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DERRY PRODUCTIONS .COM
Contents Covers: Pavel Buchler, Sandra Hoyn,
Brenda Bullock, Laura O’Connor, Shlomit Migay
5.
Dylan Brennan
6.
Benjamin Hiller
8.
Afric McGlinchey
9.
Aoife Mannix
10.
Jana Romanova
12.
Kate Dempsey
13.
Sandra Hoyn
14.
Angela Carr
15.
Lizz Murphy
16.
Benjamin Hiller
18.
Jana Romanova
20.
Ray Givans
21.
Sandra Hoyn
22.
Gerald Dawe
23.
Pavel Buchler
24.
Maeve O’Sullivan
25.
Gráinne Tobin
26.
Benjamin Hiller
28.
Roisin Kelly
29.
Laura O’Connor
30.
Jana Romanova
32.
Niall McCabe
33.
Sandra Hoyn
34.
Rachel Long
36.
Benjamin Hiller
38.
Denise Blake
39.
Sandra Hoyn
40.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
41.
Shlomit Migay
42.
Lizz Murphy
43.
Deirdre McKenna
44.
Clare McCotter
45.
Laura Mullen
46.
Jana Romanova
48.
Maurice Devitt
49.
Joseph Allen
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Abridged 0_37 Torquemada
Abridged 0_37 Torquemada
Devils
Editorial
A seventeenth-century facade in San Luis Tehuiloyocan tattooed with volcanic pebble-dash—theatrical scenes of a demonic nature. I visited the Devil’s House at three in the afternoon. My skin burnt
Inferno is a deep funnel of guilt. All the trouble of guilt and the guilty is swallowed by a vortex of darkness
red and blistered, I should have covered my face.
which churns with the hypocrisy of love and hate. In the circles, the spectacle of sin is matched by the
spectacle of punishment.
I saw monkeys with papal hats, rooster legs and stone-hard cocks, saw those symbols of the Christ’s passion: the cockerel, the stained
To have faith – social, political or religious – is to trust in the imposition of an ordering force on society.
cloak of Veronica, long nails and a crown of thorns.
Faith stimulates us through a sense of significance and justified suffering. Committing to any sort of faith
I saw pulqueros extracting the alcoholic semen of a cactus,
is an act of choosing a side, gaining a sense of self-definition through the choice of a clear positive and the
inward-peering angels that help with exorcisms, pagan
inherent conflict with its negative. An essential energy is derived from the tension of the central binary of
signs of environmental worship—suns and moons with evil smiles,
any faith: between good and bad, between darkness and lightness. “Without contraries is no progression.
Attraction and repulsions, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these
double-headed eagles.
I saw the Lord’s prayer written on the rafters in backwards Latin,
contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil” (Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). This
came face to face with an unhelpful librarian (for the Devil’s House
central binary forces order on the dappled chaos of existence, allowing us to negotiate the shadows and
is now a place of reading), saw the patio where green flies swarm
complexities of life.
at midnight, saw the well where the black-mass bodies were thrown and remembered the cloven hooves of my childhood nightmares,
Notions of good and evil are utterly interdependent. In order to believe in a sublime goodness, its counterpart,
an empty house on a hill above Rockbrook, a sweaty Fianna Fáiler
the darkness, must be acknowledged to exist. The good must be distinguished from the evil, and if the good are
with his shirt off asking is that youngfella a paparazzi?, a St. Bernard,
to be rewarded, the guilty must be punished. There is no light without dark and the intensity of the light must
rumless barrel round his neck, that seemed to know the way, the rubble
be matched by the intensity of the darkness. Evil is the defining shadow around the illuminated forms of the
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morally self-justified, the good, the faithful. The definition of light depends on shadow, otherwise all is chaos.
No part of this publication may
of empty beer cans and cigarette butts, Dublin Bay covered in gunmetal
be reproduced without permission.
clouds and the harmless stories of Old Nick playing cards with drunken
Copyright remains with authors/
gamblers, a murdered dwarf beneath the floorboards of Killakee House
The universal contention of good vs. evil is the independent struggle of every morally conscious individual, often perceived as a struggle between body and conscience, knotted in a pattern of confession. Through fear of the chaotic freedom of the sensual, the body, the intrusive Caliban in a chaste paradise, is punished for its
artists. abridged is a division of
and stopping at Mount Venus Cemetery to pray for those poor fools
in Purgatory.
The Chancer Corporation,
sin of sensitivity. Like Inferno, history is wrought with the maimed and mangled bodies of the damned. These
c/o Verbal Arts Centre,
freakish torsos of sin and penance, the sensationalist spectacles of hell, are the essential property of heaven.
Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry - Londonderry BT48 6PU.
context of subjective social moralities, the tension between light and dark can become a battle between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Those who depend on the light fear the dark, and strike out against it with the fires of execution. Next Abridged 0 – 39: The Never Never
website: www.abridgedonline.com
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Pride in something of great brightness necessitates an essential conflict with all that is dark, and in the facebook:abridged zero-nineteen twitter: @abridged030 telephone:028 7126 6946 email: abridged@ymail.com
Abridged Personnel Editor: Gregory McCartney is living in films for the sake of Russia, a Kino runner for the DDR. Editorial Assistant: Susanna Galbraith is a Junior Sophister student of English at Trinity College Dublin. She is currently the Co-Editor of Icarus magazine at Trinity College. Has developed a rampant habit of Abridging.
Dylan Brennan
Overleaf: Benjamin Hiller, from the Iron Foundry Torgelow series, 2013.
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Each mortal thing
Tumbled over rim in roundy wells Gerard Manley Hopkins
Disappeared
No birdsong. The pears drowsy, heat rising
for Jean McConville
The diggers combed the beach for days.
from a ladybird’s spotted furnace.
They said you were a seashell,
You are sitting on the low wall in your garden,
coral bone buried in sand,
staring from flower to flower.
a castle emptied of children
Everyone wants, wants, wants,
that Christmas the priest didn’t come
in the ruts of the dry season, where yells
and the neighbours averted their eyes.
and scraps of argument spiral from windows. Tree music, hitherto dreamy, bristles.
Your crime to help an injured man.
The world splinters. Your life is hollow to the skin,
The secret dances with soldiers
like a sprayed apple. This carcass garden
tarred and feathered the Catholic girls
once breathed; the birds once sang for you.
but you were different, a widow alone
Every gesture you make is blind and aimless.
with only babies for protection.
You breakfast together, conversation
Driven from one side of the city to the other
shaky; no piece fits. You think you see
where no one believed in conversion.
huge wings flimmering, final as your plum tree.
They never forgot who you were
You are full of hate, even for her, your lovely old refrain.
as they peeled your orphans from you,
Now it is pointless for the birds to burst into clamour.
ignoring the pleas of a boy who refused
Shutting your eyes, you half sense a wingbeat,
to let go of his mother till they put
like earth murmuring under a wheel.
the cold metal to his head.
Three days later they call you from your bed.
Small torturers promising silence.
There is only one way to go,
They say they kept you six days
and Eden too distant for any reversal.
and on the seventh the bog held its breath. It’s a salt wind
*
that still stings from a time so dark
You look down,
it can never be buried deep enough.
flexing wings from the heights of heaven. Someone is still wailing and stumbling. An abandoned scarf, broken-spoked umbrella; the shadow of an old woman. She has let her heart sink to one side, like coins sliding into a bucket; frail metal echoes of fragmentations. abridged __ p.9
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Low, a foggy music, the trees trying to right themselves, interacting with other spinning textures. In the small hours, the rain stringing down, she hears your voice, the habit of your words. The sky begins to roar. Her wan headlights seek out the sea. So now you know the cornerstones of her heart. She stares at the water dazed with moonlight, or the face of God, until she sees a communion sun, dim cathedral bones.
Afric McGlinchey
Overleaf: Jana Romanova, from the Azbuka (Alphabet of Shared Words) series, 2014
Aoife Mannix
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They Say It Diminishes By Generation We had a cat dark as a coal hole or should I say, she had us and sometimes she ate the food we gave her and sometimes sniffed indifferent, eeny meeny macka racka turned her black cat lips up at the saucer and took instead food we didn’t give her She could cross our paths thirteen times on leaving, stroking legs with a familiar cheek then three times more on her return eye dare dominacka winking golden-eyed I could never fix my luck at good or bad one for nothing two for noise three for one missing four for evasion five for the chances at your door. I fill my house with May and open umbrellas, set shoes on the table gift new purses bare of coin point at rainbows chickaboppa lollipoppa I walk under ladders abridged __ p.13
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leave the stoop grimy of a New Year’s Eve But I greet each magpie as my mother does ask most respectful after their wellbeing always give them the time of day to appease the count tim tom tosh.
Kate Dempsey
Opposite: Sandra Hoyn, Katzengeburt in Marokko, from Hundeelend series, 2002 – 04.
Aokigahara
The Japanese forest of Aokigahara is the world’s second most common suicide spot, known locally as ‘Jukai’ - the sea of trees.
