Self-Discovery Workshop

The next Self-discovery through Poetry workshop with Carol Boland is in Tinakilly House, Rathnew, on Sunday 7th July 2013 from 2pm - 5pm.  Cost €30. If you want to be added to the waiting list for future workshops, contact Carol at bolandcarol@hotmail.com

Dalkey Book Festival

Four of the Shed Poets  Bernie, Rosy, Judy and Carol, will be reading at Dalkey Book Festival fringe again this year. The venue is upstairs in The Club public house, on Saturday 15 June at 3.15pm.
Always a lively event with a bit of conga drumming thrown in!
Hope you can join us.

Shed Poets Documentary

Greig Colley is a student film maker at IADT who has just completed a documentary on the Shed Poets.
His short film follows the poets as they go about their weekly poetry workshop in the Poets' Shed and is backed by wonderful visuals of Dalkey and Glencree. With an original music score, the documentary features Bernie Kenny and Judy Russell,  giving an insight into the motivation of these poets.

Details of the Tidings documentary and how to view it, will be available in the next few months. Greig is currently entering his film in some of the major film festivals in the country.

Wind Horses by Judy Russell

We are delighted to announce that Judy Russell's first poetry book Wind Horses has been published by Lapwing Publishers.

These well-crafted poems are permeated and informed with a love and knowledge of nature, and of plants, and people who inhabit the poet's landscapes. Rosy Wilson

Shed Poets at Bray Arts 14/01/13

Rosy Wilson and friends at Bray Arts

"Shed Poets, Carol, Judy and Rosy will open the New Year with readings and a screening of their new DVD associating images of landscapes, people and natural life with their creative words. . . ." The Ticket, Irish Times.

Bray Arts hold their monthly shows in Martello Hotel, Bray starting at 8pm  Check out www.brayarts.net

Have A Shed - Will Share

Here is a review on the Shed Poets by Dilys Wood in Artemist Poetry, Issue 9, November 2012

HAVE A SHED - WILL SHARE
Not a store for the lawnmower but a garden room overlooking Killiney Bay, County Dublin: here six women poets (Carol Boland, Marguerite Colgan, Bernie Kenny, Maureen Perkins, Judy Russell, Rosy Wilson) have regular meetings. In her poem, Poets’ Shed, Bernie Kenny refers to “the only sound pens writing” and to a postcard pinned on the wall showing “the Dylan Thomas writing shed in creative disarray”. This lively Irish ‘co-operative’ have been highly productive — anthologies, individual collections and a DVD (The Poets’Shed) with a booklet of poems. In the DVD, beautiful images of landscape and people relate to poems read by the six poets; music is by Elizabeth Purnell.

Bernie Kenny and Rosy Wilson had books published in 2011 and 2012 respectively, and Maureen Perkins has a new collection due out in 2013. Kenny’s Always Dalkey, Always the Sea includes poems which compare with those of the much-admired US poet, Mary Oliver, in their spirit of open invitation to walk out with the poet, “Soon after dawn, today decides / to be delightful. I’m out early // ears awake / eyes finding miracles” (Summer Solstice at Liscannor). Like Oliver, Kenny has found a way to be movingly confessional but also classically constrained, obviously taking much care with choice of words, line-breaks and the shape of the poems. In Rosy Wilson’s Keeper of the Creek there are also superbly economical poems with very pure diction, for example Butterflies, “are scarce this summer// but on my mourning walk / between the hills // I see some flutter / singly and in pairs // among long
grasses / low gorse, purple heather.” Though writing about grief, she has mastered the art of not writing too circumstantially, cutting straight to the heart of loss with the daring conceit ‘mourning’ where we expect ‘morning’.

Dilys Wood

The Poets’Shed, little fish films, 2012, manager, Rosy Wilson, music, Elizabeth Pumell

Always Dalkey, Always the Sea, Bernie Kenny, Boland Press. 2011. €10 ISBN 978-19078550-3-O

Keeper of the Creek, Rosy Wilson, Belfast Lapwing, 2012. £10 ISBN 978-l-9092520-O-4

Rosy's Next Book - Keeper of the Creek

Congrats to Rosy for a publishing deal with Lapwing (Belfast).
Here is a preview of her cover. Pic by her son, Paul