writers Against War (Dublin, 2003), Pulse Fiction (London, 1998) and Snapshots (London, 1999) as well as Cork millennium collection, An Gob Saor.  He has been shortlisted for many prizes (including Over The Edge, 2010) and has won top placings in the Ian St James Short Story Award, Kilkenny Prize, Tipperary Short Story Weekend Prize and the Highlands and Islands Short Story Award.  His work was described by the late Patrick Galvin as ‘terse and original’.  He blogs regularly at on Irish and radical politics from an anarchist perspective (http://kfdoyle.wordpress.com).

Jean Folan was born in Galway in 1951. She lives in Inishcrone, Co Sligo and is enrolled on the MA in Writing in NUI Galway. Between Time is her first collection of poems and is published by Lapwing. Jean Folan was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2007, and the Over the Edge Showcase 2008, and was a featured reader at Over the Edge 2007. She was the winner of the Impromptu Haiku, Culture Night 2010, Ballina Arts Centre, Co. Mayo and runner-up at Culture Night 2012, Kenny’s Bookshop, Galway.

Jo Hemmant was born in Manchester in 1967, and this was to be the first of many places she has lived, including Sicily, Holland and Hong Kong. She has always worked with words—after brief stints teaching English as a foreign language and writing PR puffs, she moved into journalism and editing. This experience in publishing prompted her to set up Pindrop, a boutique poetry press, in 2010, which has published twelve titles to date. She now lives in the Kent countryside with her husband and two sons and is involved in local poetry, acting as Secretary of The Kent and Sussex Poetry Society and running creative writing workshops. Her poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies, such as Magma, Iota, Dream Catcher, Jericho (Cinnamon Press, 2012) and nothing left to burn (Ragged Raven Press, 2011) and she has won prizes in several competitions, including first prize in The New Writer Poetry and Prose Competition 2011(collection category), second prize in the Torriano Poetry Competition in 2011 and runner-up in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2012. Her poetry collection, The Light Knows Tricks, is just published by Doire Press.

Dave Lordan is the first writer to win Ireland’s three national prizes for young poets. He is the current holder of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award and previous winner of both the Patrick Kavanagh and Strong Awards for poetry. He has won wide acclaim for his writing and is a renowned performer of his own work, with the Irish Times calling him ‘as brilliant on the page as he is in performance’. He has read his work by invitation at festivals and venues across Europe and North America. His collections are The Boy in The Ring (2007) & Invitation to a Sacrifice (2010), both published by Salmon Poetry. His poems are regularly broadcast on Irish national radio and he reviews for the flagship Arts show Arena, as well as many publications including Ireland’s leading literary magazine, The Stinging Fly, of which he was a guest editor for summer 2012. He teaches contemporary critical theory and poetic practice on the MA in poetry studies in Dublin City University and he teaches creative writing at primary, secondary, third, and adult education levels. Dave’s debut collection of short stories First Books of Frags is just published by Wurm Press.

CAMBRIDGE: Allographic – Other Voices featuring Martin Figura and Justina Kehinde

Sunday, May 26th, 2013, 7.30pm for 8pm start, £5, £3.50 concessions

The Fountain,

12 Regent Street,

Cambridge

CB2 2DW

Open mic poetry and storytelling with free snacks. Martin Figura is many other things, but mostly a poet. His show Whistle was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry http://www.martinfigura.co.uk

Justina Kehinde is a jazz singer, public speaker, poetic dreamer, social warrior, award-winner...

Contact details: events@allographic.co.uk; 07904 488009

Website address: http://www.allographic.co.uk