Submissions open for Skylight Magazine

ISSUE 8 of Skylight magazine is scheduled for Spring 2017

Submissions will be accepted up to 1 Jan 2017 (deadline midnight 1 Jan).

Please send up to three poems, along with a short biographical note (max 60 words), to skylightpoets47@gmail.com. Work should be unpublished.

Poems to be no longer than 40 lines.

Please send your poems both as an attachment (.doc, .docx, .txt or .rtf) and in the body of the email.

The editors are also looking for original artwork. We will be featuring one artist in each issue, publishing four or five pieces. If you would like to be this artist, please email your work during the submission window.

Contributors will receive one copy of the magazine.

Reading at The Listeners

I'm reading with Maurice Devitt this Monday 28th November 8pm at The Eden House, Rathfarnham. 

All welcome. 

It should be an innovative joint reading.

Space to Write

There are residencies and retreats for writing and other artistic spaces popping up all over the place. Each has its own ethos and feel. Here's one in a restored Victorian villa historically named ‘Glenhassan Hall’ facing Northern Ireland’s Downhill beach, Coleraine, Co Derry. It has a draw for a free stay at the end of January.

Space to Write 2017 is now taking bookings.

When?
From Friday the 27th of Jan - Feb 5th.  It's 2 weekends plus the week in between.  

These dates are set aside for writers to have 'Space to Write' at a very low rate ( less than half normal price per room) The minimum booking is 3 nights, price is £22 per single room per night. We provide a beautiful space, a real fire, and endless tea and coffee. You bring yourself and the project you are are working on and food/drink for self-catering. There is no requirement to meet with the other participants or share what you are working on, however this tends to happen naturally. There is a gentle and supportive atmosphere and you will meet wonderful encouraging people.

The FB event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1605503423090390/  Join it to be entered into the draw for a free stay!  

To reserve a space email McCall with your preferred dates at info@downhillbeachhouse.com or send a PM. 

Downhill Beachhouse

'Irish Beach Retreat'
www.downhillbeachhouse.com
T:  +44 (028) 7084 9077

Scottish Arts Short Story Competition

The Scottish Arts Club Short Story Competition is open to writers worldwide aged over 18 years, by 30 September 2017, published and unpublished.
Stories entered for the competition should be 1,500 words or less and can be on any topic.

A team of dedicated readers assists the selection process with the writer Alexander McCall Smith making the final selection of the winner and the runners-up.

The Isobel Lodge Award for New Scottish Writing is open to all unpublished writers over 18 years by 30 September 2017 who were born in Scotland, had their primary residence in Scotland or were studying in Scotland on 1 January 2017.

FEES:

Every story submitted carries an entry fee of £10 payable as a donation to the Scottish Arts Club Charitable Trust via credit/debit card, PayPal or cheque. All funds raised through the competition will be channelled through the Scottish Arts Club Charitable Trust to benefit the arts in Scotland.

FORMAT:

• All stories should be in English, double spaced, 12pt, in Microsoft Word or in a PDF format. The title of the story and page number should appear on every page. This should be inserted using the header format option.
• The total number of words excluding the title should be listed at the end of the story.  

SUBMISSION: Stories are submitted via email with an entry form to shortstory@scottishartsclub.co.uk.

PRIZES:
The Scottish Arts Club Short Story Competition includes awards for:

• The overall winner – £800
• Two runners-up – £100 each
• The Scottish Arts Club Members Award – Trophy
• The Isobel Lodge Award for New Scottish Writing – £500
• All finalists – signed copies of an Alexander McCall Smith novel

All finalists in the short story competition will be informed personally by email or by telephone by 15 September. Finalists stories will be published on the websites of the Scottish Arts Club and the Scottish Arts Club Charitable Trust.

The awards will be presented on Saturday 14 October 2017 during the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Awards Dinner.

All the stories from 2016 may be read on the web site of the Scottish Arts Club Charitable Trust atwww.sacctrust.org/story – where writers may also enter the 2017 competition.

Deadline: 31st March 2017

The Charles Causley International Poetry Competition 2016

The Charles Causley International Poetry Competition is to be judged this year by their patron, Sir Andrew Motion.  When asked what he will be looking for in the winning entries he said:

‘I’m looking for poems that surprise me – not by their ostentation, but by making me see, think, remember, recover things I’ve forgotten I already know.’

This years winners will be announced next year, in what would have been Charles’ 100th year, and will be included in the celebrations and publications which will mark this important moment.

The 1st prize winner will receive £2000 and the opportunity to stay at Causley’s former home in Launceston, Cyprus Well, during his centenary year for a week-long stay.

The 2nd prize winner will receive £250 and the 3rd prize winner £100.

Five highly commended poets whose work shows particular promise will be offered a mentoring development opportunity with one of our writer’s in residence during 2017.

Entries will be shortlisted by an expert panel and the final decision will be made by Sir Andrew Motion.

