Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Anita Alig is a writer living in the West of Ireland. She spends her days crafting poems, as well as writing fiction and news articles. In 2020, Anita set up the Poetry Cooperative, an online community of well-known and emerging poets.

Mandy Beattie’s poems have appeared in journals such as Poets Republic, Lothlorien, Wordpeace, Ink, Sweat & Tears etc, chapbooks & public spaces. Poets Choice in Marble Broadsheet. Shortlisted: Dreich’s Black Box Competition. She has a forthcoming short story in the inaugural edition of, Howl & more poems soon to be published in other journals.

Carol Beirne lives in Co. Roscommon. She started writing in 2020 and has been shortlisted for the Roscommon New Writing Award 2020 and runner up in 2021. She was runner up in The Lancashire Flash fiction writing competition 2021 and has had several short stories, flash fiction and poetry published in various anthologies.

Caleb Brennan (b.1994) is a native of Limerick City, Ireland. Caleb’s work has appeared in numerous publications around Ireland, The UK and The US such as The Stony Thursday, N@, Wordlegs, Revival, The Linnet’s Wings, Skylight 47, Backsteps and The Blue Hour magazine. In 2014, His Chapbook “Unsocial Media” was Highly Commended by the judges in the BYOB poetry magazine pamphlet competition (NY, USA). In 2017, Revival press featured a series of Caleb’s poetry in Sextet 2, a group collection of six Limerick based writers.

Catherine Brennan is a self taught visual artist and curator from Laois and a member of the Laois Arthouse Collective. Working with acrylic and mixed media expanding into photography sculpture and written word during the pandemic. My work has always been emotion based, using art to work through the anxieties of life and clear the mind.

Nora Brennan’s poems have been published in various magazines including, Skylight 47, The Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet, Crannóg

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and The Stony Thursday Book. She was a recipient of the Artlinks Bursary Award for Emerging Artist 2016, which led to the publication of her first collection of poems, The Greening of Stubble Ground in 2017. She was a mentee in the Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme 2020.

Dr Arthur Broomfield is a poet, short story writer and Beckett scholar from County Laois. His recent collection is Ireland Calling. Arthur is poet Laureate for Mountmellick.

Pratibha Castle is an Irish poet living in West Sussex. Her awardwinning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published in 2022. Her work appears amongst others in Agenda, HU, Blue Nib, IS&T, London Grip, Lime Square Poets, OHC, Friday Poem, High Window, Not the Time To Be Silent anthology… Highly commended and longlisted in various competitions including Bridport Prize, she was given special mention in The Welsh Poetry Competition 2021. Pratibha’s second pamphlet is due for publication at the end of 2022.

Polina Cosgrave is a bilingual poet based in Ireland. Her debut collection My Name Is was published by Dedalus Press (2020). Polina features in the Forward Prizes Book of Poetry 2022.

Emily Cullen is the Meskell UL-Fifty Poet in Residence. She has published three collections: Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), In Between Angels and Animals (Arlen House, 2013) and No Vague Utopia (Ainnir Publishing, 2003). Emily teaches on the MA in Creative Writing programme at the University of Limerick.

Alsed Deacon is a French-Canadian living in Connemara now for over 30 years and drowning in the weight of its beauty within and without.

Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist, and children’s writer from Loughrea. His awards include The Dermot Healy Poetry Prize, The Eilis Dillon and Bisto Awards, and the 2019 Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award. Seven collections of his poems have been published by Dedalus Press, most recently The End of the World.

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RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (NY Times, 2/2017), easing the edges: a collection of everyday miracles, (Patrick Heath Public Library of Boerne, 11/2021) The Connecticut Shakespeare Festival Anthology (River Bend Bookshop Press, 12/2021), in print: 2River, Event, Gargoyle Magazine, the minnesota review, Night Picnic Journal, Plainsongs, Prairie Schooner, Southword, The Ogham Stone, Twelve Mile Review, Variant Literature, York Literary Review among many others and appears in numerous online literary journals.

Anne Donnellan’s poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, The Bangor Literary Journal, Skylight 47, Orbis, Poethead, The Galway Review and the NUIG Ropes Literary Journal. She was a featured reader at the“Over The Edge: Open Reading” in Galway City Library 2019. Anne’s debut collection Witness is due to be published in the coming months by Revival Press Limerick.