The Morrigan
The Morrigan’s throat-hackles riffle air her baneful call forewarning strife cordoning off territory
At the foot of Mount Fuji, a forest: mute trees cup caverns of ice and wind; demons squat - sucking light, eating shadows -
She hitches up her raven lips
and the only sound, the roar of blood song.
her tongue and gum reckoning Her wrap is a fox a skulking road I know something of this woman
You are my Jukai, my sea of trees: all glitter and darkness; torch in hand, I face the restless heave of silence
Her black river sheen
and break your black waters, ready to burn.
one fallen feather a bowl of brine She is the washer at the ford The fetters are cast The other bird on its back wings extended in abdication Its arching neck its thrashing bill its adversary treading liver I unwrite my skin a black crow underscore I know this line this unravelling line two cups of blood one foot
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on either side of the river
Angela Carr
Overleaf: Benjamin Hiller, from the Torgelow Iron Foundry series, 2013
Lizz Murphy
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Katherina von Bora flees the Cistercian Convent at Nimbschen, 1523
(Future wife of Martin Luther)
Black-gowned, in twilight, twelve of us hunch beside the rear portal. I clutch the hand of Aunt Lena, trust her guiding steps past the clouded forehead of the moon-faced driver, and up into the canvas-covered wagon. Aunt shushes the younger nuns, pushes our heads behind fat wooden barrels. The wagon rocks forward, clunk of wheels as they bump against stones, sink into ruts. On the floor, by light of a gap in the canvas, I see the silver back and protruding jaw, smell the pungency of a pickled herring;
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dead man’s black eyes stare up, accusingly.
Previous Overleaf: Jana Romanova, from the Azbuka (Alphabet of Shared Words) series, 2013.
Ray Givans
Opposite: Sandra Hoyn, Schweineköpfe auf dem Markt, Thailand from Hundeelend series, 2002 – 04.
Ice and Fire
Trees thicken in the uncertain light and manic gulls screech all over the place. ‘Less of the old’ I hear you say, but what can be done about the boozed-up late night caller’s rant down the phone – the wreckage of years, splinters of ice,
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unrecoverable like ash?
Opposite: Pavel Buchler, Small Inferno, 2013.
Gerald Dawe
Miller at The Gate She’s got everything she needs. She’s an artist, she don’t look back – Bob Dylan
Set of Liturgical Toys 1880 – 1890 Victoria & Albert Museum
Half the cost
On birthdays and on prosperous Christmases
of two tickets
sons bred for priesthood might unwrap
for the theatre
these silver miniatures
may be too high a price
ciborium
monstrance
to pay for sitting alone
a dolls’ tea-set for pious boys
thurible
when the lights go down.
playing Melchisidech before the mirror
I watch a character
opening this gilt-edged missal bound in black leather
my own age,
with a stitched ribbon to mark the place
a New York cop,
in the liturgical year
negotiate a deal for all the fittings
unfolding tiny vestments in the colours decreed
of his former life.
for Easter
Advent
Epiphany
red for Sundays of the Holy Innocents At the interval,
white for the burials of unbaptised children
you text to offer me
violet for blessings
and for penitence
an explanation, an apology, a refund, another date. We have never met. our man is mired
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Back onstage in recriminations, issues of money, loyalty, trustworthiness.
Maeve O’Sullivan
Gráinne Tobin
Overleaf: Benjamin Hiller, from the Torgelow Iron Foundry series, 2013
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We ran through woods at dusk and in our path gleamed a pool dark water strewn with leaves and the dying sun’s light. I ran a finger through the water; its warmth made me shudder with anticipation. I convinced him we should feel it
The Pool
on our skin, so we shed our clothes, then stood naked. Our bodies did not look the same but we waded in above our hips so there was no difference. Mud slid between our toes as with a shriek, we launched ourselves to where our feet could no longer find the bottom. Water lapped our chins while we splashed each other and spat leaves from our mouths. But then you strode from among the trees, furious as one of Zeus’ storm clouds
All the way home your anger rang in our ears.
Opposite: Laura O’Connor, video still from Genuflect, 2014
Roisin Kelly
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and dragged us out by the wrists.
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For Francis under Flowers
Wrapped in the skin of an olive Skulled east past the statues of Florence. Gnarled through a star’s first light Following the oracle of satellites. Far from the mind of the marmoset, Ganesh, in the wilds of a cigarette, Paints rainbows around black holes. II Nailed with arrows under Stephen I watch the death of the eagle As Mr Gone and the goodbye boys Sing hello. With fingers of burning sand I turn gelato into kwam, And in the place of golden sofas Eat my souls. Beloved bow-legged narcissus Burns his image into bitches, And the saints who scream in whispers,
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Scream for more.
