Connie Roberts Collection Published.

Arlen House, Dublin are proud to announce the publication of Connie Roberts's debut volume Little Witness. 

Connie Roberts, an Offaly native, emigrated to the United States in 1983. She has won both the Patrick Kavanagh Award and the Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection Award. She teaches creative writing at Hofstra University, New York.

In Little Witness, Connie Roberts interrogates memory and history. From her early-childhood with her parents to her years in an industrial school in the Irish Midlands, the 1943 Cavan orphanage fire where 35 children perished and the self-immolation of a former inmate of Letterfrack Industrial School, Roberts spins the coarse flax of poverty and abuse into the golden rope of poetry.

This is the poetry of rock-hard experience. It will skin your soul. – New York Times journalist Dan Barry.

The collection will be launched at the Listowel Writers Week on Friday 29th May 2015 at 12.30 pm in the Boys' National School Hall.

Purchase a copy here.

Moth and Caterpillar Competitions

Entries for the Moth Short Story Prize, judged by Donal Ryan, close on 30 June.

The word limit is 6,000 (no minimum length) and the story can on any subject.

The prizes: 1st €3,000; 2nd a week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France (including a €250 stipend); 3rd €1,000.

The winning stories will be published in the autumn 2015 issue of The Moth.

You can enter The Moth Short Story Prize here.

There's also the new Caterpillar Short Story Prize – with a single prize of €1,000 (and publication in The Caterpillar) for the best story written by an adult for children (aged 7-11). Closing date is 30 September.

You can enter The Caterpillar Short Story Prize here.

2015 iYeats Poetry Competition

The iYeats Poetry Competition is an annual, online, international poetry competition which has won a prestigious reputation for the calibre of both entrants and judges. The competition is open to all those 16 years of age and upwards.

Prizes: General category: First Prize €500. Emerging category: €300 (aged 16 – 25 years)

The iYeats Poetry competition was launched by the Hawk's Well Theatre in 2009 to mark the 50th Yeats International Summer School and the 70th anniversary of the death of W. B Yeats. This year it joins in the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Yeats’ birth.

Closing date for entries: Wed 1 July, 2015 at 5pm. Winners will be notified by: Monday 20 July, 2015
Results publicly announced: Late July, during the Yeats International Summer School.

Judges for 2015 are Jane Clarke and Dave Lordan. Now there's a great choice of poets to put together as judges. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at their deliberations!

Jane's collection The River has been published by Bloodaxe this year and Dave's most recent published work is Lost Tribe of the Wicklow Mountains published by Salmon.

Find out more about entering here. Competition terms and conditions here. Another 40 line limit competition. Ah well, just amalgamate lines.

Wild Atlantic Words open poetry competition 2015

Entries are invited for the Wild Atlantic Words open poetry competition 2015, for poems on any theme related to coastal landscape or maritime life and heritage, broadly interpreted.. The competition will be judged by Breda Wall Ryan.

Closing date for entry is 19 July 2015. There will be a first prize of €500, a second prize of one week’s retreat accommodation at The Creativity Cabin on the Beara peninsula, and a third prize of €100.

Winning and shortlisted poems will be featured at the Wild Atlantic Words Poetry Festival in in Castletownbere, County Cork, on 5-6 September 2015, and published in a printed anthology and/or on the Hungry Hill Writing website.

Each poem must not exceed 40 lines, and should be typed single-spaced. Up to three poems may be submitted per entry. You may submit as many entries as you wish. A fee of €10 is payable per entry of up to three poems.

You can enter online or by post. Full details on the website.

Poetry Day Reading, Maguire's Tara

A very successful Boyne Writers Group Poetry Day reading at Maguire's, Hill of Tara on 7 May. A great turn out, great readers, young and old. Some favourite poems by Eliot, Belloc, Yeats, Heaney, Kavanagh and some wonderful new poems by great readers and writers.

Well done to all involved! Thanks to all the readers, members of Boyne Writers and Meath Writers Circle and other groups and to those who travelled a distance to be there.