Poetry Sunday at Blue Stacks literary weekend by the sea

national | arts and media | event notice Thursday September 10, 2009 01:48 by Over The Edge

Blue Stacks Festival, Co. Donegal

Literary Week-end by the Sea./ Poetry Sunday This intimate literary event is the last event of the Blue Stacks Festival 09 and is based this year at the Sand House Hotel Rossnowlagh, with its beauty, ambience and wild ocean waves, offering a wonderful setting for those who write and those who want to soak up the mixture of spoken word and music that Donegal has to offer.

Poetry Sunday will take place from 2. 30pm to 5.30pm at the Sand House Hotel with its melody of readings from local and visiting writers. Poets include:
Kathryn Daily, Imelda Maguire, Annie Deppe, Susan Millar Du Mars,
Kevin Higgins, Ted Deppe, with Local Writers,

The author and publisher, John Throne, who wrote the very successful book The Donegal Woman, will also launch a new title from Drumkeen Press: At Miss Mulligans by Bridget O’Toole

Susan Millar DuMars was born in Philadelphia in 1966 to a Belfast-born mother. She holds an MA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her poems and short stories have been published widely in the US, UK and Ireland. Her poetry was included in the 2004 Anthology I, published by Ainnir; in 2005, Lapwing published a pamphlet of her poems, the well reviewed Everyone Loves Me. Susan's stories have been short-listed for many awards, and in 2005 she received an Irish Arts Council Bursary for her fiction. American Girls, a volume of her short stories, was published by Lapwing in 2007. Susan lives in Galway, Ireland. Since 2003, Susan and her husband Kevin Higgins have organised the successful Over the Edge reading series, showcasing new writers. Susan teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute, Galway Arts Centre, Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and on the Brothers of Charity Away With Words programme. Big Pink Umbrella (Salmon Poetry, 2008) is the first full collection of her poetry. Her second collection of poems, Dreams for Breakfast, will be published next year by Salmon Poetry.

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events. He facilitates poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre; teaches creative writing at Galway Technical Institute and on the Brothers of Charity Away With Words programme. He is also Writer-in-Residence at Merlin Park Hospital and the poetry critic of the Galway Advertiser. His first collection of poems The Boy With No Face was published by Salmon in February 2005 and was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award. His second collection, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in March 2008 by Salmon. One of the poems from Time Gentlemen, Please, ‘My Militant Tendency’, features in the Forward Book of Poetry 2009. A recent poem of his, ‘Ourselves Again’, appeared in Best of Irish Poetry 2009. His work also features in the The Watchful Heart – A New Generation of Irish Poets (Ed Joan McBreen, Salmon Poetry) & next year will appear in Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Ed Roddy Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010).

Ted Deppe is the author of a new book of poetry, Orpheus on the Red Line, which just came out from Tupelo Press in the U.S. He is also the author of Cape Clear: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Books, Ireland) and three other collections of poems in the U.S. (including The Wanderer King and Children of the Air from Alice James Books). Deppe has received a Pushcart Prize and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served as writer in residence for the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut and Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He worked as an RN for almost 20 years and has taught in MFA programs in Ireland, England, and the U.S. His work has appeared in many journals including Poetry Ireland, Stinging Fly, The Shop, Honest Ulsterman, Irish Pages, Cyphers, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, New England Review, and Southern Review. He directs Stonecoast in Ireland and teaches fiction, poetry, and memoir writing in the Stonecoast MFA program in Maine. Currently, he lives with his wife Annie in County Galway.

Annie Deppe was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1950, and is the author of Sitting in the Sky, a book of poems published by Summer Palace Press in 2003. A new collection entitled The Wren’s Cantata is due out from Summer Palace Press in autumn 2009. Her work has been included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2004, the equivalent of the Pushcart Anthology in Ireland and the United Kingdom. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in England and has taught poetry at Eastern Connecticut State University. She has received grants from the Irish Arts Council and the Northern Ireland Arts Council. She has published on both sides of the Atlantic, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Shop, Sojourners, and The Recorder. She holds an MA in Educational Psychology and Special Education from the University of Connecticut. A native New Englander, she now holds dual US-Irish citizenship due to the luck of having Irish grandparents. She assists in running the Stonecoast in Ireland MFA programme, facilitates writing workshops and conferences, and offers mentoring and editing services to writers.

Denise Blake’s first collection of poetry, Take a Deep Breath, was published by Summer Palace Press. Her second collection is due out in 2010. Her work is included in The Echoing Years, an anthology of poetry. She is a regular contributor to Sunday Miscellany RTE radio 1. She is a founder of the Errigal Writers’ Group and received an MA in poetry from Lancaster University through the Poets’ House.