Niall McCabe
Previous Overleaf: Jana Romanova, from the Azbuka (Alphabet of Shared Words) series, 2014 Opposite: Sandra Hoyn, Straßenhund in Thailand from Hundeelend series, 2002 – 04.
Eight
It is a time that hops in memory, on one leg, then the other,
And everything speeds up
so the buckles on your Mary Jane’s bounce and clang like shackles.
You play hopscotch in high heels.
It never skips. Not this bit.
You are eyes wild, coked up,
Your foot forever hopscotch lands on 8.
You slather gloss over the hole that is your mouth or your cunt.
At 8, forever is beyond you.
Because it is a cunt now, it knows its proper name,
You can’t tell the time, only dark and light.
its proper place; for men to crawl in and out.
At 8, you don’t know the proper name for the place he touched.
From that moment it has never been sacred.
So you couldn’t tell it. The girls at school called that place ‘mini’
Forever after, girls like Joanne Cullen will not invite you to their parties
but Mum said it wasn’t.
Though you never tell a soul, they sense everything about you is dirty.
It was a front bottom, and you have a back bottom.
And will stay dirty because you don’t know how to wash him off.
Code names for, ‘You don’t need to know their real names yet.’
You never told Mum, so can’t ask what the best stain remover is for blood spots on Sunday school walls.
Because you are eyes wide and smile and frizzy hair,
You will never let a man press his forehead against yours.
you are red bike and excited for Joanne Cullen’s birthday party.
You will never know how to scour memory
You have no need to name dirty things with your girl mouth.
from an eight year old woman’s body.
It isn’t time yet. Until it is time, deciding itself, until forever presses you against a white-white wall of a Sunday school. Over his endless shoulders- on a chair- is a Bible. It will not save you. You have, and do not have, all your birthdays in this moment. Touched between the legs by the hand of time itself.
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You are ever older.
Overleaf: Benjamin Hiller, from the Torgelow Iron Foundry series, 2013
Rachel Long
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Banishing Snakes
Incense will never feel the same, just a masking to chase away odours. Beliefs will only remain as strong as the flicker from a small candle in a red holder at the feet of a statue. The truth is a couple of coats colder than an Irish winter, a chalice full of tainted faith to pass around. Believe in the white-blossomed hawthorn, the wrath of the fairies if chopped down. I can tell you this: if your palm itches you will get money, a hot coal from a fire is a stranger to the door, warts are cured by the water of a well at Conwall graveyard
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and an evil eye can alter all you believe in.
Denise Blake
Opposite: Sandra Hoyn, Tote Schlange in Thailand from Hundeelend series, 2002 – 04.
Trinity
The campus is piebald with magpies; by night a butterball moon, low-slung, offers no light on the jungle paths where we walk, hand-matched, silent. Under corridor fluorescence our lips join, then we spin away from each other in honour of vows that dwell elsewhere. And this is right, despite beating blood, despite all ease and all longing. We are holding not dusk but a dawn, one that may have no morning, or any day at all to keep it constant; but it is something and it exists – and we with it – in a suspended trinity of sultry nights, that are outside of us, yes, but inside too. There are heart-memories here: stolen glances,
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ground covered, a pair of chaste kisses.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Opposite: Shlomit Migay, Rust, 2014
TWELVE: girl girl from the internet
YouTube profile of a 12-year-old girl. Feel free to TROLL THE FUCK OUT OF IT Twenty-six-year-old man met 12-year-old girl
girl
in
Newcastle NSW, “married” 12-year-old girl girl in a religious ceremony Yemeni child-bride died after three day struggle to give birth 12-year-old says rape, security guards say she wanted it ... A 12-year-old girl sold twice by her father, village in central Anatolia: the first time for four cows,
girl death result of severe bleeding from tears to her genital and anal area. Rape of a 12-year-old girl girl dragged off the street at gunpoint East Oakland A 12-year-old daughter girl Twelve-year-old’s
met a bad man at an Internet cafe, rape, forced to live with
him for 2 years. A 12-year old Christian girl girl getting married in Romania Suspects took turns raping 12-year-old girl girl at Woodlawn roller rink Club where girl, 12, stripped. Club will keep license A 12-
year-old girl girl died as a result of physical violence inflicted by her employer. Hobart, Australia man and a woman jailed for prostituting her 12 year old daughter girl the child slept with more than 100 men in one month. a 12 year old girl, girl in her own yard … gagged and punched police officers thought she was a prostitute because she was "wearing tight shorts." struck in the face and throat. 12-year-old girl gang-raped some sixteen months ago and having undergone 19 reconstructive surgeries,
