Martina Dalton

Inishowen curlew today. Lifted my heart.

I'll be giving a talk in Cabra Library next Thurs at 6.30pm about books to help you get through the winter. 24 recommendations - fiction, essays, poetry & memoir. Something for everyone, hopefully! Part of
@dublincitylibs.bsky.social Wintering Well programme
dublincity.spydus.ie/cgi-bin/spyd...

A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

William Carlos Williams, Winter Trees

Cover of Filly features two identical photos of a closed eyelid with heavy makeup and two fingers over the eyelid

MRS W LOOKED rumpled, her blazer fraying at the cuffs. I tried to smooth her crinkled collar, but she pushed me off and flicked through copybooks on her coffee table. Correct some of these for me, would you? Don't look so shocked, it's only second years. Lines of blue and black pen. Some doodled and spattered, some neatly ruled. Last night, as I clung to her, she'd said What am I going to do with you? and I wondered how she didn't know that she could gouge my eyes out and I wouldn't tell her to stop.

🎁 Poem-a-day advent calendar 🎁 Day 6 is a peak of @rosamundtaylor.bsky.social's epic novel in verse, 'Filly' @bansheepress.bsky.social 💖

Irish Writers Centre: National Mentoring Programme 2026 Applications deadline: 31st December 2025 Applications for the Irish Writers Centre’s acclaimed National Mentoring Programme (NMP) are now open. This highly regarded scheme offers writers across the island of Ireland the opportunity to receive sustained creative and professional support from an established Irish writer of their choosing. Now entering its ninth year, the programme has played a transformative role in the development of many emerging voices.

Irish Writers Centre: National Mentoring Programme 2026

Applications deadline: 31st December 2025 Applications for the Irish Writers Centre’s acclaimed National Mentoring Programme (NMP) are now open. This highly regarded scheme offers writers across the island of Ireland the opportunity to…

Writing & Poetry Competitions & Submissions – December 2025 — WORDBOX Over 150 calls for literary competitions and submissions including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, photography, and more - contests, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open or ...

Over 150 calls for literary competitions and submissions including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, photography, and more - contests, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open or with deadlines in December 2025. Please share & best of luck!
www.thisiswordbox.com/wordbox-blog...

Did you know that it's our 35th anniversary in 2026? 🥳

To celebrate, we've recently launched a host of 35 brand-new courses from screenwriting, poetry, comedy, and more

Check them out and get booking below 👀

irishwriterscentre.ie/courses/

I've been busy reading over the last while because I've been asked by @dublincitylibs.bsky.social to give a talk about books to brighten up the winter evenings! 📚 💕
I'll be in Raheny Library on Wed 10th and Cabra Library on Thurs 11th Dec at 6.30pm

Please share 🙏
www.dublincity.ie/events/books...

Online launch in a few weeks - link to tickets here ❤️

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/broken-sle...

How You Knew I wrote to you that ordinary day, you who had once cracked your sternum wide apart for me to see the robin lying on the cage floor, ribs barely moving, and said to me, If ever you need my life, come and take it. You understood it sooner, that's all. I'd fooled myself for months that this was just a ruse -- a cherub with a quiverful of darts, folie à deux, a neurochemical trick or even vanity, that proud flower bowed over a looking glass. But this was never just anything. In a slip of concentration I wrote: I didn't love you, then. And then a skylight opened for each of us.

Cover of fallen featuring a painting of a woman in a red dress falling through the air, her legs and feet are bare, her arms are stretched over her head

Poem-a-day advent calendar 🎁 and I'm off to a bad start having missed yesterday! But here's 'How You Knew' by Audrey Molloy from her latest collection 'Fallen' published by @thegallerypress.bsky.social 💜

The deadline for applications to our 2026 Poetry Workshop is tomorrow, Tuesday 2nd December at 5pm Irish Time.

Be sure to read the submission guidelines and get your application in on time.

More info: stingingfly.org/poetry-works...

Congratulations to Róisín Leggett Bohan @leggettbohan.bsky.social and Katie Hale @katiescribbles.bsky.social. Their chapbooks will be published next year and launched at the Cork International Poetry Festival in May @munsterlitcentre.bsky.social

Applications for the our 2026 National Mentoring Programme are now open!

This is an opportunity open to all writers across the island of Ireland to receive sustained creative and professional mentoring from an established Irish writer.

irishwriterscentre.ie/national-men...

