Alone, Together

StickyEco-Writing Workshops, Miscellaneous, Writing, , ,

I wrote this poem at an Ecopoetry workshop in the Glens Centre last August. My prompt was a line from Amanda Gorman’s poem Earthrise: “Floating like a silver raft in space… “

Thanks to Loretta Brennan of Africa Magazine for finding the marvellous image.

Alone, Together

It is possible that we are alone
in all the quantum flip and spin,
the quark and charm
of the many-stanzaed universe,
the beginning with no beginning,
the grey entropic end.


It is possible that we are alone,
we wrens and salamanders
we spinning sycamore helicopters,
we beluga and narwhal and fungi,
we humans, entangled
with apples and worms and plastic,
with dark matter and black holes,
with fracked shale and feral fires.


It is possible that we are alone, together,
in all the sparkling riptide of stars.

Allingham Festival Francis Harvey Award for Poetry, James Keane Award for Flash Ficiton

StickyCompetitions, Literary Events, ,

The 2023 Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions are open for entries until 22 September. Competition rules and entry forms are detailed on the Festival website www.allinghamfestival.com. The Festival will take place on 8-12 November in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal.

This year’s Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Awards Ceremony will feature a new award – the Francis Harvey Award for Poetry. This annual award has been created to highlight the life and legacy of Donegal poet Francis Harvey, 1925-2014. The winner of the 2023 Allingham Poetry Competition will also be declared the winner of the Francis Harvey Award. The poetry competition will be judged by poet and publisher Kate Newman.

If you’re not familiar with Francis Harvey, look into his Collected Poems. In her introduction, Moya Cannon writes that ‘…Francis Harvey’s work combines the passion for precision of a naturalist and the yearning for grace of a poet, except for the fact that a passion for precision, for naming, is also part of the bedrock of poetry. In [his] poems there is a vivid sense of how we are all moving, “free but tethered, through time’s inexorable weathers.”’

As in past years, the winner of the Allingham Flash Fiction Competition will also be declared the winner of the Keane Family Award, honouring the memory of Ballyshannon writer and arts patron James Keane. The flash ficiton competiton will be judged by Alan McMonagle

ONE places left in Ecopoetry Workshop, Manorhamilton, July 22/23

StickyEco-Writing Workshops, Workshops, , ,
Image Credit © Rudolphe Trider

Be inspired to write poems that celebrate, challenge and lament humanity’s relationship with the natural world; and, over the course of the weekend, develop your poems from inspiration to revision toward completion.

  • When? Sat July 22, 10:30 – 5; Sun July 23, 10 – 4
  • Where? The Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim
  • How much? €75 (with thanks to the Glens Centre for their generous support)
  • Early-bird? €60, if booked and paid for before July 15.
  • €60 PayPal – use this link to pay with a debit or credit card – no need for a PayPal account. If you’re having trouble with PayPal, email me at monicacorishwriting@gmail.com.
  • Travelling a distance? The Organic Centre has a list of places to stay in North Leitim

What is Ecopoetry? Why write it?

Creativity is a powerful antidote to burnout – Angela Davis

Ecopoetry is nature poetry that has designs on us, that imagines changing the ways we think, feel about, and live and act in the world. Why Ecopoetry? John Shoptaw

Even when [the nature poem] got the birds and the plants and the animals right it tended to show the beautiful bird but not so often the bulldozer off to the side that was destroying the bird’s habitat. ‘Well Then There Now’, Juliana Spahr

Write about your everyday experience of what is changing in the world around you and the environmental issues you feel passionate about. Because while facts feel slippery and inaccessible and make us feel helpless, experiences can help us understand the world from our own perspective, and artists of all kinds can create experiences better than anyone else. What is Ecopoetry and why write it? Open University, Suzannah Evans

[Readers] feel they ‘know this information already, so why do they need it in a poem’. That is precisely the point. They ‘know’ it. They are not ‘feeling it’. That is what activists in the environmental movement are asking of us: help it be felt, help it be imagined. Jorie Graham, in conversation with Sharon Blackie

[Writing] is a model for how indirect effect can be, how delayed, how invisible; no one is more hopeful than a writer, no one is a bigger gambler. Rebecca Solnit

The future belongs to those who tell the best stories. Jorge Luis Borges

Honorary Mention in the Fish Short Story Prize

Miscellaneous

I’m delighted that “The Púca’s Share” is one of the 10 prize-winning stories in this year’s Fish Short Story Prize. (There were 1256 entries to the competition 🙂

Judge Sarah Hall said of “The Púca’s Share”: “Loved the creativity and playful inventiveness of this story, which lands somewhere between adult & children’s fiction and has a real sense of folkloric verve and moral engagement to it.”

I’m looking forward to the launch of the 2024 Fish Anthology at the West Cork literary Festival on July 15.

One more week to enter the Allingham competitions!

Miscellaneous

The deadline has been extended until midnight on Friday, October 6.

It only costs €5 to enter – less than a cup of tea and a scone – or a cappuccino and a cookie – or a pint of Guinness.

Polish up your best poems (max 40 lines) and flash fictions (max 700 words – flash fictions are especially welcome)

And submit (or offer – writers never submit) through http://www.allinghamfestival.com/competitions

Deadline Extended for Allingham Poetry & Flash Fiction Competitions

Miscellaneous,

The deadline for entries to the 2023 Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions is being extended to Friday, 29 September. On-line and postal entries must be received by 23:59 on the 29th. Competition rules and entry forms are found at www.allinghamfestival.com.

In addition to the cash prizes of €300, the first-place winner in the 2023 Allingham Poetry Competition will also receive the newly-created Francis Harvey Poetry Award, and the first-place winner in the Flash Fiction Competition will receive the Keane Family Award.

First-, second- and third-place winners will be invited to read their work in the on-line Awards Ceremony on Friday, 10 November. Poetry entries are being judged by Kate Newmann of Summer Palace Press; Flash Fiction by Alan McMonagle (Ithaca, Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame).

The 2023 Allingham Festival (Nov 8-12 in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal) will include a conversation with best-selling domestic noir author Liz Nugent, readings by acclaimed children’s author Shane Hegarty, and a regional meeting of the WORD organisation of professional and aspiring writers.

Allingham Festival Flash Fiction and Poetry Competitions

Competitions

The 2023 Allingham Festival Flash Fiction and Poetry Competitions are now open! This year’s entry period runs from June to September 22. International entries are welcome! Winning entries in recent years have been crafted by writers in Canada, Australia and Dubai.

Kate Newmann, poet and Co-Director of Summer Palace Press, will judge the 2023 poetry entries. Novelist and short-story writer Alan McMonagle (Ithaca, Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame) will judge the flash fiction entries. The Poetry and Flash Fiction Awards Ceremony is scheduled to be webcast on Friday, Nov 10.

This year’s submission deadline is 22 September 2023 for both on-line and postal entries. First Prize in both Flash Fiction and Poetry is €300. Full competition rules and details are posted on the Allingham Festival Website 

The 2023 Allingham Festival will take place in Ballyshannon from November 8-12. Festival guests will include novelist Liz Nugent, broadcaster-broadcaster Sinead Crowley, soprano Regina Nathan, children’s author Shane Hegarty, actor Sean McGinley and author / Sunday Miscellany favourite Olive Travers.