Calendar of Literary Festivals in Ireland 2022

January

Classics Now
21–23 January, Dublin
@ClassicsNowFest

February

North Belfast Festival
25–27 February
@northbelfast100

March

Ennis Book Club Festival
4–6 March, Ennis, Co Clare
@ebcf

Belfast Children’s Festival
4–13 March, Belfast
@Young_at_Art

NOIRELAND International Crime Fiction Festival
8–10 March*, Belfast
@NOIRELANDfest

Kanturk Arts Festival
15–19 March*, Kanturk, Co Cork
@KanturkArts

Ballydonoghue Bardic Festival
24–27 March, Ballydonoghue/Lisselton, Co Kerry
Facebook/BallydonoghueBardicFestival

April

Dublin: One City One Book
1–30 April, Dublin
@1dublin1book

Cúirt International Festival of Literature 4–10 April, Galway @CuirtFestival

Franco-Irish Literary Festival
8–10 April, Dublin
@afdublin

Cork World Book Fest
20–25 April*, Cork
@WorldBookFest

Brewery Lane Writers’ Weekend
22–24 April, Carrick-on-Suir, Co Tipperary
@BrewerLaneT

Towers and Tales Lismore Story Festival
29–30 April, Lismore, Co Waterford
@TowersandTales

Féile na Bealtaine
28 April–2 May, Dingle, Co. Kerry
@feilebealtaine

Annual Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend
30 April–2 May*, Achill Island, Co Mayo
@BollAchill

May

Féile na Bealtaine 28 April–2 May, Dingle, Co. Kerry
@feilebealtaine

Annual Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend
30 April–2 May*, Achill Island, Co Mayo
@BollAchill

Strokestown International Poetry Festival
1–3 May*, Strokestown, Co Roscommon
@Strokestownpoem

Marie Edgeworth Literary Festival
6–8 May, Edgeworthstown, Longford
@edgeworthsoc

Padraic Colum International Literary Festival
15 May*, Longford
@CreativeLongfd

Cork International Poetry Festival
18–21 May, Cork
@MunLitCentre

International Literature Festival Dublin
19–29 May, Dublin
@ILFDublin

June

Listowel Writers’ Week
1–5 June, Listowel, Co Kerry
@Writersweek

Goldsmith International Literary Festival
3–5 June, various locations in Co Longford
@Goldsmithfest  

Festival of Writing and Ideas
10–12 June, Borris, Co Carlow
@Writingandideas  

Belfast Book Festival
10–19 June, Belfast
@BelfastBookFest

Bloomsday Festival
11–16 June*, Dublin
@bloomsdayfest

Dalkey Book Festival
16–19 June, Dalkey, Co Dublin
@dalkeybookfest

Immrama – Lismore Festival of Travel Writing
17–19 June, Lismore, Co Waterford
@lismoreimmrama

Limerick Literary Festival
18–19 June, Limerick
@kobweekend

Hinterland Festival of Literature and Arts
23–26 June, Kells, Co Meath
@HinterlandKells

July

Wexford Literary Festival
1–4 July*, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford
@WexfordLitFest

West Cork Literary Festival
8–15 July, Bantry, Co Cork
@wcorklitfest

John Hewitt Society International Summer School
25–30 July, Armagh
@The_JHS

August

Blueway Poetry Festival
30 July–1 August, Lismore, Co Waterford
@BluewayPoetry 

TitanCon, Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Festival
5–7 August, Belfast
@TitanConBelfast

Ennistymon Book Town Festival
28–29 August*, Ennistymon, Co Clare
@BooksEnnistymon

September

The Write Time Festival 1–30 September*, Dublin @fingallibraries

International Dublin Writers Festival
16–18 September, Dublin
facebook.com/internationaldublinwritersfestival

Shaking Bog Nature Writing Festival
10–12 September*, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow
@theshakingbog

Cashel Arts Festival
15–18 September, Cashel, Co. Tipperary
@Cashelartsfest

C.S. Lewis Festival
15–18 September, Belfast
@CSLewsisFest

Children’s Books Ireland International Conference
22 September, Dublin
@KidsBooksIrel

Write By The Sea Festival
23–25 September, Kilmore Quay, Co Wexford
@write_KQ

Aspects Festival
24 September–3 October*, Bangor, Co Down
@aspectsfestival

Éigse Michael Hartnett Festival
30 September–2 October*, Newcastle West, Co Limerick
@EigseMHartnett

Bray Literary Festival
30 September–2 October, Bray, Co Wicklow
@braylitfest

October

Éigse Michael Hartnett Festival
30 September–2 October*, Newcastle West, Co Limerick
@EigseMHartnett

Bray Literary Festival 30 September–2 October, Bray, Co Wicklow @braylitfest

Dromineer Literary Festival
1–3 October*, Dromineer, Nenagh, Co Tipperary
@DromineerLit

Echoes: Maeve Binchy and Irish Writers Festival
1–3 October*, Dalkey, Co Dublin
@echoesdalkey 

Children’s Book Festival
1–31 October, Libraries countrywide

Kildare Readers Festival
1–17 October*, throughout Co Kildare
@KildareReaders

Words by Water
 2–5 October, Kinsale, Co Cork
@WordsByWater

Iron Mountain Literature Festival
5–7 October*, Carrick on Shannon, Co Leitrim

Wild Atlantic Words Literary Festival
5–10 October*, Mayo
@WildWordsMayo

Cork International Short Story Festival
6–10 October, Cork
@MunLitCentre

Bookville Festival Kilkenny
7–12 October, Kilkenny
@bookvillekilkenny

Gerard Manley Hopkins International Literary Festival
8–10 October*, Newbridge, Co Kildare

Dalkey Creates Festival
11–14 October*, Dalkey, Co Dublin
@DalkeyCreates

Red Line Book Festival
11–17 October*, Dublin
@RedLineBookFest

ISLA (Irish, Spanish and Latin American) Literary Festival
14–16 October*, Dublin
@ICDublin

Octocon, the National Irish Science Fiction Convention
15–16 October, Croke Park, Dublin
@Octocon

Waterford Writers’ Weekend (part of theImagine Arts Festival)
21–23 October, Waterford
@Wwritersweekend
@Imagine_Fest

Omagh Literary Festival: Honouring Benedict Kiely
23 October*, Omagh, Co Tyrone
@kiely_weekend

November

Leaves Festival of Writing & Music
2–7 November*, Portlaoise, Co Laois
@leavesfestival

Allingham Festival
3–7 November*, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal
@AllinghamArts

An Fhéile Beag Filíochta
5–7 November*, Baile  an Fheirtéaraigh, Co Chiarraí
@Féilebeagfillíochta

Murder One International Crime Writing Festival
6–29 November*, Dublin
@MurderOneFest

Dublin Book Festival
9–13 November, Dublin
@DublinBookFest

Imram Irish Language Literature Festival
11 November–15 December* , Dublin
@Feile_IMRAM

Festival of Reading and Writing for Young Adults
17–20 November*, Waterford
@TheLitYWF

Rolling Sun Book Festival
15–18 November*, Westport, Co Mayo
Facebook/RollingSunBookFestival

The Lit: Festival of Reading and Writing for Young Adults
17–20 November*, Waterford
@TheLitYWF

Dingle Literary Festival
18–20 November, Dingle, Co Kerry
@DingleLit 

Did not run in 2021 but due to return in 2022

Bram Stoker Festival
Dublin
@bramstokerdub

Allihies Inspires Festival
Allihies village, Beara, Co Cork
@Allihiesinspire

Cancelled for 2022

Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival
Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin
@mountainstosea

Féile Fidelma Mystery Fiction Weekend
6–8 September, Cashel, Co Tipperary
@Cashelartsfest

No information available as yet for 2022

Doolin Writers’ Weekend
Usually held last weekend in January, Doolin, Co Clare
@HotelDoolin

UL/Frank McCourt Creative Writing Festival
Limerick City

Howth Literary Arts Festival Howth
Co Dublin
@howthlitfest

Graiguenamanagh Town of Books Festival
Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny
Facebook/IrelandsBooktown

Something Wicked Crime Fiction Festival
Malahide, Co Dublin
@somethingwicket

Hillsborough Festival of Literature & Ideas
Hillsborough, Co Down
@The_JHS (Did not take place in 2021)

John O’Connor Writing School Literary Arts Festival
Armagh
@johnoconnorws

Tied to the Wind, a hybrid childhood memoir by Afric McGlinchey

I thought I’d collect a selection of the reviews and interviews I’ve been privileged to receive to date for my recent memoir, Tied to the Wind. I’m posting the full endorsements I received from authors and poets I admire. For reasons of space, only extracts from these endorsements could be included in the book.

