A Decade Teaching Poetry Workshops At Galway Arts Centre

In September 2004 George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were running for re-election; Iraq was on its way towards chaos; the Beslan school hostage crisis in Chechnya ended very violently; Michael D. Higgins was a Featured Reader at that month's Over The Edge: Open Reading in Galway City Library; and I began teaching poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre. For more about what was happening in the world that month, see here.

In the decade since many participants in those workshops have gone on to achieve publication. Lorna Shaughnessy, Mary Madec, Susan Lindsay, Kevin O'Shea (RIP), Jean Kavanagh, Sarah Clancy, Mary Hanlon, Aideen Henry, Donna Potts, John Walsh, Micéal Kearney, Mary Mullen, & Deirdre Kearney have all published collections of their poems.  

The next set of workshops, which are open to both beginners and those who've been writing poems for a while, start the third week of September. For details see here. 

You can read 'Workshop Laws', my self parody of the helpful suggestions I tend to make at workshops, here.