New Delhi. Taxi driver 'assaults' 12-year-old girl girl was with her friends at a petrol station on Old South Head Road when they hailed a taxi. propositioned the girl before locking the doors Sydney ... women and girls girl who have fled the conflict in Sri Lanka to go to camps, say violence is their chief source of fear Overcrowding lack of privacy for women and adolescent girls Women and girls in eastern Congo fear soldiers meant to protect them. Sudanese girls girl and young women are still lost. “Local men have tried to take her twice already,” one woman, a
come to our house and demand money or a girl girl. Mexico … Six out
of 10 women and girl girl migrants experience sexual abuse. They said that if I went to the police, they would shoot me dead. YouTube profile of a 12-year-old girl girl. Feel free to TROLL THE FUCK OUT OF IT Feel free TROLL THE FUCK Profile of a 12-year-old girl
TWELVE: girl girl
Lizz Murphy
Opposite: Deirdre McKenna, Untitled, 2014
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Rohingya refugee told ... Guangzhou 12-Year-Old Girl girl Raped and Murdered After Being Abducted Downstairs from Own Home. At night they
Of all the trees my favourite
1.
this sea-green turning silver pine
The uh huh the oh the sweet
roosting me among the stars
The no I don’t who does the know I
the strength of its scent
The vacancy of the self well long time
sapping the stench
In there with that door shut huh
of their flesh and their gold.
Not a sound I hope but what if The I not us trying hard not
Hunched on the top branch
Saint Christina’s Gut
I am a sparrowhawk female of the species larger by far than any male.
To make too much noise
Masturbating
The door shut the shut door Locked opens
Today I have fed well
Obvious uh huh why would you even have to
on the prey he could not take.
Admit you admit That flood of light
I, my own cartographer up here with my book of maps
2.
etching changing contours
Rub it in rub it rub
in thick charcoal lines.
Me the wrong way’s right
Under this cape my dewy breasts
To rub someone out
swollen with lapis lazuli.
Suddenly this stub of a word’s Enough tub nub bub flub
Out at the end of a birch twig
His hands his mouth rub
I am an ortolan bunting
Holding a dream tight to me
my song winding
Myself like washing in it
its way past the sun
Hubba hubba hub of
a thousand pin pricks of light
Pleasure stub your center
bursting from seeds in my craw.
Harder to enlarge larger And come out to sea please
No holy anorexic I gorge
Land lubbers the far
on the tufted heads of thistles
Shore’s engorged
in the lavender fields in fields of millet
3.
vittles needed navigating night
Sweetness
on my long journey south.
As if glimpsed hint
High among incensed rafters
Follow follow
I am a pigeon sunk on the hoops
Through the forest thick
of my nacreous skirts.
With NO and other
This scavenged gut
Monsters this worn
a neap tide warm and lapping
Thread warm “He takes
the edges of magenta feet.
Me in his arms” and my Ache his need still taut Guided generations Of dizzy searchers Helping ourselves Welcome to pleasure
Clare McCotter
Overleaf: Jana Romanova, from the Azbuka (Alphabet of Shared Words) series, 2014
Laura Mullen
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Flicker the only clue
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Dublin Dream Song i.m. John Berryman 1914-2014
Recall the hours. I
Achtung! And you Henry already a comic - hero . Reluctant star but still screaming: your conversation a bubble of anger and chance, poured over & rejected for future copies of The Victor. The Hornet waits. An eye half-open and Cluedo shivers, hides the lead piping in a flurry of words and Pip leads the sing-song, knowing that tense isn’t everything and that the past doesn’t have a monopoly on nostalgia.
remember me occasionally, recall the hours, the hedgerow smells
Your father found a shot-gun in the middle of a game of Scrabble, a low score but reassuring to a man who was bald at birth and never recovered. You gave him the hat he never wore - time held his coat.
And if I leave
II
How death has snared our golden generation. Black cars. On a loop. Around Kavanagh’s Green. Gravedigger at number one in the list of desirable careers, skipping over bank-clerk, prostitute
and the fields stretching out of sight. We will not pass again, similar lives will walk these roads, enjoy the shade, spend an afternoon. The summer will end, Autumn unfurls its colours and days will pass before our eyes. Days roll out their hours, lives, their days, the uncertainty of time before us.
and priest. Oh, Henry, is this how you thought it would end or does your future still gleam abridged __ p.49
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with possibility? Endless. That’s how she described possibilities and grief. You never cried but in this case you might make an exception. ‘And’ & ‘And’, your favourite way of stealing time. Always a filibuster to hand, a hand to drag your heels. Truth had a walk-on part in the stories you told your mother. Slipped in through the side-door, there to confuse, never explain.