ENDORSEMENTS:

Tied to the Wind, is a whirlwind epic of a young Irish girl coming of age – set primarily against a wild and expansive African landscape and the War of Independence in Zimbabwe.

This is a romantic yet brutal world, where alcohol-fuelled oversight can sometimes blur the lines between childhood freedom and unintentional neglect.

The hugely attractive and magical power of Afric McGlinchey’s writing is found in the clarity of her storytelling. The tight weave of this colourful and complex tapestry cuts right to the marrow of the life, love, pain, aspiration and disillusion of a family united in love, yet torn in all directions by culture, career and geographical location.

Afric McGlinchey’s Tied To The Wind is powerful, insightful and fascinating. Through the innocent lens of a child’s point of view, she explores the failures of adults without judgement or recrimination, and learns from her father that failure is but an opportunity to begin again – offering the freedom to set out on a new adventure. 

The narrative ultimately reaches a personal redemption when we meet her and her cousin Freya, both young women, living the life, having fun, penniless and busking in Paris – feet firmly on the ground and tacking into the wind. Absolutely wonderful. – Cónal Creedon

*

Afric McGlinchey is a poet of memory, of migration, of displacement, but also of childhood and of love. Tied to the Wind portrays a life lived between Ireland and Africa depicted in searingly beautiful prose, as sharp and as poignant as black and white photographs. I loved it. – William Wall (author of Smugglers in the Underground Hug Trade, Doire Press)

*

I’ve had a truly lovely experience with Tied to the Wind. It’s a book of intense sensations, and kaleidoscopic atmosphere. I could almost feel its heat, smell its exotic fragrances, hear its gentle sounds. It was beautiful, poignant, and transporting. I finished it last night by the fire, and already I miss it. – Sara Baume (author of Handiwork, Tramp Press)

*

I loved Afric McGlinchey’s lyrical and haunting memoir Tied to the Wind. Simultaneously intimate and epic, McGlinchey’s search for belonging voyages the reader through a sequence of unforgettable landscapes, braiding beauty and challenge into an unforgettable book that lingers long in the reader’s heart. – Grace Wells (author of Fur, Dedalus Press)

*

Afric McGlinchey has written a memoir with prose poetry as her medium; the past returns in waves of memorable, poignant images, where love is challenged, and home is ever in question. Where to be, how to be and how to love are the kinds of questions Tied to the Wind asks; it’s a courageous and moving piece of work. – Paul Perry (author of the Garden, New Island Press)

*

Exquisite – a beautifully-written, lyrical charm.  – Paul McMahon (author of The Pups in the Bog, an Abbey Theatre production)  

*

Afric McGlinchey’s long-form debut steals beguilingly across the spiderweb between poetry, memoir and novel, offering an exquisitely rendered narrative of a young, hurting, growing life. Lush, sensitive, harrowing, gloriously written.  – Mia Gallagher  (author of Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland, New Island Press)  

******  

Here’s a piece I wrote for The Irish Times about the process of writing Tied to the Wind:

Bringing my mother back to life

Afric McGlinchey on writing her memoir Tied to the Wind to pin down her past

Mon, Jan 3, 2022, 06:42Afric McGlinchey

Aifric McGlinchey: “I had to be the agent of my own story, not merely a witness to other lives.” 

The compulsion to write a memoir began to overwhelm me, particularly after my mother died. (She had early-onset dementia and I was afraid it might happen to me too.)

If some memories have dissolved, others have retained their significance. I wanted to explore why these, why not others. I haven’t relied on journals and diaries – all of them were lost over the course of our family’s many moves. So these are the memories that came along with me, as part of my psychological baggage. I have included occasional interjections by my father and siblings, to highlight my fallibility as a narrator, and to suggest that their perspectives might have produced an entirely different story.

Of course, I wanted to get my hands on as many memoirs as I could to research ways of entering the narrative, but was concerned that this would have a distorting influence; I might adapt them, and accept words and concepts that would cause my to stray from my own intuitive direction. Also, while others might strive for constraint, my personal mission was to rescue exaggeration, not to write reasonably. Drama has been a key factor in my upbringing, and I’m told I can be quite melodramatic myself.

I was the peace-maker in my volatile family, and a people-pleaser. In writing my auto-fictional memoir, I discovered that I had also become a master of dissociation as a coping mechanism.

As children, my siblings and I had to become accustomed to moving, and with each move, to experience losses and separations. The result of such a peripatetic life is either not to become attached at all, or conversely, to dive in deeply as quickly as possible, to extract maximum emotional value, before you are wrenched away. And the way to people’s hearts, I discovered, was through our family stories, many of them growing taller and taller with each re-telling.

When it came to writing this memoir, I couldn’t be absolutely certain about what was true and what was exaggerated. Which is why the memoir has been cast as auto-fiction. This gave me the freedom to change names (for protection), and to converge memories. I have also altered the chronological sequence for two reasons: because I can’t precisely remember dates, and also for narrative convenience.

But why publish at all?

The public reason is that I was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary and felt the need to produce a result. A more private reason is that I also wanted to bring my mother back to life. I was a daddy’s girl and didn’t know my mother well. I wanted to ‘find’ her, and by osmosis, learn something about myself too. Also, I never had closure with her. There were things we both needed to forgive. I wanted to revive her so I could love and honour her more.

And there’s a third reason. When I met the Limerick-born poet Desmond O’Grady in Kinsale, where he was living at the same time as me, he repeatedly offered this advice: ‘live a life. Leave a record.’ And that made an impact on me.

In the end, I had far too much material. I found that by breaking down the stories into micro-memories, and treating them as prose poems, I could apply my editing skills as a poet and keep cutting until each took up no more than a page.

Many of the memories relate to stories my father told us over the years, and to things that happened to my brother, to my mother. But Alan Heathcock, an American writer whose workshop I attended, advised me that I had to be the agent of my own story, not merely a witness to other lives. I had to be the actor – find my own acts.

I am conscious that happiness ‘writes white’. But still, when I looked at my narrative more closely, I was shocked: why were the strongest personal experiences based around anger, embarrassment, shame, guilt? Why did my childhood identity seem to be primarily bound up with the concept of fear?

And then I realised something. It was my fears that made me an agent in my own life; that drove me to act.

That revelation led me to focusing my narrative around a single event – the first completely independent act of my life. A parachute jump.

It was to be a defining moment. It would liberate me from my fears. It would change my life.

And it did. During the landing, I fractured four vertebrae, and was lucky to survive. For the first fortnight, the doctors believed I would be paralysed from the waist down. I was incarcerated in hospital for a long time. And during that time, I began to write.

So yes, the jump did change my life. I’ve become a writer as a result of that single mad act. Thank you for helping me to realise that, Alan Heathcock.

The narrative is interspersed with a series of flashes forward to that jump.

So far, the wind has carried me to a certain height, from which I have had a whole new perspective. I trust and hope it will continue to offer a soft landing.
Tied to the Wind by Afric McGlinchey is published by Broken Sleep Booksand is also available as an ebook.

****

Here’s the The Irish Times link: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/bringing-my-mother-back-to-life-1.4765419?fbclid=IwAR0YyllGTotleNc83PG8t5qJOP0qtCVTk6WR1JmGe8t2MymxYjIvsGatzPo

REVIEWS:

In The Dublin Review of Books by Fióna Bolger (November 2021, 126 Shares)

Skydiving 

Fióna Bolger

Tied to the Wind, by Afric McGlinchey, Broken Sleep Books, 328 pp, €17.99, ISBN: 978-1913642907

Migration, trauma, and shifting identities across borders feature in the questions I circle in my head as I read Tied to the Wind. And there is much here to add to that mix. I also note the space between the protagonist, Itosha, and Afric McGlinchey, the author. Perhaps this distancing allows McGlinchey to write about her childhood self more easily. She mentions in her blog the challenge of writing a memoir, and chooses to define the book as auto-fiction, because memory is too tenuous and fragile to pin down as fact.

