Shore Writers Festival

I'm back home from the Shore Writers Festival having attended Friday evening and Saturday morning.

The Festival continues in the Ocean Sands Hotel, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo until Sunday. The weather is wet and wild but the hotel is warm and cosy and those attending at festival are friendly.

The readings and open mic on Friday evening were great. Such a range of material, styles of composition and delivery! The poetry, stories, novel extracts were punctuated by some lively music and the audience was happy and friendly. It went on until around 12.30 with over seventeen people performing.

I was somewhere in the middle. I began with a set list of seven poems but as the evening went on I whittled it down to three, a wise decision I think. Leave them asking for more!!

This Saturday morning I attended the two poetry workshops. Two completely different workshops but both very enjoyable and productive.

Stephen Murray threw a number of quick fire challenges at us which each involved writing a number of sentences. Then we had to look back at what we had written and choose lines, phrases, to construct a poem of nine or so lines. We were encouraged to pare it back and rearrange the lines. Amazing what people came up with.

For Katie Sheehan's workshop we each read a poem in progress and discussed the process of editing a poem. Many great suggestions and Katie herself added a few. A lot of agreement on the difficult of getting rid of great lines and phrases that don't belong and the difficulty of knowing when to stop.

At lunch time there was a stall where people could sell books and magazines. I sold a number of Asking for Directions. Delighted!

Well done to those people at Wordlegs who organised the Festival. Well done!

I would have liked to stay longer but there is an important soccer match on in the Aviva Stadium, Dublin tomorrow. come on the bit o' red!!