The first of my readings in Maine went well yesterday! Pleasure to read with Maine laureates Julia Bouwsma and Audrey Gidman. Thanks to Maine Irish Heritage Centre for inviting and hosting. We read a poem by Seamus Heaney for his birthday. @arlenhouse.bsky.social
✨ April Poetry Evening ✨
📅 Friday 10th April
🕢 7:30pm
🎟️ Free - booking essential 👉 tr.ee/7RdO2qtT13
Come along to the United Arts Club, Dublin for an evening of powerful, heartfelt, and entertaining poetry.
@arlenhouse.bsky.social
@artscouncilireland.bsky.social @poetryireland.bsky.social
THIS EVENING, Friday 20 February, 7.30pm
United Arts Club, Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2
An evening of words, writing & wisdom with Celia de Fréine & Phyl Herbert. who have both contributed in vast ways to the Irish arts world over the past 50 years.
Published proudly by Arlen House.
While @artscouncilireland.bsky.social's dysfunction & incompetence has been clear for decades, the 270 page Expert Report reveals the depths of mismanagement in quite staggering detail.
And still so much more to be exposed.
It is clear the AC would fail in its own funding applications.
While @artscouncilireland.bsky.social's dysfunction & incompetence has been clear for decades, the 270 page Expert Report reveals the depths of mismanagement in quite staggering detail.
And still so much more to be exposed.
It is clear the AC would fail in its own funding applications.
Control, horror, and satisfaction: what's not to like?
Thanks to @booksireland.bsky.social for inviting me to review The Marionette and the Maestro, the new collection of short stories by Tanya Farrelly.
@arlenhouse.bsky.social
Cover of Blood Atlas is a large brown ship coming out of the ocean. The cover is cream.
PITCH FOR THICKER THAN WATER I have this idea for a screenplay: one day, the UN severs all familial ties on Earth, and people are free to choose relatives. Our hero, estranged from his son, endeavours to re-apply for the role of dad. But then, he hears news that his son has already filed for a new dad a teacher, sports coach, a friend's dad - and this breaks his heart. A plot twist occurs midway through our family feature when he considers where his own father is; the old fart is in a nursing home somewhere, staring at a dirty wall. So, our protagonist enrols as a janitor at this facility-a montage shows him cleaning shit along a narrow hall until he starts to steal moments of confused tranquillity in the old man's room, joining him to study a wall stain shaped like Dún Laoghaire's pier, where, one morning, the old man forced a 99 on them to numb a silent pain. The film ends as the son from the start, without warning, turns up with ice cream ... but real life isn't that breezy, I know. I just like that this dumb little script could allow three troubled men to admit they could have gone easy on each other, without knowing when, or knowing how.
Poem-a-day advent calendar 🎁 Day 18 is 'Pitch for Thicker than Water' from 'Blood Atlas' by @lukemorganpoet.bsky.social 🌹 @arlenhouse.bsky.social
Arlen House - celebrating 50 years
Eavan Boland leads the WEB Women Writers Workshop at Annaghmakerrig in 1985 - including fascinating interviews with Eavan, and attendees Mary Morrissy, Roz Cowman and Rosemarie Raughter.
rte.ie/archives/202...
@nessao.bsky.social
Cover of Spaight's book is a painting featuring blues, reds and black, there are flickers of white in the blue
MY GRANDMOTHER'S KITCHEN: Sketch at 8 Wooden as a string puppet, my grandfather lies in the white ruffles and lace of the coffin. My mother touches his face as though she decodes the parchment-like skin of his unselfing. A croak like the original tremor of language rises from the women dressed in black who beetle through the room. Other voices merge, an almost sweet sound like a hive's hum; a storm brewing - only to falter as each woman surrenders and keens from her own sorrow. I'm high on lemonade. Candlelit shadows mount the walls, blot part of us into the dark. I'm afraid and want to go home. My mother is unlike my mother: she is like a fish in a shoal, the pressure sense of their bodies creating a contour that twists and turns; their world sealed. Face after face could be hers: my first time to sense she belongs only there.
🎁 Poem-a-day advent calendar 🎁 Day 12 is 'My Grandmother's Kitchen' from 'Watching for the Hawk' by @bredaspaight.bsky.social 💖 @arlenhouse.bsky.social
Neil Hegarty reviews the vivid and inventive new collection The Marionette and the Maestro, by Tanya Farrelly (Arlen House)
@neilhegarty.bsky.social @arlenhouse.bsky.social
booksirelandmagazine.com/control-horr...
My dystopian novel, The Memorisers, is recommended by Angela Graham as a book of the year: ‘Chillingly identifiable with today.’ @arlenhouse.bsky.social thelonelycrowd.org/2025/12/09/b...