As Oliver Sacks wrote: “Every act of perception is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.” With this, I qualify my own creative reading of Tied to the Wind.

This is Afric McGlinchey’s third book. Two poetry collections, The Ghost of the Fisher Cat and The Lucky Star of Hidden Things, and a chapbook, Invisible Insane, were previously published to much critical acclaim, and her collections have both been translated into Italian.

Tied to the Wind is poetic in intent and portrays “a young girl’s attempts to tether herself to a life that keeps coming unfixed, every time her family moves from Ireland to Southern Africa. Interwoven into the narrative are the puzzle pieces of a fateful decision to undertake a skydive, despite her fear of heights.” There is a family at the centre of these stories. A mother, a father, a brother, a sister. The interjections, set apart at the foot of some pages, by both Molly and Ivor (Itosha’s younger siblings) lend the text the air of something which has been, if not agreed upon, at least discussed with the surviving family members.

The book is formed of a collection of fragments, each page containing a short flash piece, or prose poem (depending on your inclination to categorise) or a right-aligned lyric. These short texts are like a series of interconnecting beads which the reader has to string together to follow the journey for herself. And yes, you must string, your hands, your body becoming implicated in this visceral experience.

“Tied to the Wind doesn’t pretend to present a cohesive picture of a life,” McGlinchey warns us. I would suggest that Tied to the Wind doesn’t tolerate pretence of any type; as readers, we find ourselves drawn in but not allowed to suspend our faculties. These flash pieces light up aspects of our own lives, of ourselves, and as such we are implicated in the making of the story in a way a solid narrative novel could never achieve.

On receiving a copy, I was struck by its weight, size and texture. It is similar to an old-style school textbook in its size and holding it is a comforting sensation. The feather illustration on the cover is so realistic you almost feel like blowing it away. And the cover fixes some of the motifs we will find in the text – the colour of a clear sky, the element of air, the windblown feather of a bird.

Other key elements:

The sky: Irish, Southern African, clear or cloudy, rippling with heat, or clouds “eating up the sun”;
day: “Time passes more slowly in a field when you are lying in it. Watch the silvery sun being pulled to the horizon as though there was a secret magnet.”
night:
“He takes my hand. Not a word about the incident, just points out all the stars streaming a sash of liquid silver across the sky.”

The sky is a recurring character. Itosha’s relationship to it deepens through her parachute jump, which is a presence throughout the text. The on-the-brink almost breathless skydiving poems appear at intense moments in the otherwise prose narrative. Air, in its wind form, pushes the words of the skydiving interludes to the very right edges, as if the words are almost being blown off the page.

You’re here,
a comet
on the rim
of the sky,
as the earth spins
and hurtles.
You look up
for proof
that your parachute
is still open,
the wind
shouting
inside it.
Before and after
have been
sheared away.
There is only
this.

There are feathers to be found falling through the text: “The first migration …”, where the birds are air-surfing above the children, the seagull, “Skimming down across the sea … lonely bird, just like me, to Itosha’s mother “folding her cleverness away under bright-coloured wings”, her father’s piano hands “flying like birds”, her mother as a carrier pigeon  and she herself “feeling an uprush of birds in my chest”, or a swift, the bird tied to the Ireland/Southern Africa migration route, to name but a few.

With Itosha, we swallow-dive, “leaping into the air, feeling its rush flow over your body, flipping, then plunging into the pool. Everything is different under water, that denser element.” For someone whose greatest achievement is the reddening of a belly flop, I am in that body leaping, flowing, feeling the dive. For the child Itosha, experiences are intense and embodied and the writing captures this in concentrated form. We are given visceral detail and drawn into the body of the text again and again.

Itosha recounts her many guilty secrets, from the snake killed because she disturbed it, to self-blame after shouting to her brother for help, an act that triggers a family schism. As the Rhodesia she has been living in becomes increasingly militarised, she is surrounded by soldiers on R & R from the war and exposed to the physical and psychological consequences of this. Her detailed snapshots of characters such as Jack before and after service and the impact of their PTSD on those around them are powerful testimony to the damage inflicted by war and conflict.

Jack, when he and Itosha first meet, is not what she expects. “He reaches to rescue a dragonfly fizzing dustily on the surface, wades to the edge, lays it on the concrete and watches until it shakes its wings and totters off.” But later, after he’s been to war, where “He didn’t die, though all the rest of his stick did”, she is horrified by his behaviour. “Now he’s driving the car directly at a mother balancing a basket of avocados on her head, baby swaddled behind her in an orange kikoi. She topples into the ditch, becoming a parcel of soaked orange cloth.”

And the avocados become code perhaps for grenades and violence, reappearing later in the garden of her house, now full of soldiers.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
…
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind

                        Emily Dickinson 1263

McGlinchey tells the truth, but from the angle of a skydiver, and we are drawn into this world of spinning experience. Along with Itosha, we are trying to make sense of it all. “Black, why are you called Black? He laughs softly. I can ask the same thing. Why are you called Itosha? Maybe because you are an African girl? I giggle.”

We never find out either of the whys, but the questions resonate in our heads as we read on. “Back in my room, I lean on the sill. Maybe my name is a sign. Maybe I am meant to be an African girl.” And years later, she thinks: “What a name. Who gave it to him? Why didn’t we ask if he had another name, a birth name?”

McGlinchey resists the ever-present temptation to editorialise. Itosha experiences the world in the present moment and we are invited to share her perception. She grows in understanding as she ages but no overarching world view is presented. We are invited to look here, and here, and here, and make of it what we will, just as a child must do.

His shadow looming on the wall, whistle of the thin, flexible riding crop. Ivor makes not a sound. So I hold it in too, but grasp with each successive whip-whip-whip, squeezing Ivor’s hand tight. One, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve …
That’s enough Seán. Mum’s grey voice in the doorway.
After Dad follows her out of the room, we stay knelt over the bed as we catch our breath and check out the welts on our bums. They begin to trickle red. Ivor turns to me. We won, he says. How do you mean? I ask him. Because, we didn’t cry.

Later in the book, as her parents discuss moving country, Itosha describes their conversation: “Their voices leave spaces, like a threadless hem with a line of small holes.” And again, we are pulled into this family dynamic, not just as observers, but in a more visceral way.

When Dad returns from the hospital, words are coming from his mouth but they take a while to reach me. Intensive, he repeats. Care. We must take care of her. She almost died, as he looks at me. Do you understand? That heart attack nearly killed her.
My heart caught on a hook.

The use of pauses and charged language intensifies the experience of reading these pieces. Each resonates with the reader all the more for not being fully embedded in a conventional narrative. Glossing over these provocations to remember our own childhoods is not possible: there’s nowhere to run on the mainly white pages. This way of writing, as bursts of embodied emotion in poetically charged language, makes clear the flash, momentary nature of memory. At the same time, the language allows the reader to experience each piece in their own body. “My heart caught on a hook.”

We find ourselves reading the story of a young girl growing into womanhood, between continents, with constantly shifting surroundings, unable to find stability, as she highlights at the end. The white space in this book becomes the blue sky in which the words are falling towards earth with an inevitability and we as readers are called to construct a narrative for ourselves with an increasing sense of urgency.

This text could be seen as an enactment of trauma. There’s a sense in which all moments exist and are equally relevant at any time: the constant rattling of the ice cubes in a bucket becomes a sound track to the endless parental partying, “and we’ve missed it again, the tree-wafting, world-sleeping nightness of night”; the association of a chocolate bar with an incident of childhood sexual abuse; the teen’s voice declaring “Adults are not to be trusted. Not even priests. Especially not priests.”; and the breathlessness of the interspersed skydiving experience throughout the book. All of these contribute to the sense of a text so intense and fragile it is cracking in places, allowing space and time to mix and meld.

For some readers, secret spaces might be perceived, hidden between these prose poems and skydiving pieces, “places more intimate even than our own bodies”.

I find myself writing about the fact that some people have never had a tree, or a room or even a bed to themselves. They have lived every minute of their lives in the presence of others. But no matter where anyone is in the world, whatever their circumstance, they can go to this secret place, the most intimate thing we have, more intimate even than our bodies.

