The ninth issue of the very popular Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet has been published by the Arts Office of the Kilkenny County Council.
The aim of the publication is to give local writers a platform for their work.
One hundred and eight poems were submitted for inclusion by 41 writers, with 16 poems, by 13 writers selected by this year’s editor Yvonne Cullen.
Cullen was born and lives in Dublin. Her first collection of poems Invitation to the Air won the American Ireland fund award at Listowel Writers' Week.
Editor Yvonne Cullen says of poetry submitted to the broadsheet: ‘Reading the work submitted, I had a wonderful sense of the whole of the county it came from. It was a really lovely experience to enter a region like that, via the contents of a large manilla envelope, and that was truly how it felt. A group of poems emerged which seemed to talk to each other and together add up to more than the sum of their parts, as an experience of Kilkenny in poetry. I hope that when you read it, you'll agree!’
Selected poets are Michael Massey, Anne O’Connor, Geraldine Coleman, Willie-Joe Meally, Jim Moore, Jill Stewart Nunn, Susie Lamb, Monica Fleming, Carmel Cummins, Myra McAuliffe, Frances Cotter, Jack Cuddihy, and Kevin Dowling. The design and illustration of the broadsheet was undertaken by artist Ale Mercado and are intrinsic to the presentation of the publication.
Cullen will provide a workshop with Broadsheet poets entitled ‘your emerging voice’ on Friday June 12, with the launch of the Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet Issue 9 taking place on this date at 5pm in No 72, John Street, Kilkenny.
