We really enjoyed the launch of Issue 21 last Thursday! Editors Bernie Crawford and D’or Seifer were joined by Marion Cox who acted as our MC for the night. We were thrilled to have poet David Nash perform his work at the event and officially launch the issue. And he was joined by several of our contributors who read their own poems from the magazine. Pictures of the evening are available on our Facebook page.
You can buy copies of the magazine here or, in our usual selection of bookshops in Galway, Limerick and Dublin.
We are delighted to launch this next milestone issue, Issue 20, in Galway City Library on Thursday 26th June at 6PM. As a real treat for our audience (and us too!) we will host poet Lauren O’Donovan as our launcher and Susan Millar DuMars as our MC. Lauren launched two books of poetry this year: Taxidermy Heart and Superposition and will perform a reading of her own work. She will be followed by readings from the poetry contributors in this issue.
This issue is a bumper issue, with even more poems, to celebrate reaching the 20th issue milestone. We hope everyone enjoys reading it as much we enjoyed putting it together! You can buy copies of the magazine here or, of course, buy directly from us at the launch. We look forward to catching up with all our poetry friends very soon.
Our next issue, Issue 19, will launch in Galway City Library on Thursday 24th October at 6PM. We are thrilled to have poet Michael Dooley as our launcher and Susan Millar DuMars as our MC. Michael launched his debut collection, In Spring We Turned to Water, from Doire Press this year and will perform a reading of his own work. As always, contributors will also attend and read their published poems from the magazine. You can buy copies of the magazine here.
We had a wonderful time at both the launches for Issue 18: in the All Saints Heritage Centre in Clonbur and in Galway City Library. Karen J McDonnell was our launcher in Clonbur and Orla Fay was our launcher in Galway, with Susan Millar DuMars as MC. Contributors read at both of these events and photos are now up on our social media.
Issue 17 has now been printed and will be launched on Thursday 25 May at 6 pm in Galway City Library by poet Breda Spaight, who will be our featured reader.
Contributors from the current issue will also be reading. Susan Millar DuMars of Over the Edge Literary Events will MC for the evening.
We had a fabulous launch of Issue 16 by poet Anne Rouse on Thursday in Galway City Library as part of the Over The Edge literary reading. This was an exciting and well-attended event – our first live launch since before Covid. Here’s Anne launching the issue:
And here’s some of the crowd:
For more photos of the event see our Facebook page.
We are delighted to be working with the Cúirt International Festival of Literature and Over the Edge to introduce a new stream of readers at the Over the Edge New Writers Showcase at Cúirt each year. Skylight 47 will support this event by providing a shortlist of writers to the organisers. These will be writers from under-represented communities, who are now emerging onto Ireland’s contemporary literature scene. At the showcase a dedicated space will be given to these exciting, fresh voices to help share their talents with a wider audience.
Selected Reader
For this year’s Cúirt festival, we created a shortlist of such writers that had previously submitted to Skylight 47 and invited them to submit work for selection by Cúirt. We are delighted to announce Flavia Simas as the initiative’s inaugural reader at the 2022 showcase. Congratulations Flavia!
Longer-Term Project
We hope to make the showcase stream part of a longer-term initiative that will expand in scope over the next couple of years. This will potentially include 1:1 mentoring and workshops with groups or individuals who fall within the initiative’s criteria. We are really looking forward to working with these writers and hearing them read at future events during Cúirt.
We will release further information about the longer-term project as soon as details are confirmed.
Deirdre Hines has launched Skylight 47 for us in great style, and we thank her very much. We love the way she began:
It was when Dante began writing his Divine Comedy that the word ‘launch’ came into being. The pathway to the hallowed halls of many literary magazines can be as difficult to traverse as Dante’s nine circles of hell. But there is one magazine that has as its core ethos an equality of access that is democratic in its equalities of participation and outcomes. That magazine is Skylight 47, which since its inception nine years ago has been in the vanguard of what Heaney refers to in his poem of the same name:
‘But when the slates came off, extravagant sky entered and held surprise wide open.’
We know you will be surprised and delighted with Issue 15. You can buy your copy here.
We will be launching alongside Over The Edge’s Open Reading to celebrate their 19th birthday on Thursday 20 January at 6.30 on Zoom. You are all most welcome. More details following shortly.
SKYLIGHT 47 poetry 