Although this is a unique work – auto-fiction in a flash-fiction format with an intense use of language and a fearless approach to content – there are two other books with which the themes of PTSD and the search for a place to belong resonate for me. Robin Robertson’s The Long Takealso uses poetry to portray trauma and PTSD. And Sarah Crossan’s The Weight of Water handles the story of a girl’s migration and search for a sense of belonging through a form of poetry. In McGlinchey’s work, she captures both these themes through a similarly hybrid form.

This book is a skydive from the first slap and a four-year-old and her brother on the run, wondering “how will I know my own home?” through numerous shifts of place, family issues, the impact of war on individuals and communities, through violence, racism, sexism, alcoholism, and finally, to the note passed by a stranger to Itosha: “If you tie yourself to anything, tie yourself to the wind.”

The brave reader dives in to these intense experiences, but this book lands you gently, if shaken, at the end. Your parachute is McGlinchey’s sure-wordedness and craft, her ability to catch the winds of language and fly us with her. Do not open this book lightly, but know that the experience will be well worth it.

1/11/2021

Fióna Bolger has lived in Ireland and India. Her first full collection was published in 2019 by Yoda Press, Delhi, A Compound of Words. Her grimoire, The Geometry of Love Between the Elements, was published by PB Press in 2013. She facilitates workshops on various aspects of poetry for all ages and stages. Her next collection is due out from Salmon Poetry in June 2022, Love in the Original Language. www.fionabolgerpoetry.com

Review in the Irish Examiner by Michael Duggan:

                                                              

Here’s a link to an interview for OUT FROM THE CITY (interview by Leah Mulcahy):

https://outfromthecity.wordpress.com/2021/12/06/an-interview-with-afric-mcglinchey/

Here’s an interview with the author Nikki Dudley for her blog:

Hello!

Thanks for agreeing to appear in my newsletter / on my blog. 

Q: Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your writing?

I live with my partner, an artist and poet, by the sea in a remote part of West Cork.  I’m a book editor, reviewer, workshop facilitator and mentor. So my life is all about the written word. When I’m not working, I’m reading other stuff and writing, walking and swimming. Lockdown has been easy for us, as not much about our life has changed. 

In terms of my writing habits, I don’t have a set rhythm or ritual, although I’m more likely to write in the morning. I hate the idea of being pigeon-holed, although there’s not much chance of that anyway,  as I’ve lived a pretty nomadic life, and don’t really fit into any of the Irish boxes. All I ask of myself is that every new book I write has a freshness to it, a new angle, different from my earlier work. Of course, one’s writing style or ‘voice’ is always going to be identifiable, like handwriting. No getting away from that!

Q: Which book/s have you read at least 3 times?

Well, I’ve read King Lear – my favourite Shakespeare play – at least six times, but as that was for study, maybe it doesn’t count? Sylvia Plath’s Ariel poems, because I wrote my thesis on her work. Recently, I read the Canadian poet, Eva H.D.’s début, Perfect Rotten Mouth several times. Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Oh, and Amy Leach’s Things that Are. But I am such a bibliophile that usually I get to read  a book only once or maybe twice, because there are so many tantalising others queued up, waiting.

Q: Is there a writer you would love to meet? Who and why?

Impossible question! So many writers, so many reasons! Maybe James Joyce – a very complex character, probably fun when he was drinking. Because even though he was supremely selfish, his self-belief and his gigantic vision, intellect and ambition were spectacular – as well as his ability to win patrons, his courage, impulsiveness and sense of adventure,  his ability to absorb languages the way you absorb a tan in the sunshine. Joyce reminds me of my charismatic, alcoholic, musical, self-absorbed, adventurous father, whom I adored.

Q: What’s your least favourite part of the writing process?

Having to promote a new book. Although I do enjoy readings if there’s another poet reading with me. Much less pressure! 

Q: Which fictional character would you invite for a drink and what do you think you’d discuss?

I’d like to invite both Sugar and Agnes from Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White. It was agony reading about Agnes’s continuing ingnorance of sexual matters, even periods, and I’d love to have a heart-to-heart with both of them about being women in those Victorian times, sharing with them how it is these days, discussing the dynamics between men and women then and now.

Q: How would you describe your writing style? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you write everyday or whenever the moment strikes you? 

A pantser. I binge write at first. Once the bones of a book are in place though, strategy comes into it.

Q: What advice would you give a new writer?

Seek out a mentor. Make friends with your local librarian, and request books. Read, read, read, not just Irish, but international writers, and outside your own genre too. Only submit poems you’re proud of to journals you admire (if you can’t afford to subscribe to them, you can access them in good libraries, or online). Always wait at least a month after writing a poem before sending it anywhere, because hopefully you’ll continue editing and improving it. Submit regularly to New Irish Writing and enter competitions. 

Q: What inspires you?

The sea. Swimming. The natural world. Dinner party conversations with good friends. Music. Art. Movies. New places. Flying. Love. Reading. 

Q: Which words/phrases do you overuse in your writing?

Honestly not sure. Just did a check on Wordcounter and the repeated words in an extended piece I’ve just written are: wind, light, sea, body. You can see where I’ve been spending lockdown!

Q: Tell us about your latest work. 

It’s called Tied to the Wind, and is an auto-fictional account of my nomadic childhood. My family moved back and forth between Ireland and Southern Africa, so it was difficult to attach, latch on, to have a sense of belonging. I wanted to re-enter that childhood space, to relive those moments. So I wrote in the present tense, with no advantage of enlightened adult hindsight. I wanted to meet the child I was, and get a sense of her and her perceptions. The I, in the story, is called Itosha. That distancing helped.

The constant moving triggers a sense of destabilisation, exacerbated by my father’s alcoholism, racism, war and the conflicts of complicit colonial privilege. Interwoven into the narrative are flash-forward puzzle pieces of a fateful decision to undertake a skydive, despite Itosha’s fear of heights. She wanted to shock everyone, including herself, to be an agent in her own life. And that impulsive act backfires. But she does learn something too.

I intended the narrative to be in the form of prose poems, but some critic is bound to argue that it’s no such thing. Of course, it depends on how you define a prose poem. I read the Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, and the diversity of those poems is exhilarating. I also read Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept – another one I’ve read a few times! My story isn’t as lyrically ‘heightened’ as that. But if I define a prose poem as having a certain compression, an atmosphere,  as having its own entity, who’s to contradict me?

Q: Where can we find out more about you and/or your book?

Here’s a link my book on the Broken Sleep Books website, where you can order the book:

https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/afric-mcglinchey-tied-to-the-wind

And here’s a link to my website: www.africmcglinchey.com

Twitter handle: @itosha

Thank you for your questions, Nikki. It’s been fun.

Here’s a link to Nikki Dudley’s website: https://www.nikkidudleywriter.com/blog/speaking-to-afric-mcglinchey-about-her-new-collection

*****

A Journalist in uMlazi by Nick Mulgrew

(Warning: This is a triggering poem.)

He was a journalist for ten years. During his training,
he was sent to uMlazi D Section. It was raining.
With mentor and broken Zulu he searched on the roadside
for anyone who knew of a girl who had been raped
by a man in the dark in a bush by the path by the stream.

He couldn’t believe he would find that girl. He’d had a dream
his work might be meaningful; but there might be no meaning
in the diagonal world of green and mist and keening
people, who stared at him like the interloper he was.
Hubristic boy, stunned sun-god caught with his ear in the conch.

The first person he spoke to, though, stood right next to the girl.
The second person he spoke to was the girl. But which girl?
the girl asked. There were five girls, in fact, with eight-ball eyes each,
each wandering this neighbourhood in their mauve matric hoodies.
They’d each been attacked on their way home from extra classes.

She took a maze of paths, showed him the dent in the grasses.
Yes, this is where it happened, she said, unable to blink
away tears from swelling, and welling she began to shrink
within herself. The journalist nodded, wrote in shorthand;
in his best impression of someone who could understand.

The girl said she knew who he was. They all knew who he was.
Yes, he’d raped at least five girls her age. They knew who he was.
She had told laughing policewomen. They knew who he was.
The journalist asked, therefore, if could he write who he was.
No—due to legal reasons, he would not write who he was.

He was a journalist for ten years. This was his first day.
His mother picked him up from work; the next she did the same.