Honor Duff, a native of Dublin, now living in Bailieborough, Co Cavan, has had her work published in several journals, including Boyne Berries, Skylight 47, Crannog, The Galway Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Drawn To the Light Press, and has been placed and commended in many poetry competitions.

Gavan Duffy writes poetry and short fiction. He is a member of the Scurrilous Salon writers Group and has previously published in Crannog, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, New Irish Writing, Boyne Berries, South Bank Poetry Journal, Stony Thursday Book, The Lake, Bangor Literary Journal among others. He was the winner of the Francis Ledwidge Award 2020 and is working towards a first collection.

Jessica Dunne is an emerging illustrator based in Westmeath, Ireland. Her work celebrates nature by exploring expressive plants, animals and people. Her style tends to combine bold graphic shapes with textured linework. She is available for editorial and narrative illustration.

Tim Dwyer’s poems appear regularly in Irish and UK journals, recently/forthcoming in Allegro, Black Nore Review, The High

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Window, Spilling Cocoa On Martin Amis, and The Stony Thursday Book. His chapbook is Smithy Of Our Longings (Lapwing). Originally from Brooklyn, he now lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland. tjdwyer@frontiernet.net.

Diarmuid Fitzgerald (he/him) lives and works in Dublin as a teacher, writer, healer, and coach. A collection of poems The Singing Hollow was published in 2021 by Alba Publishing. Two collections of haiku have been published also by Alba Publishing, Thames Way in 2015 and A Thousand Sparks in 2018. Poems appeared in The Stinging Fly, Cyphers, Crannóg, Boyne Berries, The Blue Nib, Impossible Archetype, and the Green Carnations anthology. Diarmuid won a grant from Poetry Ireland in 2022 and a Words Ireland mentoring bursary in 2021. Follow on Instagram @deewriters. Diarmuid also offers creative writing courses at www.writeasif.com.

Bernadette Fosberry was born in England but has lived happily in Ireland for the last thirty years. She has always enjoyed writing poetry and fiction and is an active member of the Headford Writers Group.

Richard W. Halperin's poetry is published by Salmon and by Lapwing. In Spring 2023 a Selected and New Poems will be published by Salmon, drawing upon all the collections. 'In Jordan' will be in it.

Paul Hennessy lives and writes in Wexford. He was the winner of the 2022 Shahidah Janjua Poetry Competition and was short-listed for the Anthony Cronin award. Recent work has appeared in the Waxed Lemon and the Wexford Bohemian.

Peter Heyns lives outside Boston, MA. After a long hiatus, he began writing poems again in 2020, written with Speech-To-Text technology into his phone, mostly while hurrying somewhere.

Sacha Hutchinson is a practicing artist with a home studio in Barna. She received a Bachelor of Arts in art and design in 2010. Her work looks at nature’s vulnerability and has a strong

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environmental message. She paints in gouache and oil. She enjoys writing poetry and has published several poems. She records life with daily thumbnail sketches, written observations, diary entries in ink pen and has filled over sixty sketch books. These act as an inspiration for larger projects. She has been involved in several group and solo exhibitions. She illustrated the last during lockdown. The birds along the shore and in the coastal meadows of Galway Bay were the focus of her work. Their importance was freshly felt during this time. As their numbers continue to fall their conservation is ever more important.

Anne Irwin lives in Galway. Her poetry has been published in many literary journals and magazines including Poetry Ireland Review, ROPES, Skylight 47, Poetry Bus, Irish Left Review, High Window, Boyne Berries, Automatic Pilot, A New Ulster, Crossways, Galway Review Anthology and Vox Galvia.

Emma Lara Jones lives in Felixstowe, England. She has had many jobs including piano tutor, lawyer, and English teacher. She now focuses on her writing full-time and is about to begin a Creative Writing Masters.

John D. Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. His work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. He won the Listowel Poetry Short Collection Award and the Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition, in 2020. His manuscript was highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2016. Most recently he was a finalist in the Montreal International Poetry Prize. His first collection: The Loss Of Yellowhammers was published by Summer Palace Press in 2020.

Brian Kirk has published a poetry collection After The Fall (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and a short fiction chapbook, It’s Not Me, It’s You (Southword Editions, 2019). His poem “Birthday” won Irish Book Awards Poem of the Year, 2018. His novel Riverrun was a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2022.