Maurice Devitt
Joseph Allen
Contributors
Denise Blake has two poetry collections published by Summer Palace Press; Take a Deep Breath and How to Spin Without Getting Dizzy. She is a popular contributor to Sunday Miscellany RTE radio. Denise is highly regarded for her facilitation work in schools and with Adult groups. Denise’s most recent translation work is published in Selected Poems Seán Ó Ríordáin edited by Frank Sewell and An tAmharc Deireannach Colette Ní Ghallchóir. Dylan Brennan’s poetry and prose have been published in a range of Irish and international journals, in English and Spanish. Atoll, a mini collection of poetry, is now available as a free download from Smithereens Press and his first full collection, Blood Oranges, will be published in November 2014 by The Dreadful Press. In 2014 he was runner up for the Patrick Kavanagh Award and was shortlisted for the Fish Short Memoir Prize. In 2015, his coedited volume of essays on the work of Juan Rulfo will be published by Legenda. He lives and works in Mexico. www.dylanbrennan.org Pavel Büchler is a Czech-born artist, teacher and occasional writer living in Manchester. Brenda Bullock’s artistic practice began with media and production design. After graduating from The London Collage of Printing art school she became a full time graphic designer. Her focus then moved to photography, whereby she completed a masters and achieved the Royal Photographic Society Bursary Award for my work with alienated rural communities titled ‘Unheimlock’. She has taught photography since, and curated and supervised exhibition installations. She now contributes to various magazines, and is working on future exhibitions.
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Angela T Carr is a poet and writer based in Dublin. In 2013, she was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Award and won the Cork Literary Review Poetry Manuscript Competition. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2014 and her debut collection, How to Lose Your Home & Save Your Life, is forthcoming from Bradshaw Books. More info at www.adreamingskin.com. Nuala Ní Chonchúir was born in Dublin in 1970; she lives in East Galway. Her chapbook of flash Of Dublin and Other Fictions was published in the US in late 2013 by Tower Press and Nuala’s second novel The Closet of Savage Mementos appeared April 2014 from New Island. Penguin USA and Penguin Canada will publish Nuala’s third novel, Miss Emily, about the poet Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid, in 2015. www.nualanichonchuir.com Gerald Dawe has published eight collections of poetry with The Gallery Press, including, most recently Selected Poems (2012) and Mickey Finn’s Air (2014). The fourth and final part of his ‘Lagan Series’ of literary and autobiographical essays, The Stoic Man, will be published next March by Lagan Press. Kate Dempsey has been published in many journals including, The Shop, Poetry Ireland Review, Orbis, Magma, Crannog and The Moth. She has been twice commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Awards and won and been shortlisted in competitions such as the Hennessy New Irish Writing Awards, The Plough Poetry Competition and the Cecil Day Lewis Award. She also had a poem nominated for the Forward Prize. She runs the Poetry Divas, a glittery collective of women poets who read at events and festivals all over Ireland, blurring the wobbly boundaries between page and stage.
