News

Every year the Poetry Society (https://poetrysociety.org.uk/), a huge UK organisation dedicated to showcasing excellent poetry, runs a competition for young poets – The Foyle Young Poets Award. I thought it might be inspiring to highlight how seriously this organisation takes the work of young writers, because it’s easy to think, as a young person, that […]

Kilkenny Arts Office Rhyme Rag Ensemble established as a result of the Rhyme Rag, an online poetry journal for Kilkenny’s young writers The Kilkenny County Council Arts Office is proud to present Mark my Words, a new collection of poems by the Rhyme Rag Ensemble, a group of young Kilkenny writers. Mark my Words is […]

Culture Night offers a wonderful range of events free to the public. One the events of the evening features young poets reading their work at the Arts Office Gallery at 4.30pm. In 2017, to support the expansion and sustainability of the Rhyme Rag programme, the Arts Office began developing a Young Ensemble of writers – […]

Hi all, I hope those of you in the middle of exams are doing ok! They’ll be over before you know it, and the summer will beckon… Some of you may have been at the writing workshop I ran in Kilkenny last month: the group was really great and interactive, and as a result there […]

Easter holidays used to be my favourite holidays of the year, because they seemed so unexpected and so very long and chocolate-filled. Now, I feel like celebrating processed sugar and mass-marketing isn’t the most amazing thing to get small children to do…so I often ask students to imagine what kind of celebration they would invent […]

Calling all young poets and writers! There is exciting news from Kilkenny Arts Office about its innovative poetry programme Rhyme Rag. Arts Officer Mary Butler sets out the plan, “In 2017 to further support the expansion, stability and sustainability of the Rhyme Rag programme and our community of young writers we are developing a Young […]

Hi again everyone, January is generally a time to put new habits in place, so here are a few of my favourite books about creative writing in case you’re planning on getting more serious with your writing this year! The Artists Way by Julia Cameron This is a really popular book for writers and artists […]

I was trying to think of a good poem to quote from in this post – Another September, by Thomas Kinsella?  This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin? Then I remembered how disillusioning it can be to have ‘words of wisdom’ from older poets forced down your throat in school.  You don’t get to choose […]

In case you couldn’t make it, here you have a fantastic report on the Rhyme Rag Launch last Spring at the Set Theatre, Kilkenny. Kilkenny Matters: Rhyme Rag Launch