A quartet of local poets – Noelle Lynskey, Bernie Crawford, Sacha Hutchinson and Luke Morgan – will feature in the next Poetry Lobby which takes place in the Menlo Park Hotel on Sunday, March 2, from 3pm to 5pm.

The event, as usual, is hosted by local poet Anne Donnellan and will be followed by an open-mic session for other attendees.

Noelle Lynskey completed an MA in Creative Writing in UL in 2022 and was invited to be Strokestown’s Poet Laureate in 2021. Widely published, her debut collection from Arlen House will be launched this year. Noelle is artistic adviser to Portumna’s Shorelines Arts Festival and facilitates Portumna Pen Pushers.

Poet, creative writer facilitator and editor Bernie Crawford has been published in Irish and international journals – including Mslexia, the North magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee and  Howl.  Her first full collection, Living Water, was published by Chaffinch Press in 2021. She was awarded an arts bursary by Galway County Council in 2019 and received an Arts Council Agility Award in 2022. She facilitates creative writing classes and is a co-editor of the popular poetry magazine Skylight 47.

Sacha Hutchinson is a medical ophthalmologist, living in Galway. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Ropes, Skylight 47, The Storms, The Curlew, Inpspired and Lothlorien. She was shortlisted for Over The Edge New Writer in 2019 and won the Poems for Patience competition at Cúirt 2022.

Luke Morgan is the 2025 winner of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award, a prize given annually by the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, to an Irish poet.  His debut collection, Honest Walls, was published in 2016 when he was aged 22. His second collection, Beast, was published in 2022 and his third, Blood Atlas, is due this Spring.

His poetry has been featured in prominent journals across the world, including Poetry Review, New England Review, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review and Cyphers. Also an award-winning filmmaker, he lives and works in Galway.

Host Anne Donnellan promises that this band of brilliant writers will fill the March Sunday afternoon with poetry delights – a special occasion on the Galway literary calendar.

Pictured: Bernie Crawford…co-editor of poetry magazine Skylight 47.