Before the global COVID-19 pandemic, I had just started as poet-in-residence at Scoil Phobail Mhic Dara in Carna, in the beautiful Connemara Gaeltacht. At NUI Galway, I was able to move my last Creative Writing seminars of the semester online. I was also looking forward to giving a reading at the wonderful Strokestown International Poetry Festival this weekend with poet, Simon Lewis. While event cancellations and postponements are unfortunate for everyone involved, the most important thing is that we are all staying safe, remembering that "our health is our wealth".
On a positive note, it has been uplifting to judge the Roscommon Schools' Poetry competition for the Strokestown Poetry Festival and to read so many poems of every day celebration from primary and secondary students. The winners of the competition - for both primary and secondary schools - were officially announced on the Festival website today. I read over 450 entries "blind" in batches, so I was delighted to see a good mix of boys and girls among the winners and highly commended poets (see the list of winners and highly commended poets below)
Visit this link to read the winning poem from both primary ("Earth"), and secondary ("Lunatic"), schools. My individual comments have been sent to the recipients and I look forward to watching out for the names of these fledgling writers as they make their first incursions into print. I'm grateful to Strokestown Poetry Festival committee for asking me to judge the competition.
In other exciting news, I gave my first live reading on Youtube for The Holding Cell last Wednesday, 29th April at 7pm and you can watch the reading below. It was an exhilarating experience; slightly nerve-wracking but also highly enjoyable. Huge thanks to everyone who tuned in and eased me on my maiden voyage with technology - it certainly helped! Though it feels a little odd for me to invite 'subscribers', I plan to announce future short readings in the not-too-distant future, now that my new YouTube channel is "off the ground". The best way you can find out about upcoming releases is to click the 'subscribe' tab on the page and so I encourage you to do so.
Hats off to the wonderful Simon and Rozz Lewis for taking the brilliant initiative of setting up the Holding Cell during this time of global crisis and thanks so much to them for inviting me to read. Like some of the other poets involved, I would have been reluctant to take the plunge without their encouraging nudge. For a full line-up of readers and schedule of readings, check out The Holding Cell website here.