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Angela Kirwan, originally from Dublin, has been living in Carlow for the thirty years. She has recently graduated with a B.A (hons) degree in Arts and Humanities from Carlow College, St. Patrick’s. She was awarded first place in poetry in the college’s literary awards in 2022. She is a member of Carlow Writers Co-operative.

Originally from Dublin Caitríona Lane moved to the West where life makes more sense. The natural world surrounding her cottage informs her writing and creativity. Her poetry reflects the environment in which she now lives. She is a bilingual writer. Poetry Ireland selected her work as part of their Introductions/ Céadlínte series 2022.

Sinéad MacDevitt has been shortlisted in the Swords Heritage Festival short story competition and highly commended in the Jonathan Swift prose competition. Her poems have been commended in the Francis Ledwidge, LMFM and Rush Poetry competitions. In 2013, she was awarded second prize in the Desmond O’Grady poetry competition.

Marie MacSweeney has written short stories, poems, radio plays and talks. She has won various prizes and competitions, among them the Phizzfest and Kells Poetry Prizes and the Francis MacManus Short Story for Radio Award and the Books Ireland Award, 2017. Her stories and poems have been published in many anthologies and magazines. She has broadcast on Sunday Miscellany for many years and occasionally with Lyric FM and had radio plays performed on RTE.

Her publications to date are OUR ORDINARY WORLD AND OTHER STORIES (2004), MOTHER CECILY’S MUSIC ROOM (2006) and FLYING DURING THE HOURS OF DARKNESS (2009), both poetry collections published by Lapwing, Belfast. FLYING DURING THE HOURS OF DARKNESS also contains her translation of the renowned Irish grief poem CAOINEADH AIRT ÚI LAOGHAIRE. She also writes opinion pieces and articles with historical content.

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Mary Madec's most recent book appeared from Salmon at the end of 2019, The Egret Lands with News From Other Parts. In 2021 she received a literary bursary from the Arts Council and is in the process of completing her next collection on Eurydice as a myth of the environment, title to be decided.

John Martin’s 2004 collection, The Origin of Loneliness was followed by poems in The London Magazine, Magma, The Lancet, Dreich, Trasna and Ink Drinkers magazines. A former soldier, he studied philosophy before medicine and currently works as a doctor and scientist in Europe and the US.

Alison McCrossan is from Cork. Publications include Southword, Orbis, Abridged, and The Honest Ulsterman & Drawn to the Light Press.

Linda McKenna’s debut poetry collection, In the Museum of Misremembered Things, was published by Doire Press in 2020. The title poem won the An Post/Irish Book Awards Poem of the Year in 2021. She has had poems published or forthcoming in, among others, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The North, The Honest Ulsterman, Crannóg, Acumen, Atrium, One, The Stony Thursday Book, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Drawn to the Light, Abridged, Skylight 47. She lives in Downpatrick, County Down and is working on her second collection.

Mary Mulholland lives in London and is widely published. Her debut pamphlet, What the Sheep Taught Me, came out with Live Canon, this summer and a collaborative pamphlet (with Simon Maddrell and Vasiliki Albedo), All About Our Mothers, came out from Nine Pens earlier this year. She has a poetry MA from Newcastle, The Poetry School, and a background in psychology and history of art. She is co-editor of The Alchemy Spoon magazine and founded Red Door Poets. @marymulhol // www.marymulholland,co.uk//.

Alan Murphy is the Irish artist and writer-illustrator of four collections of poetry for children and teenagers. He has contributed collage art, photography and poetry to numerous digital and print

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journals and anthologies in Ireland, the UK and the US, and exhibited throughout Ireland and abroad. Dublin born, he lives in Lismore, county Waterford. Occasionally he reviews books for Inis magazine and has lately taken up song writing via the guitar, which he plays badly.

Frank Murphy was winner of The Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award for Poetry in 2009. Short-listed and placed in many others. Most recent commended in the Jonathan Swift in 2021. Published many places. Editor for The Meath Writers' Circle.

Jean O’Brien’s 6th collection Stars Burn Regardless came out from Salmon Publishing this Spring. An award winning poet her work is published, anthologized and broadcast regularly. She was the Poet in Residence in CCI Paris for November 2021.She holds an M.Phil in creative writing/poetry from Trinity College, Dublin and tutors in same.