No Need

Sad to see that my début collection, The lucky star of hidden things (which was reprinted three times) is sold out and no longer on the Salmon Poetry site. Recently I was contacted by a Spanish translator for permission to post her translation of one of my poems. Honoured, of course, as I always am by translators who attentively trace the energy and tone of a poet’s language, and from the original poem, create one of their own. This is the poem she chose to translate:

No need to tell me 

that endings

are a moment of transcendence,

and all that is solid        melts into air;

no need to remind me 

of the eyeblink tales of life,

like furniture and fridge snacks that stack up, 

then vanish in a flame-lick.

No need to challenge me 

to walk the high wire,

or to drag me to a party with all the wrong people,

where men take up space with knuckles on hips,

and there’s barely elbow room.

No need to show me 

I’m in safe hands – 

I’ve seen your scar 

and know what you’re made of.

No need for you to hold up 

a cardboard cut-out sun:

I remember how it looks, how it feels.

Or to suggest 

that I’m more stone than heart:

what do you expect?

I’m still  half a couple from ark days

pickling memories in a jar.

No need to say 

that love will return some day 

like speech after long silence;

that’s    dirty talk.

Here’s a link to Victoria Principi’s translation:

No hace falta

Tied to the Wind

• 

So, my next book has gone to the printers! It’s a hybrid in terms of genre, and my biggest book yet, at 327 pages. Here’s a lovely endorsement from Mia Gallagher:

Afric McGlinchey’s long-form debut steals beguilingly across the spiderweb between poetry, memoir and novel, offering an exquisitely rendered narrative of a young, hurting, growing life. Lush, sensitive, harrowing, gloriously written. 
   — Mia Gallagher, Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland

And here’s a blurb, for more of an inkling:

Tied to the Wind doesn’t pretend to present a cohesive picture of a life. It’s an auto-fictional rendering of a childhood, where the Irish-born protagonist (named Itosha) finds her family moving  to, and then from, Zambian sunshine, to a situation of financial deprivation back in Ireland, followed by a change in fortunes, then another move to war-torn pre-independent Zimbabwe. Context is slowly drip-fed through fragments. But the implicit impressions concerning power and privilege reveal the complexities faced by this infuriatingly passive half-innocent trying to understand something of the world she inhabits.

If anyone would like to review it, please get hold of me. Meanwhile, it’s available for pre-order here: https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/afric-mcglinchey-tied-to-the-wind

Hum, Hum by Mary Oliver

1.
One summer afternoon I heard
a looming, mysterious hum
high in the air; then came something

like a small planet flying past –
something

not at all interested in me but on its own
way somewhere, all anointed with excitement:
bees, swarming,

not to be held back.

Nothing could hold them back.

2.
Gannets diving.
Black snake wrapped in a tree, our eyes
meeting.

The grass singing
as it sipped up the summer rain.
The owl in the darkness, that good darkness
under the stars.

The child that was myself, that kept running away
to the also running creek, 
to colt’s foot and trilliams,
to the effortless prattle of the birds.

3. SAID THE MOTHER
You are going to grow up
and in order for that to happen
I am going to have to grow old
and then I will die, and the blame 
will be yours.

4. OF THE FATHER
He wanted a body
so he took mine.
Some wounds never vanish.

Yet little by little 
I learned to love my life.

Though sometimes I had to run hard –
especially from melancholy –

not to be held back.

5. 
I think there ought to be 
a little music here:
hum, hum.

6.
The resurrection of the morning.
The mystery of the night.
The hummingbird’s wings.
The excitement of thunder.
The rainbow in the waterfall.
Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.

The mockingbird, replaying the songs of his 
neighbors.
The bluebird with its unambitious warble
simple yet sufficient.

The shining fish. The beak of the crow.
The new colt who came to me and leaned
against the fence
that I might put my hands upon his warm body
and know no fear.

Also the words of poets
a hundred or hundreds of years dead — 
their words that would not be held back.

7.
Oh the house of denial has thick walls
and very small windows
and whoever lives there, little by little,
will turn to stone.

In those years I did everything I could do 
and I did it in the dark –
I mean, without understanding.

I ran away.
I ran away again.
Then, again, I ran away.

They were awfully little, those bees,
and maybe frightened,
yet unstoppably they flew on, somewhere,
to live their life.

Hum, hum, hum

Aristotle by Billy Collins

This is the beginning. 
Almost anything can happen. 
This is where you find 
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land, 
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page. 
Think of an egg, the letter A, 
a woman ironing on a bare stage 
as the heavy curtain rises. 
This is the very beginning. 
The first-person narrator introduces himself, 
tells us about his lineage. 
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings. 
Here the climbers are studying a map 
or pulling on their long woolen socks. 
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn. 
The profile of an animal is being smeared 
on the wall of a cave, 
and you have not yet learned to crawl. 
This is the opening, the gambit, 
a pawn moving forward an inch. 
This is your first night with her, 
your first night without her. 
This is the first part 
where the wheels begin to turn, 
where the elevator begins its ascent, 
before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle. 
Things have had time to get complicated, 
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore. 
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers 
teeming with people at cross-purposes— 
a million schemes, a million wild looks. 
Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack 
here and pitches his ragged tent. 
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals, 
where the action suddenly reverses 
or swerves off in an outrageous direction. 
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph 
to why Miriam does not want Edward’s child. 
Someone hides a letter under a pillow. 
Here the aria rises to a pitch, 
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge. 
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge 
halfway up the mountain. 
This is the bridge, the painful modulation. 
This is the thick of things. 
So much is crowded into the middle— 
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados, 
Russian uniforms, noisy parties, 
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall— 
too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end, 
the car running out of road, 
the river losing its name in an ocean, 
the long nose of the photographed horse 
touching the white electronic line. 
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade, 
the empty wheelchair, 
and pigeons floating down in the evening. 
Here the stage is littered with bodies, 
the narrator leads the characters to their cells, 
and the climbers are in their graves. 
It is me hitting the period 
and you closing the book. 
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen 
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck. 
This is the final bit 
thinning away to nothing. 
This is the end, according to Aristotle, 
what we have all been waiting for, 
what everything comes down to, 
the destination we cannot help imagining, 
a streak of light in the sky, 
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

https://wordpress.com/post/africmglinchey.wordpress.com/1771

Why You Should Never Marry a Poet by Heather Bell

Think about it – the way that credit cards, bougainvillea,
vacations, dictionaries, the road on the way to work will

all never be enough. The poet wishes
with her deepest bones
and writes that she wishes
she had killed you

in the supermarket. She wonders why
she ever loved you in song. 

She publishes book after book. Each line detailing
how your hair is ugly and monstrous in the morning. And how,
like moss, you cling to her
so piteously. 

But you marry her anyway.
and she looks like a roar of snow
in white. You figure she will read a poem about you
that day in front of everyone: her throat

is, after all, a stamen
or matchstick. 

But she is silent, says only the I DO’s
and a few Bible verses. 

The poet loves with a most violent
heart. What you have not known-
she has wanted to tell you the truth
all of these years,

but grew silent as an old lover does
at eighty. There is no way to say

how one loves the ache of your cracked lips,
the heavy belly of your tongue, the years she spent
feeling not loved,
but still loving. Think about it-

the poet is fearful of others knowing and finding your mouth.

She is frightened of you –
realizing you could have been
loved better or harder
or with real words.

Previously published in @Tender

Easter by Roisín Kelly

As it’s Easter, and Roisín is one of Cork’s own (well, we claim her!) here’s her lovely poem, which first appeared in The Guardian. Just had to share it on my blog:

You walk by holding a bunch of flowers
never knowing that you’ve just performed a miracle.
Are those flowers for your girl?
I imagine her dressed up like an Easter egg
in yellow and pink. I’d tap at you like an egg,
cracking your thin chocolate shell.
If I were made of chocolate too, I’d break
off parts of myself to give to you and your girl.
Once, I gave my words for garden
and water and moonlit and love
to a man who kissed me. After he rolled
a stone over my heart and shut me off
from the world, I had no words left
to describe the dark dream that followed.
Now you’ve walked by, godlike in jeans
and an old t-shirt, the sun glinting on one
silver earring. Now a rose is once again
not only rose but also soft and red
and thorn and bee and honey.
Now a bird is singing song and tree
and nest in a high place and blue speckled egg.
You yourself are glowing with words, they move
up and down you as if they’re alive.
The words bring themselves to me
and tell my tongue sweetness over and over.
The words are everything. With them,
I’ll turn water to wine at your wedding.