Fee: The first poem submitted costs £7. Subsequent entries in the same submission cost £5 per poem. 

 40 lines of text maximum, no minimum. The title is not included in the line count. Lines between text/stanzas are not counted in the line count. Titles, epigraphs and dedications are also not counted as lines. 

Postal Entries only. Link here

Deadline: 1st December

Haiku for Science Hack Day

Haiku

It’s really simple

These are really simple

tap tap tap

In principal,

we should be able to

tap tap tap

that little arrow

see the little checkmark

that’s when the fun starts

Look, if I wave

I change the numbers

on the screen

I don’t know much

I can follow instructions

that’s important

You need to use

a proper crimper

Of course we have one

Him? He knows stuff

he just takes shit apart

and wiggles it

How long did it take

for him to fix it

oh seconds

Making prototypes

we have more ideas than time

to make them all work

hot duck in plastic -

ideally to mould it

saw it in half

It has chemistry

electronics and software

mechanics and art

the motor squeezes

the drop falls, splashes, lit up

the camera flashes

duck on the bottom

incoming wave bobs duck on top

powers LED

Mother’s pattern

drawn into the present -

laser cut fabric

Limerick drivers

One cyclist retaliates

vest and LEDs

So many photos -

two people watching a third

typing

Floating lanterns

LEDs and thermocouples

such pretty colours

Pimp my chair

Help me overcome

daily obstacles

braille display -

little wheels and pins

one way internet

We’re brewing beer

squirting carbon dioxide

displacing O2

Who set off

the fire alarm?

who’s on fire?

When’s the next one?

Five years of never again

Never again

Pickled Body Submissions

Call for Submissions: Issue 3.2 – Egg

The online mag, The Pickled Body is looking for poetry submissions.

Call for Submissions – Issue 3.2: Egg
Deadline: November 30, 2016

The egg is surreal*. Consider what it is, where it comes from. Wonder whether or not it came first.

The egg is versatile (think metaphor for breast, eye, the beginning, the end; think puns). The egg is volatile (think salmonella). In The Great Gatsby it’s the tail end of East and West. Eat it; on its own – over easy, scrambled, poached – or as part of something bigger than itself – cake, quiche, meringue. It is all things, and it is nothing. And Dali, if you take Picasso’s word for it, had a monopoly on them.

Send up to three of your best egg poems to thepickledbody@gmail.com

Link here

The Rialto poetry pamphlet competition

The rather brilliant UK poetry magazine Rialto has a new poetry pamphlet competition.

1st prize: publication of the winning pamphlet + launch reading + up to £200 travel expenses

Poets on the shortlist of 10 will each get a paragraph of feedback. The winner and 3 others will have a poem published in The Rialto. All shortlisted poets will have a poem published on our website.

Deadline: Wednesday 30 November 2016  

Judge: Hannah Lowe

Please send us 18-24 pages of poems. Poems should be typed in single spacing on one side of A4 paper and in a font size of 12. Start each poem on a new page.  Maximum 40 lines per page.  If you include a poem sequence in which the poems are 14 lines long or less then you may put two on a page.

More guidelines and submission details here

Cinnamon Press Debut Poetry Collection Prize

• Prize of £300 plus publishing contract.
• Up to 25 runners up published in a poetry anthology.
• Open to those who have not had a full collection published.
• Judged by Jan Fortune.
• The fee is £12

• Entrants  should not previously have had a full poetry collection published.

• Entries should be submitted electronically, via the forms on each competition page, in .doc, .docx or .rtf file formats only. Please ensure you have up to date virus protection before sending any files. (If you have problems please email for guidance.). You may also send send your work by post, without your name on the MS, but please add a cover sheet with your contacts details and the name of your work.
• Submit 10 poems up to 40 lines

• Deadline: 30 November, 2016

Guidelines and online submissions here

Women’s Way Short Story Competition

Woman’s Way is launching a short story competition for the second year. We want all our readers who enjoy writing to enter our competition.

Our theme this year is REINVENTION. This year, we’re narrowing the genres to five and will be picking one winner from each genre. These are:

• Romance
• Horror
• Childrens/Young Adult
• Humour/Comedy
• Crime/Thriller

Our winners’ stories will appear in our Christmas annual, issue 51 (on sale December 27) plus some extra special gifts.

Note: They are not saying what the prize is...but there is no fee

• Stories must be previously unpublished though you can submit more than one story per category. We will not accept poetry, scripts or an opinion piece
• Word count: One page stories of a maximum of 800 words
• Entries should be typed on double line spacing on side of paper only, Times New Roman, 12 point, with wide margins. All stories must be in English and each page numbered
• Please add a cover page to each story which includes: your name, postal address, email address, contact number, name of story, word count and category you’re entering. Also include a 50-word biography
• Stories may edited to Woman’s Way’s house style

More info on writing.ie
Send your completed stories and cover page to atoner@harmonia.ie 

Deadline: 1st December

Doolin Writers Weekend Competition

Doolin Writers Weekend Competition is now open for entries for short stories, poems and flash fiction

Judges Sinéad Gleeson, E.M. Reapy and Rita Ann Higgins. 