Maurice Devitt: After a career in business he completed the Poetry Studies MA at Mater Dei in Dublin, focusing on the poetry of James Wright, John Berryman, Charles Bernstein and others. He was recently long-listed for Over the Edge New Writer, short-listed for Poets Meet Painters, Cuirt New Writing Award, The Listowel Writers’ Week Collection Competition and selected for The Cork Spring Poetry Festival. In 2013 he was placed third in The Cork Literary Review Manuscript Competition, and short-listed for the Over the Edge New Writer Award, Westport Arts Poetry Competition and The Doire Press International Chapbook Competition. During 2012 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was runner-up in the Cork Literary Review Manuscript Competition and short-listed for the Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection Competition. Over the past three years he has had poems accepted by various journals in Ireland, England, Scotland, the US, Australia and Mexico. He is a founder member and chairperson of the Hibernian Writers’ Group. Ray Givans has been published in four poetry pamphlet collections. His first full collection was published by Dedalus Press, “Tolstoy in Love”, which was shortlisted for the Rupert and Eithne Strong award for best first poetry book published in Ireland, 2009. Benjamin Hiller is a German-American freelance writer and photographer currently based in Berlin, Germany. His writings has been published in important European news outlets like Weekendavisen (Denmark) or Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland); his photography, often distributed via the agencies Corbis as well as AFP, got published world-wide like The Guardian, Washington Post, L.A. Times, VICE Magazine, Egypt Independent and more. The iron foundry Torgelow is one of the last large industrial factories in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. From a workforce that reached 700 then fell to 300 the plant makes products which are mainly used in wind energy. The iron foundry is heavily criticized because of the massive use of temporary workers and low wages. After the reunification and the closure of many industrial enterprises in the region the former workers founded in 1992 the Torgelow GmbH With the reportage Hiller tries not only to illuminate the working conditions on the ground but also to show that for renewable energy (wind turbines) energyintensive production processes are still necessary. Sandra Hoyn is a freelance photojournalist living in Germany. She studied photography at the University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg. Since 2005 she is working on photo-stories concentrated on social issues and human rights. Since 2007 she is represented by laif, agency for photos and reports. In 2013 she got the Henri Nannen Award at category photo story with Fighting For a Pittance. In 2012 she got the 2nd place at IPA - International Photography Awards in category Professional editorial sports. 2012 is awarded of the Px3 - Prix de la Photographie with three silver medals for her features. In 2011 and 2007 she received a scholarship from VG Bild-Kunst. In 2009 she received the Kindernothilfe Media Award, 2004 the Kodak Young Talent Award. Roisin Kelly was born in Northern Ireland in 1990 but has mostly lived south of the border. After completing her MA in Writing at NUIG, she moved to Cork City where she continues to write fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in Crannog, Wordlegs and the Bohemyth; upcoming publications that will feature her poems include Skylight 47, Boyne Berries, Silver Apples and Raving Beauties (Bloodaxe 2015). Rachel Long, currently shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate of London 2014 has been published by The Emma Press and Forward Poetry. She has been featured at the Olympic stadium and The Royal Festival Hall, and commissioned by Apples & Snakes, SPOKE and Cape Farewell. She is currently studying an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmith’s University London.
Aoife Mannix is the author of four collections of poetry and a novel. She has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live. She has performed throughout the UK and toured internationally with the British Council to China, Latvia, Nigeria, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, India, Norway and Austria. She has an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London and is currently working on a PhD in creative writing. Niall McCabe studies English Literature and Drama at Trinity College Dublin. He is co-editor of Icarus magazine, and a founder member of the Spoonlight Collective. His poems have been published in Icarus, JOLT, and The Columbia Review. Originally from Co. Derry, he now resides in Dublin. Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. She won the IHS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. In 2013 she won The British Tanka Award. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Belfast born Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Boyne Berries, The Cannon’s Mouth, Crannóg, Cyphers, Decanto, Iota (forthcoming), Irish Feminist Review, The Leaf Book Anthology 2008, The Linnet’s Wings, The Moth Magazine, The Poetry Bus (forthcoming), Poetry24, Reflexion, Revival, The SHOp and The Stinging Fly. Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, was published in 2012. Home is Kilrea, County Derry. Afric McGlinchey won the 2010 Hennessy Award for Emerging Poetry and the Northern Liberties Poetry Prize (USA) in 2012 and was shortlisted in the Bridport. Other achievements include a high commendation in the 2012 Magma competition, Pushcart and Forward nominations and a long-listing in the National Poetry Competition. As well as readings around Ireland, she has taken part in international poetry festivals and events in South Africa, France, England, Northern Ireland, Italy and Zimbabwe. Afric’s poetry collection, The Lucky Star of Hidden Things, was published by Salmon in 2012. Her work has been translated into Irish, Spanish and Italian. She offers editing services and online courses at: www.africmcglinchey.com Deirdre McKenna (b. Dublin, 1973) studied RTC Sligo, and University Of Ulster, studying a masters in fine art at the University of Ulster, graduating with distinction in 2007 and received the RUA Prize and Dean’s Prize. Co-director of Catalyst Arts 2002-2004 exhibiting, organising and collaborating. McKenna is a studio holder in Flax Art Studios, Belfast, and is represented by the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. Recent exhibitions include The Past is Unpredictable, FE McWilliam , 2014. Voices Travel by the Modern Art Association in Kaohsiung Museum, Taiwan, 2014. SCOPE New York, 2012. McKenna’s work is part of the Arts Council of Northern Irelands collection, private collections and has been featured in many international art journals. Shlomit Migay is a visual fashion artist, born in Israel and based in Vienna, Austria. For more than a decade, is combining her knowledge in the different art forms of photography, make up & body art, design and performance in order to make her visions come to life. In her images she creates her fantasy worlds which transcend a verity of emotions, fears and dreams. Her work was published in books and magazines and was exhibited in exhibitions worldwide. www.shlomitmigay.com Laura Mullen is the author of eight books: Complicated Grief (forthcoming from Solid Objects), Enduring Freedom: A Little Book of Mechanical Brides, The Surface, After I Was Dead,Subject, Dark Archive, The Tales of Horror, and Murmur. Recognitions for her poetry include Ironwood’s Stanford Prize, two Board of Regents ATLAS grants, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award, among other honors. She
has had several MacDowell Fellowships and is a frequent visitor at the Summer Writing Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa. Her work has been widely anthologized. Mullen is the McElveen Professor in English at LSU and the Director of Creative Writing. Lizz Murphy has published twelve books. Her seven collections of poetry include Shebird (forthcoming), Portraits and Six Hundred Dollars (PressPress), Walk the Wildly (Picaro Press), Stop Your Cryin (Island Press) and Two Lips Went Shopping (Spinifex Press print and e-book). She is available for workshops and mentoring etc.