And here’s Carol Rumens’ analysis of the poem. Hope she doesn’t mind me sharing it:

From Mercy, the first full-length collection by the young Belfast-born poet, Róisín Kelly, Easter seems to have a special glow to it. And no, the glow isn’t only that of romantic love. The latter is a strong contributory factor, of course: its pains are rekindled for the speaker when her ex-boyfriend walks by “holding a bunch of flowers”. The question “Are those flowers for your girl?” contextualises it a little, while retaining the tonal mystery. Is the voice angry, sarcastic, sorrowful? We might guess it’s all three.

I like the mixed emotions playing throughout the earlier passages of the poem, and how they are finally resolved. Easter eggs initially supply the poetic calories. All three players in the love triangle are turned into chocolate, the man’s current girlfriend being a particularly sickly and triumphant example “dressed up … / in yellow and pink”. The man is seen as the more vulnerable.

Writing a kind of verse letter to the man in question, the speaker imagines tapping him and “cracking your thin chocolate shell”. Birth may be suggested, but death occurs first. She imagines her own comic-extreme self-sacrifice, breaking off parts of her chocolate self to give the man and his girl.

Later on, imagery from the Passion of Christ recalls the numbness and sense of being buried alive “after he rolled / a stone over my heart / and shut me off from the world”. Probably the same boyfriend was the culprit, though not necessarily. Kelly’s change of pronoun leaves it ambiguous. The “sepulchre” analogy is pitched high, yet it’s also faithful to the experience of severe depression, a suffocating stone that’s all too real.

Now the speaker returns the ex-lover to mortal form, a little self-mockingly at first – “godlike in jeans / and an old t-shirt, the sun glinting on one / silver earring”. The mood has changed, perhaps with the recovery of simultaneously erotic and sublimated feelings.

Words withheld and words given become the dominant theme. In line nine, the first of the special, italicised words and phrases, garden, helps the transition to biblical analogy. There is an implied betrayal. But the words are magically potent. They ignite the rose, although they include thorn. They produce birds who lay “blue speckled egg(s)” in nests high in trees. Kelly’s italics slow the reader, so we savour these archetypal symbols, these ordinary happy words, and, importantly, imagine them as the especially meaningful gifts originally offered in the poet’s native Irish language.

Six lines from the end, the poet turns on her full power with that marvellous image of the man clothed in, covered in, words that “move / up and down you, as if they’re alive”. Most significantly, “the words bring themselves to me / and tell my tongue sweetness over and over”. They enable the speaker to find her own words and “The words are everything…” Once more, I was reminded of a passage from the New Testament: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the word was God.”

Out of the rediscovery of inspiration and language comes the generosity of forgiveness – and, of course, the miracle. A miracle was first attributed to the man in the poem’s second line: now, an old-new miracle is performed by the speaker. What could be more generous than turning water to wine at a rival’s wedding feast? And of course the wine is also the poet’s gift-to-self – part of her own word feast, now freely flowing.

Easter appears in the forthcoming collection, Mercy, to be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2020.

Directory of current Irish literary journals

I first compiled this directory of Irish journals in 2016. Since then some journals have become defunct, and others have sprung up, particularly during the lockdown, so I thought it was time to update it. For writers just beginning to submit work, I recommend trying the newer journals first. Those who have already had work published, you know the ones to go for! But even if you’re a more established writer, it might be good karma to support the new journals too. Besides, some of them might go places.  Comments always welcome.

 

This artwork by Jeanie Tomanek, titled Security, appears in the Spring 2021 issue of Spontaneity. You can view more of her work here.

So, here’s the updated list:

 

Abridged                                                                                                              http://www.abridged.one                                                                                                                        

Beautiful product. And the themed submission calls are irresistible, poems in themselves. This is an online and also a print journal, based in the North (but we’re being inclusive here!) Besides, they’ve taken poems of mine, so they’re right up there in my estimation!

A New Ulster                                                              https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/new-home-page

The editor, Amos Grieg, hopes that this journal ‘will act as a reflection of the changing times in which we live in and grant you the reader a doorway into other worlds of the imagination.’ The journal appears monthly and has been in publication since September 2012.

Banshee Literary Journal                                                                  https://bansheelit.tumblr.com

A gorgeous journal, Arts Council funded, with three editors who are happening writers themselves: Laura Jane Cassidy, Eimear Ryan and Claire Hennessy. They have taken poems of mine. And they pay! Going places.

Beir Bua Journal                                                                      https://beirbuajournal.wordpress.com

An Irish, inclusive, journal for the  avant-garde; postmodern, asemic, experimental, surrealist, visual poetry, poetry object, & art. Not familiar with this one yet, but curious to check it out.

Boyne Berries                                                                                 http://boyneberries.blogspot.ie/ 

This long-standing journal came out of a writers’ group and has grown legs since, although it appears to have shut up shop since the lockdown.

Burning Bush 2                                                                                  https://issuu.com/burningbush2 

A good reputation, but went underground for a bit. Had work in this. Not sure if it’s still happening, although the website is still online.

Channel

https://channelmag.org

 

This journal of environmentally-themed poetry, prose, and criticism, seeking to channel climate concerns and natural preoccupations into writing. Its third issue was published at the end of 2020 and the team are currently working on issue four.

 

Cold Coffee Stand                                                                  https://coldcoffeestand.wordpress                                      

‘Make it new, wrong, broken and brilliant’ invites this journal, which seems to have been around since 2017, although it’s new to me. ‘Cold Coffee Stand is, and always will be, open to all voices.’ They are ‘dedicated to amplifying work from every facet of Irish culture and society.’ Their submission call is always open, so that’s handy.

Crannóg                                                                                http://www.crannogmagazine.com/  

Established in 2002, and Arts Council funded, Crannóg receive about a thousand submissions for each of their three issues per year. One of the first to publish a poem of mine, so I have a soft spot! And they pay. The editors are Sandra Bunting, Tony O’Dwyer, Ger Burke and Jarlath Fahy, all of whom read each submission.

Crossways Magazine                                                                        https://crosswaysmagazine.com

Crossways is a literary magazine that deals in original poetry, short-fiction, and book reviews. Established in early 2018, its aim is to publish high quality work from authors in Ireland and around the globe. The magazine is available in both print and digital formats. You can email your submissions to: crosswaysmagazine@gmail.com. The editor is David Jordan

Cyphers                                                                                                                 http://www.cyphers.ie/

An esteemed print journal, founded by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and the late Macdara Woods and Leland Bardwell. One to aim for. Glad to have work in this. They pay.

Drawn to the Light                                                              https://drawntothelightpress.com/about/ 

Drawn to the Light Press is a magazine of contemporary poetry edited by Orla Fay. It will be published thrice yearly in October, February and June. The first issue, launched this Valentine month, is aptly enough, all about love. There’s artwork too.

FourXFour                                                                                 http://www.poetryni.com/fourxfour.html

A quarterly online journal of new poetry from Northern Ireland, committed to highlighting the up-and-comings. Edited by Colin Dardis (a busy man! He also edits Panning for Poems, below.)

Gorse                                                                                                                        http://gorse.ie/

Gorse a well-established literary journal interested in experimental fiction and smart writing. It looks for blended fiction, memoir, and history, personal essays, and fiction in translation. Haven’t sent work to this one yet, but looks interesting. Curated by Christodoulos Makris.

Icarus                                                                              http://www.icarusmagazine.com/editorialteam/

Icarus is a student literary and arts magazine based in Trinity College, Dublin. They publish two or three issues per academic year and accept submissions of poetry, prose, drama and visual art from students, staff and alumni of Trinity College. As I’m not an alumna, don’t know this one.

Idler                                                                                                                 http://www.idler.ie

Another one I don’t know. But their website says that ‘Idler brings the very best of short-form writing to mobile device and other online users. Regularly updated stories, poems and essays help make those long waits shorter… Because time is a terrible thing to waste.’

Impossible Archetype                                                  https://impossiblearchetype.wordpress.com/

An international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry edited by Mark Ward, it was founded in January 2017. They publish two issues a year and are accepting submissions until the 1st March. This is one I’m not familiar with.