Linda Opyr was the Nassau County Poet Laureate 2011-13. She is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Where the Eye Wants Coast (2020). Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Hudson Review, The Atlanta Review, The Paterson Literary Review, and The New York Times, as well as other publications in Ireland, Wales, England and the United States. In 2017 she was a featured poet at the Bailieborough Poetry Festival in County Cavan, Ireland. Art Ó Súilleabháin was born in Corr na Móna, Co. Galway and spent some years in Boston USA. He lectured at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC before returning to Ireland and Corr na Móna in the north Connemara Gaeltacht. He has featured in Poetry Ireland Review, Boyne Berries, Skylight 47, The Honest Ulsterman, Writing Home, Hold Open the Door, Vox Galvia, and The Haibun Journal (haiku) among others. He won Duais Phádraig Ó Conchubhair in the Bally Bard Festival in 2022 for a poem as Gaeilge and was chosen by Poetry Ireland Introductions as Gaeilge

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for 2022. He published his first collection in English - Mayflies in the Heather in 2021. www.artosuilleabhain.com.

Eugene Platt’s forthcoming collection, Weaned on War, will be published by Revival Press in Limerick. The official launch of the book has been set for February 11, 2023.

Polly Richardson Munnelly currently lives and writes in Dingle co Kerry, she continues to run groups the Bulls Arse Writers & Worldly Worders remotely along with her walking poetry workshops. She has been published both nationally and internationally. Her collection Winter’s Breath is available on Amazon in both print and e-book.

Jane Robinson lives in Dublin. She was educated at Trinity College Dublin and the California Institute of Technology and worked as a scientist in Ireland, India, and the US for ten years before turning to writing, particularly poetry, to express and explore the urgent issue of environmental change. Her debut collection, Journey to the Sleeping Whale, received the Shine Strong Award. A second collection will be published by Salmon in March 2023. Recent essays are in Skylight 47-14, and in ‘Irish Women Poets Rediscovered’ (Cork University Press, 2022). She is currently teaching a workshop on the practice of Ecopoetry at the Irish Writers Centre.

Áine Rose is an artist and poet from Donegal, Ireland. She has a bachelor’s degree in Speech & Language Therapy from Trinity College, Dublin (2017) and a postgraduate fine-art degree from the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Clare (2021). She has been awarded the Emerging Artist Bursary Award from Arts & Health funded by Irish Health Service & Irish Arts Council (2022). Her work has appeared in Lothlorien Journal, Morning Fruit, Icarus, A New Ulster & Irish Arts Review.

K.T. Slattery is a native of Mississippi, now living in Ireland. Her writing has been published in Ropes Literary Journal, Nightingale and Sparrow, The Blue Nib, Impspired, The Wellington Street Review, Analogies and Allegories, and Streetcake. She received a

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special mention in the 2020 Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition, was nominated for The Pushcart Prize in 2021, and in 2022 was a featured writer in the collective, Pushed Toward the Blue Hour, published by Nine Pens Press.

Patrick Slevin has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Skylight 47, The High Window, The Cormorant, The Blue Nib, The Manchester Review, The Interperters' House and the Poets' Republic and others.

Martin Sykes is a writer from County Mayo, Ireland. He came runner up in the 2019 Dalkey Creates Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for the 2020 Trim Poetry Competition and longlisted for the 2020 Fish Poetry Prize. He was selected as one of the Young Writer Delegates for the 2020 Cúirt Literary Festival. His poetry has appeared in Boyne Berries and Skylight 47.

Anthony Wade, a Forward Prize nominee, has published in poetry journals in Ireland (including Drawn To The Light), Britain, India and the US, in print and online. Irish, he now lives by the sea in East Cork not ten miles from where he spent childhood summers, and is an active member of the local writers’ group. twitter.com@anthonywadepoet.

Sue Wallace-Shaddad has an MA from Newcastle University/Poetry School London. Her short collection A City Waking Up was published by Dempsey and Windle, October 2020. Sue was highly commended in the Plough Poetry Prize 2021 and has had several pamphlets shortlisted and longlisted by Maytree Press. Her poems have featured in London Grip, Artemis, The Ekphrastic Review, The High Window, Fenland Poetry Journal, Ink, Sweat & Tears amongst others. Sue writes poetry reviews for Sphinx Review, London Grip and The Alchemy Spoon. She is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society. https://suewallaceshaddad.wordpress.com.

Amy Worgan is a poet and essayist from Manchester. Her work likes to focus on themes of neurodivergence and ekphrasis. She is currently studying an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

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The Sensual World (1989) Alan Murphy €15 ISSN 2737-7768

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