Four fine poets are on the bill for the upcoming Poetry Lobby reading in the Menlo Park Hotel.

Rachel Coventry, Anne Irwin, Vinny Glynn Steed and Susan Lindsay are the featured readers on Sunday week, January 19, from 3pm to 4.30pm, for an event hosted by local poet Anne Donnellan. It will be followed by an open-mic session.

Rachel Coventry’s poems have appeared in journals including The Rialto, the North, Stand, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, the Shop, and The Moth. Her poem On the Death of an Absent Father was Carol Rumsfeld’s Poem of the Week in The Guardian in October 2023.  Her second collection, The Detachable Heart, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2022. She has a doctorate in philosophical poetics from the University of Galway, and her monograph, Heidegger and Poetry in the Digital Age, was published by Bloomsbury London in 2023.

Galway poet Anne Irwin is inspired by everyday things – the beauty of nature, her maturing years, mythology – and her poems are sometimes political and often satirical. They have been published in magazines including Poetry Ireland Review, A New Ulster, ROPEs, Skylight 47, Poetry Bus, Irish Left Review, High Window and Boyne Berries. Her first collection, A Minor Concerto in Rahoon, was published by Lapwing Press,

Susan Lindsay has published three collections of poetry with Doire Press. Her poems, interviews and essays have been published in journals and anthologies, including Poetry Ireland Review and The Café Review: A Gathering of Irish Voices.  In 2022 she read for the University Missouri-St. Louis Irish Readings and Concerts Series in the US. She facilitates Conversations Mediated by Poetry, most recently creative wellbeing events, and occasionally blogs at susanlindsayauthor.blogspot.com.

Vinny Glynn Steed’s poetry has appeared in journals and online in Mexico, the USA, Scotland and Northern Ireland. His debut chapbook, Catching Air, was published by Maytree Press in 2020. when he also won the Allingham poetry competition. His full debut book, Hell Bent, is due to be published this year.

Host Anne Donnellan promises that this free event will be a feast of verse for all!

Pictured: Rachel Coventry…guest reader.