Irish Pages                                                                                                          http://irishpages.org/

Based in Belfast, this journal promises ‘outstanding writing from Ireland and overseas’. Somewhat dry-looking, it is nevertheless substantial and impressive. The editor is Chris Agee. The journal is in English & As Gaeilge. I noticed that Ruth Padel, Morten Strøkness, John F Deane, Greg Cambridge, Moya Cannon, Greg Delanty, Tisja Kljalović Braić, John Glenday, Meg Bateman, Benjamin Keatinge, Slavenka Drakulić and other interesting names are among others in the current issue.

Mandrake                                                                                      https://www.mandrakejournal.com

Mandrake is a new online Dublin journal featuring the gothic, the supernatural and the weird. They are looking for fiction, non-fiction and poetry. They claim to be ‘concerned with the exploration of philosophical pessimism through gothic and horror narratives.’ Think Edgar Allen Poe, Angela Carter, Baudelaire, Mary Shelley, Beckett, David Lynch, Doestoyevsky,  Shirley Jackson, Emily Brontë. The editor is Eoin Rogers, a  graduate of a Masters in Creative Writing from NUI in Galway, and now based in Dublin. Should be interesting!

Panning for Poems                                                                    http://www.poetryni.com/panning-for-poems.html

A micro-poetry  (poems 3 – 8 lines long) broadside and online journal, edited by Geraldine O’Kane, sub-edited by Colin Dardis, based in the North. Nice to have an outlet for those tiny poems and a source for inspiration, too.

Paper Lanterns                                                                                             https://paperlanternslit.com

Paper Lanterns is a new literary journal, founded in 2020 by Grace Kelley, Amy O’Sullivan and Ruth Ennis. Short stories, flash, art, poetry and features. It got a splash in The Irish Times and on RTE when it was launched, and is Arts Council supported. It aims to promote the voices of young people in Ireland and across the world, and provide new and exciting content for teen and young adult audiences. it has beautiful artwork and is published four times a year. Three issues of Paper Lanterns have been published thus far and there are a lot more to come. Good luck to the editors – they’ve found a niche here.

Poethead                                                                                     https://poethead.wordpress.com/

An excellent poetry blog curated by Christine Murray, who is compiling a valuable and  extensive index of women poets, both Irish and international, contemporary and deceased. Great resource, and influential. So sorry to see that it’s now closed for submissions, but it’ll remain online as an archive. 

Poetry Ireland Review                                                      http://www.poetryireland.ie/writers/submission-to-pir/

The ‘journal of record’ in Irish poetry. You’re on the official literary radar once you’ve managed to get work between these pages. The current editor is Colette Bryce. The latest issue features work from Denise Riley, Kayo Chingonyi, Luke Morgan, Katie Donovan, Nick Laird, and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, among many other excellent poets, as well as Ailbhe Darcy’s perceptive analysis of documentary poetry in performance, focusing on Kimberly Campanello’s MOTHERBABYHOME and a tribute to the much-mourned Eavan Boland. They also have a pamphlet, Trumpet, which is sent to subscribers, where more reviews are featured. They pay contributors.

Riverbed Review                                                                   https://riverbedreview.wordpress.com

Riverbed Review is another new journal sprung from the lockdown. It publishes pieces inspired and informed by the natural world, particularly waterways and rivers. Looking for stories and poetry based around this theme, its current submission window for its second issue is open until March.

Ropes                                                                                            http://www.ropesliteraryjournal.com

This literary journal gets a new lease of life each year as it is passed down to the next generation of students on the MA in Literature and Publishing course at NUI Galway. Publishing poetry, prose, and visual art, Ropes aims to give emerging writers a space to platform their work, while donating its proceeds to a chosen charity; this year’s charity is COPE Galway – what better reason to support it?

Skylight 47                                                                          https://skylight47poetry.wordpress.com/

Their blurb states that they are ‘possibly Ireland’s most interesting publication’. Based in Galway. Current editors: Bernie Crawford, Nicki Griffin, Marie Cadden and Ruth Quinlan. Interesting, broadsheet-style journal. They published a glowing review of my first collection, and also some poems, so I have a crush!

Silver Apples                                                                                                                  https://silver-apples.squarespace.com                                                                                    

This one is new to me, but here’s what the About paragraph says on their website: ‘We publish writing across all genres and mediums. Do you have prose, poetry, or a one-act play? Because we want it. Do you dare to defy genres or mediums? Because we publish those pieces, too.’ They also have a competition, which is currently open for entries.

Sonder Magazine                                                                                                https://sonderlit.com

Love their blurb: “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Here’s what they say about the magazine: ‘We publish short stories, flash fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, all based around the individual and how we interact with each other. We want you, the writer, to get into the mind of someone sitting across from you on the Dart home, or the fella who just asked to bum a lighter, or even the Aisling wearing runners to work. Submission guidelines are in the Submissions tab. Have a gander. Slide into our DM’s. See you on the flipside.’ Already smitten!

Southword                                                                      https://southword.submittable.com/submit

The Munster version of Poetry Ireland Review, Southword is a print literary journal that publishes new international writing. Southword has published the work of Medbh McGuckian, Helen Ivory, Haruki Murakami, James Lasdun, Kim Addonizio, Tess Gallagher, Colm Tóibín and Vona Groarke, among other acclaimed poets and writers. The 2021 spring issue features prizewinning and shortlisted entries from the Gregory O’Donoghue and Seán O’Faoláin competitions, both organised by The Munster Literature Centre, as well as specially commissioned work. Submissions of poetry and short fiction (for the autumn issue) are open as follows: POETRY: December 1st, 2020 ‒ February 28th, 2021. FICTION: January 1st ‒ March 31st, 202. Although no longer an online journal, the online archives are still available: https://munsterlit.ie/Southword/issues_index.html

Splonk                                                                                                                           https://splonk.ie/about/

Founded in May 2019, Splonk is an online flash fiction journal dreamed up by a group of flash writers in Ireland. The word ‘splonk’ is the anglicised form of the Irish word ‘splanc’: noun fem. flash, spark. A splaincín (derived from splanc) is a spirited, fiery female. The editor is the award-winning author and poet, Nuala O’Connor. I’m including it here because the micro fictions here are pure poetry. Go for this one.

Spontaneity                                                                                                     http://spontaneity.org

‘Where everything connects’ – a beautiful online journal, curated by Ruth McKee, specialises in ekphrastic responses to visual art. The forthcoming issue (see illustration above) will be in response to the separation of families at the US border. Artists and writers from Ireland and around the world contribute their words and pictures to the magazine by responding to an image or words from the previous issue. I’ve had work in this journal and love both the premise and the product.

SurVision                                                                                                  http://survisionmagazine.com

This is an independent international online magazine founded in March 2017 and based in Dublin, Ireland. Edited by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, SurVision publishes neo-surrealist poetry and comes out in January and July. The deadlines for these issues are 31st December and 30th June. Submissions of not more than five poems are considered at any time. SurVision have now begun publishing surrealist chapbooks too. they’ve published my chapbook, Invisible Insane and also work of mine in an anthology of surrealist poetry called Seeds of Gravity.

The Bangor Literary Journal                                                              https://thebangorliteraryjournal.com

Another new NI journal, this one is currently on its thirteenth issue. They’re interested in photography, flash fiction and poetry, and welcome hybrid / experimental work. They also have several competitions. Check them out.

The Bohemyth                                                                                              http://thebohemyth.com/

Based in Dublin, editor is Michael Naghten Shanks. I don’t know much about this one yet, but it’s a quarterly online journal, publishing poetry, fiction, photography, essays. I think it’s on hiatus during the lockdown.

The Dublin Review                                                                                 https://thedublinreview.com/

The Irish Times called this ‘a world-class forum for the literary essay.’ A quarterly magazine of  fiction and non-fiction: essays, memoir, travel writing, criticism. Founded and edited by Brendan Barrington, it is highly regarded. Published in book format and assisted by The Arts Council of Ireland. Although they don’t accept poetry, I couldn’t not include them here.

The Galway Review                                                                                http://thegalwayreview.com/

‘Committed to excellence in the extraordinary art of the written word.’ Not familiar with this journal, but as it’s based in my the city of my birth, must check it out! A number of editors. I do wish they’d jazz up the look of their website though.

