Goldsmith Literary Festival

 

The Goldsmith International Literary Festival is on this week-end in Abbeyshrule and Ballymahon, County Longford. The poetry readings by well-known poets and the poetry competition prize winners takes place at Pallas, at Goldsmith's birthplace. I've attended this twice and it's a most enjoyable event.

This year my entries went unnoticed alas but LitLab will be well represented by Honor Duff who has won third prize. Honor has been widely published and has won prizes in other competitions.Well done Honor! She told us that her prize-winning poem had been entered after having been LitLabbed. I don't know who the other prize winners are.

The featured poet at the open air reading on Sunday is Heather Brett, author of three collections of poetry, the most recent, Green Monkey Travelling (Bluechrome). She facilitates arts groups and poetry based workshop projects with students of all ages and with Noel Monahan has been editor of Windows Publications for over 20 years.Their latest Windows anthology is due for launch this August.

I have been highly commended in the Golden Pen poetry competition in County Galway. The readings and presentation takes place on Saturday 9 June. Again I've no idea who the prize-winners are in this competition.