This year they've gone “green” and are asking for submissions online if possible.

In 2017 it'll be the 5th year of Doolin Writers’ Weekend, at Hotel Doolin Ireland from 3rd to 5th of February 2017. Some names on the programme so far: Sara Baume, Mike McCormack, Claire-Louise Bennett, Alan McMonagle, Declan Meade, Elaine Feeney with many more to be announced. 

I'm hoping they're going to ask me, TBH. It has a great reputation for fun.

For more information on the competitions please follow this link http://www.hotel Doolin.ie/doolin-writers-festival.html

Deadline 13th January 2017

Some upcoming book launches - Salmon Press

3 from Salmon Press to be launched on |Tuesday 8th November 6.30pm in Books Upstairs.

Fish On A Bicycle - New and Selected Poems by Jean O'Brien

This New & Selected is a revisiting of Jean O'Brien's four collections starting with The Shadow Keeper in 1997 and moving up to the present day. Her new poems mark a maturing of her work dealing with ill health, parenthood, nature and everything in between. As with her previous collections her work is honest and direct and calls for a similar response from the reader. As ever she broaches hard subjects without fear or compromise and faces her own mortality. These poems are dealt with in a light-hearted way that belies their seriousness, they are lively and always readable.

The Art of Dying by Adam Wyeth
From mountain pass to storm-tossed seashore, from Barcelona to the Drakensberg, these new poems by Adam Wyeth feature journeys both witty and surreal.  There is much that is busy transforming here, from kitchen to ice-rink; rock to hatching egg.  In the richly imagined Talking Tree Alphabet, a birch tree becomes Marilyn Monroe holding down her skirt, while the blackthorn is a ‘ravaged whore’. At the heart of the collection, the still point around which the energies flow, is a boy’s relationship with his father, the absurd indignity of death, and the ceaseless unfolding of the generations: ‘An ancient vellum/ where the next life is written’. Language, the raw material of the poet who shapes and makes sense of the world, is celebrated without forgetting the humble source of it all, Yeats’s foul rag and bone shop, or ‘thorns/that draw blood and score the heart completely’ (from ‘Gorse’). Dancing on the edge of civilization, preferring the energizing potential of dream and myth, Wyeth’s is a refreshing new voice on the Irish poetry scene.  Katie Donovan

Slow Clocks of Decay by Patrick Chapman
Slow Clocks of Decay is Patrick Chapman’s seventh poetry collection, his most mature and expansive to date. Exploring universal themes through the lens of his remarkable imagination – the loss of friends to suicide; the insidious nature of depression; the inevitability of ageing; and the destructive effect of religion – Slow Clocks of Decay culminates in a bravura sequence that conjures the poet’s own final journey as a fantasia of Hitchcockian intrigue set in a Paris of the mind.

Picaroon Poetry call for Submissions - Troubadour

Troubadour will be an anthology of poetry inspired by music and musicians.

Call for Picaroon anthology submissions! 

Here at Picaroon, we get so many poetry submissions paying tribute to genres such as jazz, country, and the blues, or specific singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and David Bowie. Either way, and whatever your view, it’s clear: music means the world to many poets, and in many cases the two art forms are closely entwined.

Hence our title: “troubadour” was originally a word used to describe a certain type of medieval poet, but has, over the centuries, come to mean a singer. A troubadour seamlessly blends words and music.

This anthology will be edited by Kate Garrett and Robert de Born (poet, songwriter & musician), and published in Spring 2017.

The deadline for submissions is Sunday 5 February 2017.

Guidelines:

• Submit up to 4 unpublished poems about music, inspired by music, as tributes to music – the interpretation of the theme is up to you.
• Submit all of your poems in a single Word document (not one poem per document – this gets very confusing), or in the body of your email. Please do not send PDFs.
• Send your poems to picaroonpoetry@gmail.com with the subject line “Troubadour Submission”.
• Unfortunately we cannot accept found poetry for this book, due to stringent copyright laws around song lyrics, so please don’t send any.
• If you are sending a simultaneous submission, please let us know as soon as possible if it’s accepted elsewhere.
• Payment for the anthology will be one contributor copy of the paperback.
• Once again, the d, and the book will be published in Spring 2017 (probably April).
  We look forward to reading your

Deadline 5 February 2017

Link here

Launch of new books by Eleanor Hooker and Catherine Ann Cullen

Two new collections by two super poets,  A Tug of Blue by Eleanor Hooker and The Other Now by Catherine Ann Cullen. Dedalus Press. You'll end up buying both, believe me.
Tuesday 8th November 7pm
The Teachers Club