The Haibun Journal                                                                                https://thehaibunjournal.blog

The Haibun Journal, launched in Ireland April 2019, is a print journal specialising in the haibun literary form. The journal appears in April and October each year. The editors are: Sean O’Connor, Amanda Bell, Kim Richardson and Paul Bregazzi. Just had my first haibun accepted by them and looking forward to seeing the journal.

The Irish Literary Review                                                   http://irishliteraryreview.com/index.html

This journal, edited by former BBC journalist and Oxford Creative Writing Masters graduate Catherine Higgins-Moore, features poetry, fiction and interviews and keeps an archive of interviews. Clean. Classy. Currently closed for submissions, but I’m going to keep an eye on this one. 

The Irish Times                                                                        http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/poetry

Always worth submitting to this one if you’re unpublished. It’s a big deal to get selected for publication in New Irish Writing at the The Irish Times, as it means you’re in with a chance to be shortlisted for the coveted Hennessy awards. (I was a Hennessy winner, and trust me, there’s nothing like it.) You can email your entry to hennessynewirishwriting@irishtimes.com or post it (with a stamped addressed envelope) to Ciaran Carty, Hennessy New Irish Writing, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2. Submissions are open to unpublished writers who are Irish or resident in Ireland. All accepted stories will be printed in the Irish Times, as well as being considered for the Hennessy Literary Awards, with prizes of €1500 and €2500, as well as a trophy. And even if you are published, you can submit for the Poem of the Week. They pay contributors.

The Liminal Review                                                                                 https://www.liminalreview.com

Another new one! The Liminal Review is a literature and arts journal that is looking for the things that are made in the in-between spaces. The Liminal Review was founded in December 2020 by Alix Berber and Shauna Smullen. ‘Two queer artists looking to carve out a new space for marginalised voices in Ireland and beyond. The project emerged from a curiosity for the concept of liminal spaces, transition and temporality.’ They’re open to fiction, short prose, reviews, poetry, creative nonfiction, marginalia, and illustrations. 

The Moth Magazine                                                                                        http://themothmagazine.com/

This is a print magazine, associated with the renowned Moth Poetry Prize (one of the biggest prizes in the world for a single unpublished poem) and includes artwork. Slim, but classy. Considered one of the most beautiful and tasteful journals around. Another one to aspire to. Glad I’ve had work published here.

The Ogham Stone                                                                            https://theoghamstoneul.com/

This is a literary journal run by the Masters students of English and Creative Writing at the University of Limerick, featuring poetry, art and fiction. I noticed Mary O’Malley’s and Sinéad Morrissey’s names on the masthead.

The Penny Dreadful   
http://thepennydreadful.org/

‘The Penny Dreadful,’ claim the team, ‘is the highest brow compendium of literature since bald men invented widow’s peaks and we all decided to go along with it.’ Steered by Marc O’Connell, edited by Cethan Leahy and Róisin Kelly. Here’s more of their blurb: ‘So you have managed to navigate the highway that is the byway of the internet and found yourself washed up on the shores of The Penny Dreadful. “The what?” you ask in a simian like fashion, scratching your forehead with your knuckles. Wait here while we fetch you a banana.’ Based in the rebel county of Cork, what more can I say? They accepted my review of Kimberly Campanello’s collection, because, well, it was Kimberly! Two poetry submission rejections though (ouch).

The Pickled Body                                                                              http://thepickledbody.com/

A clean, aesthetic online poetry and art magazine ‘that plays with the senses.’ Each themed issue presents work from the surreal to the sensual and points in between – ‘poems that not only sound as good as they look, but taste as good as they feel.’ I concur. The editors are Dimitra Xidous and Patrick Chapman. Submissions are currently closed, but that could be a lockdown thing.

The Poetry Bus                                             http://thepoetrybusmag.wix.com/change#!submissions/cgyc

‘Curating the world artfully, inclusively, fairly.’ claims the journal. Published by Peadar and Collette O’Donoghue. They’ve also published a ‘grimoire’ by Fiona Bolger, and may do more.        I had work published both in print and on the CD that accompanied the substantial journal. And they nominated my poem for the Forward Prize! 

The Stinging Fly                                                                                                               http://www.stingingfly.org/

Founded by Aoife Kavanagh and Declan Meade in 1997, this is one of the most rated journals in Ireland today. Arts Council funded. The Stinging Fly publishes English and Irish poetry and also fiction. The journal has published new work by a number of acclaimed writers such as Simon Armitage, Kevin Barry, Emma Donoghue, Claire Keegan, Toby Litt, Colum McCann, Medbh McGuckian, Paula Meehan, Sinéad Morrissey, Paul Murray, Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Sharon Olds, Keith Ridgway and C.K. Stead. Hard to get into – took me four attempts! But I’ve had work accepted a few times now, and each time, it’s a thrill. The English poetry editor is Eabhan Ní Shuilleabháin. There are also contributing / guest editors such as Sally Rooney, Mia Gallagher, Thomas Morris, Cal Doyle, Danny Denton. They are now publishing books as Stinging Fly Press and have published about twelve award-winning books and anthologies. And they pay contributors.

The Tangerine                                                                                    https://thetangerinemagazine.com/

The Tangerine is a new Belfast-based magazine of new writing. It covers culture and politics, and is published three times a year. ‘We want to read work that challenges and excites us,’ they say.The print journal includes features, reportage, commentary, fiction, poetry, illustration and photography. Submissions are currently closed, but Issue 9 (100 pages) is available to buy online. 

The Waxed Lemon                                                                       https://twitter.com/TheWaxedLemon

Love the name! Based in Wexford and launched in Autumn of last year, The Waxed Lemon is an independent journal looking to publish poetry, short stories, flash fiction, photography, and art. Keep an eye on their Twitter page (above) for information about their upcoming submissions window.

The Well Review                                                                                                                 http://www.thewellreview.com/

The Well Review (TWR) was founded in 2016 by Cork native, Sarah Byrne with the support of Christian Carley, Mary-Jane Holmes and Niall Murphy. It was established ‘to create a space to house exceptional poetry from all over the world,’ says Sarah Byrne. ‘I, along with most of my Irish poet friends, very much miss The SHOp, edited by John and Hilary Wakeman, who have retired. I’m hoping that The Well Review will be the journal to compensate for that loss.’ The inaugural issue featured work by international poets such as John Burnside, Maram al-Masri, Ellen Bass, Ishion Hutchinson, Kaveh Akbar, Nick Laird, Matthew Dickman and Maggie Smith. They offer online courses too and have begun a printing press. Arts Council funded. Still trying to get into this one. The journal is published in February and September. And they pay. 

The Quarryman                                                            https://www.facebook.com/quarrymanjournal

This is a literary journal, associated with University College Cork. Originally started in 1920, this journal was revived by the 2015 MA creative writing students, and the first, substantial issue  sold out. Submissions are accepted, via their Facebook page, only for those affiliated with UCC, including alumnae. Email them at quarrymansubmissions@gmail.com

Tír na nÓg                                                                                                       https://tirnanoglit.com

This is a new publication for prose and poetry by writers native or local to Galway that engage in an international dialogue. Its first issue can be found online while submissions for its second issue will open soon.

TwoMeter Review                                                                       https://beauwilliamspoet.com/2mr/

TwoMeter Review is edited by a Dublin-based American, Beau Williams. Here’s what he says: ‘We are a working-class, grassroots magazine motivated by connection and the elevation of Irish and American voices. We believe poetry is powerful, expressive, poignant, and necessary.’ Submissions for poetry and photography for the second edition are now open. It will be published digitally with physical copies for sale. 

Winter Papers                                                                                   https://www.winterpapers.com

Self-described as ‘a fine cut of a book’, Winter Papers one of Ireland’s foremost arts anthologies, containing fiction, non-fiction, interviews, and in-conversation pieces. It has been described by The Irish Times as ‘a treasure trove of soul fuelled with deep roots in Irish soil’ and was picked as an Irish art book of the year by the Sunday Times. Edited by Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith, its sixth edition was published at the end of last year.

 

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If I’ve left any journals out, please add them, with a link, in the comments below. Thanks. Happy reading and submitting, and please subscribe and support the journals where you can. Where would we be without them?