Join special guests Malcolm Guite, Gaynor Kane, Rosemary Jenkinson, Mark Ward and Elizabeth McGeown for a unique evening where the authors will share their work, followed by a discussion led by Dr Connal Parr on the theme of ‘Work, Place and Language’.
In addition, the Thomas Carnduff Poetry Competition, sponsored by Yellow House Publishing Ltd, welcomes submissions from writers resident in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Submissions are open from 1 – 30 June and are welcome in English, Irish and Ulster Scots, focusing on the above theme. Three prizes comprising shields and gift vouchers will be awarded, to the value of £50, £30 and £20. To enter the competition, send your submission to publishingyellowhouse@gmail.com
The beautiful new cafe in Templemore Baths will be open before the event, so please come down early, grab a tea or coffee before the show, or to enjoy during the show.
Capacity is limited, so we recommend booking early for what will surely be a highlight event in this year’s festival.
Age guidance: 18+
Author Biographies
Malcolm Guite is a poet and priest, and Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. He lives in Norfolk, England, and lectures widely in England and North America on Theology and Literature. His books include Lifting The Veil, (Square Halo 2021); The Word Within the Words (DLT 2021); After Prayer (Canterbury Press 2019) and Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder 2017). He has a YouTube series called ‘A Spell in the Library’ at https://www.youtube.com/c/MalcolmGuitespell.
Rosemary Jenkinson is a playwright and short story writer from Belfast. In 2018 she received a Major Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and was artist-in-residence at the Lyric 2017. Her plays have been performed in Australia, Dublin, London, Edinburgh, Brussels, New York and Washington DC. Short story collections include Contemporary Problems Nos. 53 & 54, Aphrodite’s Kiss, Catholic Boy (shortlisted for the EU Prize for Literature), Lifestyle Choice 10mgs (shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize) and Marching Season. She was singled out by the Irish Times for her ‘elegant wit, terrific characterisation and an absolute sense of her own particular Belfast’.
Mark Ward is the author of the collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2023) and four chapbooks: Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018), Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), the prose/haiku/hybrid HIKE (Bear Creek Press, 2022) and the Choose Your Own Adventure sonnet, Faultlines (voidspace, online 2022/print 2023). His poems have been featured in The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, Poetry Ireland Review, The North, Banshee, Crannóg, Southword, and The Honest Ulsterman amongst others, as well as anthologies, the most recent of which is Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry. In 2021 and 2022 Mark was awarded bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its seventh year.
Twitter: @dogwithoutlegs / Instagram: @faekplastiksteev
Elizabeth McGeown is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Belfast. She has work published in journals including Banshee, Poetry Wales and Under the Radar. She is the 2022 UK Slam Champion and was longlisted in the Saboteur Awards 2022 for ‘Best Spoken Word Performer’. She won the Cúirt International Festival of Literature: Spoken Word Platform 2019 and the Cursed Murphy Spoken Word Prize 2019. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Her first poetry collection ‘Cockroach’ was published by Verve Poetry Press in summer 2022.
Gaynor Kane is from East Belfast. She came to writing late, after finishing a degree with a creative writing module. Her full collection, ‘Venus in Pink Marble’ was released on her 50th birthday in 2020, published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press. She has four other publications, from the same press: a micro-collection, ‘Circling the Sun’ (2018), a chapbook, ‘Memory Forest’ (2019), a co-authored chapbook of pandemic poetry ‘Penned In’ with Karen Mooney (2020); and a collection of love poems ‘Eight Types of Love’ (2022). Gaynor has been guest editor of the Bangor Literary Journal and The Storms Journal. She has also performed at several festivals, including the Belfast Book Festival, Stendhal Music and Arts Festival & Cheltenham Poetry Festival and a judge for the North Carolina Poetry Society.
