Literary Evening with Jessica Traynor & Mark Roper
Carlow College is delighted to welcome poets Jessica Traynor & Mark Roper for a special reading to launch their latest books.
Jessica Traynor is launching her third collection, Pit Lullabies. It is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Mark Roper is launching his latest book, Beyond Stillness.
About the Event
Time: Tuesday, 15th November 2022
Time: 7.30pm
Location: Cobden Hall, Carlow College
Jessica Traynor
Jessica Traynor is a poet, essayist, dramaturg and creative writing teacher from Dublin.
Jessica Traynor was born in Dublin in 1984 and is a poet, essayist and librettist. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award and in 2016 was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. Her second collection, The Quick, was a 2019 Irish Times poetry choice. A Place of Pointed Stones, a pamphlet commissioned by Offaly County Council, was published by The Salvage Press in 2021.
Essays and interviews have been published in The Dublin Review, Tolka, Banshee, Winter Papers, Sunday Miscellany 50, and We Are Dublin and listed for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Award and Fitzcarraldo Editions Prize.
She has written libretti for a number of operas, including Paper Boat (Music for Galways/ INO, 2022), Ghost Apples for 20 Shots of Opera (INO, 2020), and The Wanderer (Irish Modern Dance Theatre, 2022).
She reviews poetry for RTÉ’s Arena, and for Poetry Ireland Review, and has held residencies including the Yeats Society, Sligo, and Carlow College. She is an inaugural Creative Fellow of UCD, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing in 2008, and is Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Writer in Residence for 2021-22.
Mark Roper
Mark Roper was born in Derbyshire, England in 1951. He moved to Ireland in 1980 with his partner Jane. His collections include The Hen Ark (Peterloo, 1990), which won the 1992 Aldeburgh Prize for best first collection; Catching The Light (Peterloo, 1997); and The Home Fire (Abbey Press, 1998). Reviewing the latter for The Irish Literary Supplement, Bill Tinley described Roper as “one of the most accomplished and engaging poets writing in Ireland at present.”
Whereabouts was published in 2005 by Peterloo & Abbey Press; Even So: New & Selected Poems by Dedalus Press in 2008. His latest collection, Bindweed (Dedalus, 2017) has received excellent reviews and was shortlisted for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2018. A Gather of Shadow (Dedalus 2012), was also shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award and won the Michael Hartnett Award in 2014.
The River Book: A Celebration of the Suir, a collaboration with photographer Paddy Dwan, was published in 2010. This was followed by The Backstrand: Tramore’s Open Secret, in 2013, and Comeragh: Mountain, Coum, River, Rumour in 2018. The pair are currently at work on a book about the Waterford coastline.
A highly experienced Creative Writing teacher, Mark has run courses and workshops in many different settings, including schools, prisons, and senior citizen centres. From September 2002 to May 2003 he was writer-in-residence at Waterford Regional Hospital. He was granted Arts Council Literature Bursaries in 2010, 2013 and 2016.