My playscript, Manichea: A Play on Cancellation, is launching tomorrow 6pm at the American Bar Belfast - a play, poetry and a pint! @arlenhouse.bsky.social @abbeytheatre.bsky.social
Belfast launch
TOMORROW
Thursday 4 December, 6pm at The American Bar
Liz McManus (ed) *May Morton: Phantom Poet*
Rosemary Jenkinson *Manichea: A Play on Cancellation*
Francis O'Hare *A Different Light*
ALL WELCOME
Arlen House - Celebrating 50 Years
My new play script, Manichea: A Play on Cancellation, is launching this Thursday 4th at 6 pm at the American Bar Belfast - it will be fun! @arlenhouse.bsky.social Many thanks @booksireland.bsky.social
Rosemary Jenkinson discusses the thrilling prospects of a playscript and her new publication Manichea: A Play on Cancellation @arlenhouse.bsky.social
booksirelandmagazine.com/rosemary-jen...
LONDON this evening, 7.30pm, Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith
Celebrating Arlen House at 50, launching biggest anthology of Irish women poets ever compiled *Washing Windows V: Women Revolutionise Irish Poetry, 1975-2025*
@nualaoconnor.bsky.social
Hosted by @irishlitsoc.bsky.social
ALL WELCOME
Watch/listen/read—the first page of Tanya Farrelly's new collection, The Marionette and the Maestro, read by the author ❤️
@arlenhouse.bsky.social
booksirelandmagazine.com/the-first-pa...
London!
Celebrating Arlen House at 50, launching @nualaoconnor.bsky.social's *Menagerie* plus *Washing Windows V: Irish Women Revolutionise Poetry, 1975-2025*
Hosted by @irishlitsoc.bsky.social at @irishculturalcentr.bsky.social Hammersmith, Tuesday 25 Nov, 7.30pm
irishlitsoc.org/event/arlen-...
Celebrating 50 Years of Arlen House
Arlen House & Books Upstairs invite:
Liz McManus (ed) *May Morton: Phantom Poet*
Noelle Lynskey *Featherweight*
Ruth Carr *Catching the Missing Beat*
Rosemary Jenkinson *Manichea: A Play on Cancellation*
Sunday 30 November, 2pm
Books Upstairs Café
ALL WELCOME
Arlen House & Books Upstairs launch invite:
Liz McManus (ed) *May Morton: Phantom Poet*
Ruth Carr *Catching the Missing Beat*
Noelle Lynskey *Featherweight*
Rosemary Jenkinson *Manichea: A Play on Censorship*
Sunday 30 November, 2pm, Books Upstairs
ALL WELCOME
Celebrating 50 Years of Arlen House
looking forward to seeing @arlenhouse.bsky.social at the #DublinSmallPressFair2025! Arlen House publish a broad range of literature in English agus as Gaeilge
arlenhouse.ie
Great readings @booksupstairs.bsky.social in Dublin on Sunday with the gang. I read from my new short story collection, Laganside Lights @arlenhouse.bsky.social
Arlen House & Books Upstairs invite you to enjoy readings from 5 stunning works of Irish literature:
Deirdre Cartmill *Under the Blue Seraphim*
Rosemary Jenkinson *Laganside Lights*
Luke Morgan *Blood Atlas*
Francis O'Hare *A Different Light*
Csilla Toldy *Firebird*
Sun 9 Nov 2pm, Books Upstairs
Launching Sr Stanislaus Kennedy's groundbreaking research on female homelessness *But Where Can I Go? Homeless Women in Dublin* (Arlen House, 1985) with Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald & Catherine Rose.
Rest in power, Stan
RTÉ Archives: A day in the life with Sr Stan in 1985
www.rte.ie/news/2025/11...
Arlen House & Books Upstairs invite you to enjoy readings from 5 stunning works of Irish literature:
Deirdre Cartmill *Under the Blue Seraphim*
Rosemary Jenkinson *Laganside Lights*
Luke Morgan *Blood Atlas*
Francis O'Hare *A Different Light*
Csilla Toldy *Firebird*
Sun 9 Nov 2pm, Books Upstairs
Launched "Blood Atlas" at the Irish Secretariat in Belfast last night, alongside new work from these other fine writers - Celia de Fréine, Ruth Carr, Deirdre Cartmill and Csilla Toldy. Thanks to @arlenhouse.bsky.social and the audience for coming out to support new irish poetry!
I had a wonderful time in Cork reading from my new short story collection, Laganside Lights, at the Cork International Short Story Festival @munsterlitcentre.bsky.social @arlenhouse.bsky.social
A magical event in Cork celebrating Arlen House at 50, honouring Catherine Rose, Ireland's first feminist publisher; plus launching the biggest anthology of Irish women poets ever published ‒ Washing Windows V ‒ with an amazing speech by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin + stunning readings from contributors.
Flyer for the Dublin Small Press Fair, 28/29 November, Pearse Steeet Library
The inaugural Dublin Small Press Fair is happening at the end of November!
30+ presses, events, readings, and more. Organised by me and @eireannmor.bsky.social. More information coming very soon - follow @dublinsmpressfair.bsky.social for updates
Had a pop-up reading at @carleton.edu, Minnesota yesterday. Edgar Allan Poe showed up! Thanks to students and staff of the English Department.
@arlenhouse.bsky.social
