White House Poetry, 31st Mar 2010

What: Poetry reading with special guest poet Evelyn Casey
When: Wednesday, March 31st 2010, 9.30pm
Where: The White House pub, O'Connell Street, Limerick

This week at the White House Evelyn Casey will read a selection of her work, collected over the many years she has been writing, including fourteen years spent living in the north of Germany. The evening will also include and open-mic session to which all comers are encouraged to contribute to, so bring along something you've been working on to share.

Evelyn Casey is working as a health and fitness trainer and consultant at the University of Limerick Sports Arena and is a regular contributor to the Revival nights each Wednesday at the White House bar.

Thus far she has been published in Revival poetry journal, with many more sure to come. Her poems are often personal and passionate and Casey is a highly accomplished reader and performer of her work.

Admision to the event is free of course and as usual finger food will be provided compliments of the proprietor of the White House. See you there!!

White House Poetry, 24th March 2010

What: Poetry reading with special guest poet Paul Casey

When: Wednesday, 24th March 2010, 9.30pm

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

At the White House this week, we welcome back long-time supporter Paul Casey, the man responsible for the establishment and organisation of the weekly O Bheal reading series at the Long Valley in Cork (http://www.obheal.ie/).

The night will be complete with the usual open-mic session to which all comers may and will be encouraged to contribute, so bring poems on the night, or a song, or short piece of fiction... Admission as ever is free and finger food shall be provided complements of the White House proprietor.

Paul Casey will read a selection of his work, including pieces from his recently published collection of long poems, It's not All Bad.

Casey is one of Cork and Munster's most important poetry promotors and activists, with the O bheal series now running for over three years and attracting such guests as Macdara Woods, Derek Mahon, Kevin Higgins, Richard Tillinghast.

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/

White House Poetry, 10th Mar 2010

What: Poetry reading with special guest Richard Tillinghast

When: Wednesday, March 10th, 2010, from 9.30pm

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

At the White House this week we will be treated to a reading from Tennessee native Richard Tillinghast, who had recently published his Selected Poems with Dedalus Press. He will be joined on the night by his partner, the poet Grace Wells, so it promises to a great evening of poetry.

We will of course have the usual open-mic, too, to which all may and will be encouraged to contribute - bring some poems and see if the mood strikes you!! Some extra colour and atmosphere on the night will be added by the visit of a creative writing class all the way from Norway, whom we'll look forward to welcoming to Limerick. Our resident Master of Ceremonies, Barney Sheehan, will have to be on his best behaviour, and anyone who knows him knows what that means!!

Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Richard Tillinghast first came to Kinvara, County Galway, for a year in 1990 on an Amy Lowell travel grant and has long since been a distinctive presence on the Irish literary scene. He now lives in South Tipperary. Selected Poems is his tenth book of poems.

He is also the author of three non-fiction works including Damaged Grandeur, a critical memoir of Robert Lowell, with whom he studied at Harvard, and Finding Ireland: A Poet’s Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture. With his daughter, Julia Clare Tillinghast, he has recently published Dirty August, a selection of their translations from the Turkish poet Edip Cansever.

Tillinghast has also been active as a critic, travel writer and book reviewer for The Irish Times, The New York Times, and other periodicals. He has received grants from the Arts Council of Ireland and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others, and in 2008 was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of the South (Sewanee).

White House Poetry, Mar 3rd 2010

What: Poetry reading with special guest Alan Garvey

When: Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 9.30pm

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

This week at the White House we bring you the return of Alan Garvey (not unlike Napolean's return from Elba) for the launch of his third and new collection, Terror Háza. The night will also have the regular open-mic session to which all comers may and will be encouraged to contribute. Bring your friends, make them bring poems, etc etc. Admission is free as always and finger food is provided as ever, compliments of the proprietor.

Garvey has published three chapbooks - Whoever (2001), The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (2003) and Play Dead (2006) - and two full collections - Herself in Air (2006) and Learning to Crawl (2008). Work of his has also been published in many journals and anthologies in Ireland and Canada.

