December and January


11th December

Ó Bhéal‘s End of Year Event presents

Don Paterson
(via zoom / overhead projector)


You can listen to Don’s reading here.

Don Paterson is the author of numerous works of poetry and non-fiction; his writing has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes, and the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions.

He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009; he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and for many years taught at the University of St Andrews, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Poetry in the School of English. From 1997 to 2022, Paterson was poetry editor at Picador. For most of his life he has also worked as a jazz musician and composer.

He lives in Kirriemuir, Scotland and his most recent collection is The Arctic (Faber & Faber, 2022).
 


You can watch a video of the event here


Hybrid Ó Bhéal Session

This event will be both in-person, hosted in the Hayloft bar, upstairs in Long Valley, Winthrop St Cork, as well as on Zoom (which is limited to 100 people). Participation in the open-mic session and five word challenge is open to both in-person and virtual attendees. The session will be live-streamed at obheal.ie/live and via Ó Bhéal’s Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels. Note to Participants: Our hybrid events are recorded and remain viewable on video via these same channels.

Click here for our Live Poetry Stage

We are no longer posting the zoom link via our social media channels. Upon written request to info@obheal.ie with a sentence outlining your reason for participation, a link to join the session will be emailed to you on the evening of the event, which is expected to run for between 2-3 hours.

The evening will feature four parts:

7-7.45pm: Poetry-Films (random play from Ó Bhéal’s Poetry-Film comp archives – NOT STREAMED);
8.30pm: Five Word Challenge (max 30 – after the allotted 15 minutes writing time);
9.20/30pm: Featured Guest Poet (30-40 minutes);
10:20pm: Open-Mic Session for original poetry (max 20).

(Entering a Zoom meeting is all explained here >>>. This link provides you with a step-by-step guide and YouTube tutorial if necessary. You should check this out if you’re unfamiliar with the Zoom platform – it also shows you where to download the zoom client/app for your computer/phone. Please Make sure to know where the chat box is and how to mute yourself to reduce background sound.)



8th January

Ó Bhéal in association with First Fortnight presents

Daragh Fleming and Sarah Barnsley
(in-person)                     (via zoom)


You can listen to Daragh’s reading here.

Daragh Fleming is an author and poet from Cork, Ireland. His debut in nonfiction, Lonely Boy, is published by BookHub Publishing. He has poems in Beir Bua, Trasna, The World Transformed Sunday Morning At The River, and more. Fleming won the Cork Arts ‘From The Well’ Short Story Competition in 2021, was longlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize and Highly Commended for the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2023.

His pamphlet Poems That Were Written On Trains, But Weren’t Written About Trains was published by Dark Thirty in 2022 and his début full length collection Enigmatic was published by Sunday Mornings at the River in November 2023. He also runs the award-winning mental health blog, Thoughts Too Big.
 


You can listen to Sarah’s reading here.

Sarah Barnsley grew up in the Midlands where her dad was a firefighter. A winner in the Poetry Society Members’ Poems Competition (2021, 2018), her work has appeared widely in magazines including Poetry Wales, The Rialto and The White Review. Her first full collection, The Thoughts (Smith|Doorstop, 2022), explores different manifestations of intrusive thoughts as part of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) before navigating through the twists and turns of recovery and love.

Other publications include a pamphlet, The Fire Station (Telltale Press, 2015), co-editorship of Truths: A Telltale Press Anthology (2018), and literary criticism. Sarah is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, Contributing Editor to The Understory Conversation and lives in Hove.
 


 


You can watch a video of the event here


Hybrid Ó Bhéal Session

This event will be both in-person, hosted in the Hayloft bar, upstairs in Long Valley, Winthrop St Cork, as well as on Zoom (which is limited to 100 people). Participation in the open-mic session and five word challenge is open to both in-person and virtual attendees. The session will be live-streamed at obheal.ie/live and via Ó Bhéal’s Vimeo, Facebook and YouTube channels. Note to Participants: Our hybrid events are recorded and remain viewable on video via these same channels.

Click here for our Live Poetry Stage

We are no longer posting the zoom link via our social media channels. Upon written request to info@obheal.ie with a sentence outlining your reason for participation, a link to join the session will be emailed to you on the evening of the event, which is expected to run for between 2-3 hours.

The evening will feature four parts:

7-7.45pm: Poetry-Films (random play from Ó Bhéal’s Poetry-Film comp archives – NOT STREAMED);
8.30pm: Five Word Challenge (max 30 – after the allotted 15 minutes writing time);
9.30pm: Featured Guest Poets (20 minutes each);
10:20pm: Open-Mic Session for original poetry (max 20).

(Entering a Zoom meeting is all explained here >>>. This link provides you with a step-by-step guide and YouTube tutorial if necessary. You should check this out if you’re unfamiliar with the Zoom platform – it also shows you where to download the zoom client/app for your computer/phone. Please Make sure to know where the chat box is and how to mute yourself to reduce background sound.)