Poetry Magazines Submissions Spreadsheet Poets! Take the hard work out of submitting to poetry magazines What poetry magazines are there? What are their web addresses? How many poems can I send? Are they open for submissions now? You&#821…

I'll be updating the poetry magazines spreadsheet this coming week, so if you're not on my mailing list, join now (it's free) and you'll never be short of places to send your poems... robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk/poetry-magaz...

"at the old pond
snow falls on Mandarin ducks
in twilight"
Basho Matsuo

(image: Jakuchu Ito)

LAUNCH: Banshee | Issue 20 | Books Upstairs Celebrate ten years of Banshee at the Dublin launch of our speculative fiction-themed 20th issue. Join us at Books Upstairs on Thursday 4 December at 6pm to raise a glass and to hear prose and poetry ...

Banshee celebrates ten years in print @booksupstairs.bsky.social next Thursday 4 December! Join us from 6pm to raise a glass to the publication of issue 20 and hear from our brilliant contributors. Hosted by guest editor @clarakiyoko.bsky.social 🎄

booksupstairs.ie/all-events/l...

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;

Rainer Maria Rilke, Evening; tr. Stephen Mitchell

Congratulations, Paul! 💫✨

Huge congratulations, Elaine!

Poets Dean Browne and Rosamund Taylor in conversation UCC School of English & Digital Humanities presents a reading and discussion with two exceptional young Irish poets

On Wednesday @ucc.ie are hosting an amazing FREE event w/ poets @deanbrowne.bsky.social & @rosamundtaylor.bsky.social. Dean's debut collection After Party is published by @picadorbooks.bsky.social and Rosamund's verse novel Filly by @bansheepress.bsky.social
www.eventbrite.ie/e/poets-dean...

Applications for the 2026 TSF Poetry Workshop are open and close on Tuesday 2nd December at 5pm Irish time.

More information on how to apply here: stingingfly.org/poetry-works...

❛ There will be dying, there will be dying, / but there is no need to go into that. / The poems flow from the hand unbidden / and the hidden source is the watchful heart.

Poet Derek Mahon, who was born #OTD in 1941.

And the song goes on, beautiful.

Rilke

Before Saint Genevieve's Tomb by Mícheál McCann When the old mystics described religious experiences maybe it felt a little like this: simply overcome as the bell rings ten, sore knees pressed into stone in the cavernous church looking up to an icon. Maybe it’s the thirty-eight-degree heat. Maybe it’s the sorrowful absence of cat hair in my mouth. Maybe it’s how Saint Genevieve saved a city through her words. Maybe it’s how she reminds me of my friends, of West Belfast, of Sister Mona’s roses. A gilt figure in Paris lands me somehow back to standing in a playground. Sister Anne. Riley wallpapering her classroom in book covers just to show the kids you can be hot and clever. Niamh speaking tenderly to and about the children. The army men who smothered Mona’s roses with busted sandbags. How the roses grew back. The ruins of those murdered rosebushes nourished whatever was to grow above them. All those girls who passed those roses every morning. All this from the gaze of the patron saint of shepherds. Maybe it’s not so profound. Maybe I’m just homesick and you could fry an egg on these Parisian cobbles. Or maybe it is. When my eyes dry, I get up from my knees and take my devotions with me into the brightness.

I am and will be a lifelong fan of Mícheál McCann's work 💘 @thegallerypress.bsky.social @irishtimes.com

Poetry Ireland / Éigse Éireann is pleased to announce the appointment of Claire Power as the new Director of the organisation.

Read more on our website at www.poetryireland.ie/news/poetry-....

35 new courses for 35 years of the Irish Writers Centre.

We're delighted to unveil our first batch of new creative writing courses from January 2026 onwards, covering a huge range of interests and for writers at every stage of their journey: irishwriterscentre.ie/courses/

Thrilled with this review in the Australian Book Review of The Making of a Poem which gives strong praise too, to its sibling The Process of Poetry. #Australian #Australia #Poetry #poets

Aosdána member and Saoi Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin awarded Honorary Doctorate of Literature by UCC - Aosdána The trailblazing poet, scholar, editor, Saoi of Aosdána and former Ireland Professor of Poetry, Professor Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin was honoured the Honorary Doctorate by University College Cork (UCC) fo...

Aosdána member and Saoi Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin awarded Honorary Doctorate of Literature by UCC

aosdana.artscouncil.ie/general/aosd...

Writing.ie is an online magazine site designed to help you improve your writing & get published.

If you are an author and would like to contribute to Writing.ie do please get in touch!

& it’s also free to add your events!!

Welcome to our community✍️
#writersky

We're launching next Thursday 27th November in the Digital Depot - come one, come all!!