A graduate of the Creative Writing M.A. at WIT, Garvey is an highly accomplished reader and performer of his work, receiving Travel and Mobility Grants from the Arts Council of Ireland to read at the University of Toronto and at the March Hare Festival, Newfoundland.

Born in Dublin, growing up in Naas, Garvey lives in Carlow with wife Tara and sons Keir and Alastair.

Terror Háza, published by lapwing Press in Belfast, will of course be available for purchase on the night, which the poet will happily sign with personalised messages for buyers.

"Alan Garvey is a meticulous poet whose oeuvre extends both near and far. As the poems in Terror Háza declare, Garvey is aligned with the new committed generation of poets for whom vacuous mythology and the tedium of theologised philosophy has become a shadow in the margins of modern art."

- Richard Montgomery

We hope to see you there for what will surely be a great event. Arrive early to ensure you get good seats.

White House Poetry, Feb 24th 2010

What: Poetry reading with special guest Jaki McCarrick
When: Wednesday, February 24th 2010, 9.30pm
Where: The White House pub, O'Connell Street, Limerick

The White House this week welcomes Jaki McCarrick as guest to its weekly reading series. She will perform a selection of her work and, of course, the night will have the usual open-mic session to which all comers may contribute and are encouraged to do so.

Jaki McCarrick is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. Her first play, The Mushroom Pickers, won the 2005 Scottish Drama Association's National Playwriting Competition, and premiered at the Southwark Playhouse in London in May 2006 and in New York in February 2009.

She has published poetry in Poetry Ireland Review, Revival, Boyne Berries, Southword, Cyphers, Cathach, Word on the Street, Stylus (Australia), The Pedestal (North Carolina), Ouroborus (New York), Atonal, and short stories in The Dublin Review, Verbal Arts Magazine, Cyphers, Brace, Random Acts of Writing, The Frogmore Papers.

She was Writer-in-Residence at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre for the Pushkin Trust in July 2007. She recently won first prize in the Northern Ireland Spinetinglers Dark Fiction competition for Blood and was selected for the 2009 Poetry Ireland Introduction series of emerging poets.

Her play, The Moth-Hour, has been nominated for a number of awards and her most recent play, Leopoldville, was this year short-listed for the Adrienne Benham Award as well as the 2009 Kings Cross Award for New Writing, taking runner-up. Playwright David Hare has just selected Leopoldville as a finalist in the 2010 Yale Drama Series Playwriting Competition. Leopoldville is to be staged in London in 2010.

Admission to the event is, of course, free and finger-food is served compliments of the White House proprietor. A word of advice, arrive early to get good seats!! See you then...

White House Poetry, Feb 17th 2010

What: Poetry reading with special guest Catherine Phil MacCarthy

When: Wednesday, February 17th 2010, 9.30pm

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

This week at the White House as part of the weekly reading series, special guest poet Catherine Phil MacCarthy will be launching her latest collection of poems, Suntrap (Blackstaff Press). As ever the night will be complete with an open-mic session to which all comers are welcome to contribute. Admission is free and finger food is provided compliments of the White House.

Of Suntrap, poet Tom McCarthy's review in The Irish Times stated:

"It is as a love poet that Catherine Phil MacCarthy triumphs... Suntrap continues this vein in its chronicling of the robust power of attachments, from the primal power of ”Dance” to the sexual intrigue of “Another Woman.” Here is a poet, then, who becomes stronger with each new collection, a poet who understands that furnace of love while longing for late winter ice to hold firm along the Shannon."

MacCarthy's other collections are How High the Moon (Poetry Ireland, Sense of Place Award, 1991), This Hour of the Tide (1994), the blue globe (1998), and a first novel, One Room an Everywhere (2003). She was awarded a bursary in poetry from the Arts Council in 1994, 1999 and 2007/8 and was Writer in Residence for Dublin City (1994) and University College Dublin (2002). She works freelance as a Creative Writing tutor and is a former editor of Poetry Ireland Review.

Copies of Suntrap will be available to buy on the night, which the poet will sign with personalised messages. It should be a great night - don't miss it!!