White House Poetry, 17th March 2010

What: Poetry reading with special guest reader Jane Weir

When: Wednesday, 17th March 2010, 9.30pm

Where: The White House pub, O'Connell Street, Limerick

This Paddy's Day at the white House is a very special night of poetry. Jane Weir will read a selection of work from her collections The Way I dressed During the Revolution, Before Playing Romeo, and the forthcoming, Gazehound, written about the lives of women during the Italian Renaissance. The night will be complete with the usual open-mic and we would encourage all comers to contribute. Admission is of course free and finger food provided compliments of the proprietor.

Jane Weir will be accompanied on the night by Alex McMillen, editor of Templar Press, and he will be giving a talk about publishing and, specifically, about Templar's Pamphlet and Collection competitions, the deadline for which is early May - essential to all poets with publishing aspirations. Considering the current financial climate and the backlogs at many presses, this could be the best way in.

Jane Weir is Anglo-Italian. She was the overall winner of the Wigtown Poetry Competition in 2008, joint winner of the first Jackson Dawson Award for Poetry (2003) and her first collection, The Way I Dressed During the Revolution, was shortlisted in 2006 for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. She has also published a pamphlet, Alice, based partially on the life of the early twentieth century Derby political activist, Alice Wheeldon.

Her latest book, Walking the Block, is a poetic biography based on the lives of the Modernist handblock printers and textile artists, Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher, who created a unique range of hand block printed naturally dyed textiles between the two World wars. Jane has also recently completed an adaptation of Walking the Block, as a radio play.

poetry has been widely published in anthologies and magazines including Out of Fashion (Faber: 2005), Answering Back (Picador: 2007), PN Review, Ulster Tatler (2008), The Forward Book of Poetry (2007, 2008) and the International Sonnet Competition Prize Anthology (2008). Her winning poem from the 2008 Wigtown Poetry Competition, ‘On the Recommendation of Ovid We Tried a Weasel’, is one of two published in the 2009 Forward Book of Poetry.

If you would like to know more you can visit Jane's website at http://www.janeweir.co.uk/