We are excited to announce that our 2021 online reading series will conclude on Wednesday 28th April, at 6 pm, with a reading by the poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe.

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Born in India, she grew up across the Middle East, Europe and North America, before calling Ireland home. Founder of the P[l]ay It Forward Fellowships, she is poetry editor at Skein Press and Fallow Media, and contributing editor with The Stinging Fly. She is a recipient of the Next Generation Artist Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Student Award. Her debut poetry collection, Auguries of a Minor God, is forthcoming from Faber & Faber in July 2021.

You can book tickets for this online event via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/creative-writing-at-university-college-cork-reading-nidhi-zakaria-eipe-tickets-151455739193

Cover of The Disposable Stories

On Wednesday, April 21, from 8.30pm onward, De Barra’s Spoken Word will host a reading of the ‘The Disposable Stories’, a new multimedia literary magazine, created by Emily Titsworth.

Originally from Mount Olive, Illinois in the US, Emily has been resident in Cork in the past year. The ten contributors on the night – including DeBarra’s very own Lauren Cavanagh – are all students on the Creative Writing MA programme at University College Cork and also contributors to the magazine.

For this particular project, each participant took two photographs using a disposable camera. Once developed, the photos were randomly distributed among them, the pictures serving as ekphrastic writing prompts: Hence ‘The Disposable Stories’ title.

Ekphrasis is a Greek word. According to the dictionary it means, ‘Calling up a subject before the eyes with visual vividness’. So words are used to create a ‘picture in the mind’ but one that can be compared to the actual picture that inspired it. It says something about how all our minds can work so differently, even when faced with the exact same visual (or crime scene, but that’s a different story).

Further information about the event can be found on DeBarra’s Spoken Word YouTube channel that features a video. Emily explains on the video how a search for inspiration led her to come up with the disposable camera idea and why she likes the restriction of “having to capture something in just two shots” instead of the seemingly endless (but often meaningless) possibilities of a digital phone camera. Plus, how her home town is connected to this part of Ireland via a remarkable woman called Mother Jones, aka Mary G. Harris, ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ who was probably born in Blarney Street, Cork, and buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive. Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night also gets a look-in.

Following the readings, a brief exercise that will encourage audience members to write their own piece in response to one of the ‘disposable photos’ that hasn’t been used yet. They can then read out loud what they’ve produced, if they so want. The prize? A virtual pint of genuinely Irish Guinness “from the comfort of your own home”. The evening will close with an Open Mic that is open to all-comers from everywhere.

A Zoom link will be sent to the mailing list and posted on DeBarra’s Spoken Word on the day. If you wish to be added to the list, please email debarrasspokenword@gmail.com.

Congratulations to Laura McKenna!

Her debut novel, Words to Shape My Name, has been shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2021!

What a wonderful achievement and best of luck  !