Laura O’Connor is an artist and researcher based in Belfast. Currently undertaking a practice based PhD at the University of Ulster (UU), her work focuses on the representation of women on screen specifically the parallels between gender performativity in online self-representation seen in the screens of the ‘digital everyday’ and in screen-based feminist art practice. O’Connor has an MFA from UU and a BA (hons) in Sculpture and Combined Media from Limerick School of Art & Design. She is the recipient of numerous awards such as SIAP funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (2011, 2013), the Tyrone Guthrie Bursary (2012) and the Tommy McLoughlin award (2010) from the Cavan Arts Office. Past exhibitions include, The Pensive Spectator at Trans Art Cavan 2013, A (brief) History of Looking for Culture Night Belfast 2012, In View at the Golden Thread 2010. O’Connor is a co-director and studio member of Array Studios Belfast. www.lauraoconnorart.com Maeve O’Sullivan’s. work has been widely published and anthologised for twenty years. From Dublin her collections of haiku (Initial Response, 2011) and poetry (Vocal Chords, 2014), are from Alba Publishing. www.twitter.com/maeveos Jana Romanova is a photographer, based in Saint-Petersburg. She was born in 1984 in Russia, and got a degree in journalism from Saint-Petersburg State University. Currently she works with photography, video and installations to investigate the theme of collective identities in Russia and former Soviet Union countries. As a photographer she challenges herself with experiments, where she becomes a part of different communities, questions her own identity and explores the medium of photography works as a power through classification, systematisation and falsification, being something that is “created” by any community. Her long-term documentary projects were selected for a number of international exhibitions and festivals such as Encontros da Imagem (Braga, Portugal), the Backlight Festival (Tampere, Finland), Encuentros Abietros Festival (Buenos Aires, Argentina) «Perchance to Dream» at Andrea Meislin Gallery (New York, USA), “New Saint-Petersburg” at Nieuw Dakota Gallery (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), “Me, myself and I” by Anzenberger Gallery (Vienna, Austria), etc. and got several prizes and honourable mentions in pho-tography all over the world. http://janaromanova.com Gráinne Tobin grew up in Armagh and now lives in Newcastle, Co Down. She worked all her adult life as a teacher, and has now retired from the day job. She is the author of two poetry collections from Summer Palace Press: Banjaxed (2001) and The Nervous Flyer’s Companion (2010). She is a member of the Word of Mouth Poetry Collective, a contributor to the Word of Mouth anthology (Blackstaff, 1992) which was translated into Russian and published in St Petersburg, and has produced English versions of poems by the St Petersburg poet Galina Gamper for Word of Mouth’s bilingual parallel text anthology, When the Neva flows Backwards, Lagan Press, 2014.
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Joseph Allen has had poems published in various magazines, including; Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Antigonish Review, Cyphers, London Magazine, Orbis, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Reader, The Shop, South Carolina Review, Stand, The Stinging Fly, etc. He has had published five collections of poetry, most recently; ‘Looking for Robert Johnson’, Lapwing Publications, 2011.
Ryan Gander Make every show like it’s your last
Peter Richards Intuitive Actions Common Attributes and Isolated Incidents September - October 2014
4 October - 29 November 2014
Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown www.millenniumcourt.org 0044 (0) 28 3839 4415
10-12 Artillery St., Derry-Londonderry, BT48 6RG, Northern Ireland Opening Hours: Tues - Sat 12-6pm www.cca-derry-londonderry.org
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