SHARON GUARD and JUNE O'SULLIVAN
SHARON GUARD and JUNE O’SULLIVAN read from their debut novels ASSEMBLING AILISH and THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S WIFE, both published by Poolbeg Press.
The reading will be followed by an open mic.
SHARON GUARD grew up in, and still lives in, Dublin. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick. Her work has appeared in New Irish Writing, SWERVE magazine, The Ogham Stone and the Washing Windows anthologies. She won the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award in 2020 and her story Artifice was shortlisted for the RTÉ Short Story Competition 2024. Her debut novel, Assembling Ailish, is published by Poolbeg Press.
Praise for ASSEMBLING AILISH:
A gripping and skilful debut from a hugely talented storyteller. JOSEPH O’CONNOR
Assembling Ailish is a beautiful and important novel, an incisive, insightful study of childhood, motherhood, obligation, guilt, and the impossibility of true freedom from the circular pain of existence, but all lit by a blaze of love and hope. Sharon Guard is an extraordinary writer. DONAL RYAN
A gripping and skilful debut from a hugely talented storyteller. JOSEPH O’CONNOR
Uplifting and powerful – a stunning debut from a gifted new voice. FERDIA MAC ANNA
An evocative story from a fresh new voice about life, love, hard-won wisdom and learning to forgive. MARTINA DEVLIN
JUNE O’SULLIVAN lives on an island in Co. Kerry. Her writing has appeared in the The Ogham Stone Journal, The York Literary Review, Seaside Gothic, The Storms Journal, The Waxed Lemon and Sonder. She is a recent graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. Her debut novel, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife is published by Poolbeg Press.
Praise for THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S WIFE:
On such a tiny stage, a rock in the ocean, June presents an epic story of love, loss, betrayal, heartbreak and survival. This is a stunning debut. DONAL RYAN
A powerful & evocative debut historical novel with many resonances for our own world. JOSEPH O’CONNOR
A powerful, poignant story of love, loss, motherhood with characters so vivid they live and breathe well beyond the page. It is a truly beautiful piece of storytelling. FIONA SCARLETT
JASON STONEKING: Poet
SWERVE WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE NOVEMBER 2024
SWERVE is very proud to present Jason Stoneking, our November 2024 poet-in-residence, to headline the latest Lit Lounge.
Jason is a poet, diarist, and performer originally from the United States, who has made his home in Paris. His current practice is focused on the creation of unique, handwritten texts, in a single draft, for an individual reader, event, or publication.
Jason’s work, LETTER FROM PARIS, is featured in SWERVE 3.
Instagram: @jasonstonekingthepoet
HELLE HELSNER: Muliebrity
HELLE HELSNER:
MULIEBRITY
Definition: The quality of being a woman
Friday, Saturday, Sunday 2 pm - 6 pm
MATERIALITY, LANDSCAPE MEMORY
My practice encompasses matter provoking ideas and making, with roots in prehistoric bronze casting that integrates ancient technology with contemporary practice. My interest lies in traditional ecological knowledge and our relationship to materials as more than just resources. Through the disused mining landscape of Allihies I am investigating how extractivism, and the social politics surrounding it, is a universal concern, affecting us all.
I exhibit nationally and internationally with work in private and public collections including the Danish State Collection, the OPW and the RTE collection.
Recent exhibitions include Desire Lines, a two-woman show (Lavit Gallery 2022, Ballinglen Art Gallery 2023 including a publication Desire Line: with essays from Sarah Kelleher and Padraig Spillane). A solo show: No Stone Left Unturned, (Sternview Gallery 2022) dealing with landscape and materiality through drawing and sculpture. Performative collaborations include gold casting with Ruairí O Donnabhain/Dublin Theatre Festival: Oír in 2021 and Otolith on Cape Clear in 2019.
Recent residencies include the Ballinglen Art Foundation courtesy of Cork County Council. I have also received an Agility Award from The Arts Council of Ireland.
SWERVE: The Cork International Short Story Festival
THE SWERVE SHOWCASE at THE CORK INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY FESTIVAL
MUNSTER LITERATURE CENTRE/CORK CITY LIBRARIES
Four SWERVE writers were chosen to read at this prestigious festival:
SEAN COFFEY
JANET HEERAN
ELAINE GORMLEY
SHARON GUARD
DARAGH FLEMING: The Lit Lounge - West Cork Feelgood Festival
Daragh Fleming is a writer, poet, author and mental health speaker.
He offers an authentic and vulnerable approach to normalising the conversation around mental health, using creativity to bridge the gap.
Whilst working towards his BA in Applied Psychology Daragh began advocating for mental health through his now award-winning blog, Thoughts Too Big. He began to explore more formal literary writing during his Masters in Linguistics. Link: THOUGHTS TOO BIG.
He is the author of four books: Two poetry pamphlets, a collection of short stories, Lonely Boy, a collection of essays on mental health.
He has a new book forthcoming in 2025 with Broken Sleep Books.
Daragh’s aim is to normalize speaking about our mental health. He does this by being glaringly honest, upfront, and authentic to show others that having mental health struggles does not affect your inherent value.
Achievements:
Winner: From The Well Short Story Competition 2021, Duncairn Flash Fiction Competition 2024.
Highly Commended: Patrick Kavanagh Award, Fool For Poetry Prize.
Longlisted: Cúirt New Writing Prize, London Magazine Poetry Prize
Shortlisted: Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize
Daragh is widely published including in The Irish Times, Gutter Magazine, Trasna, The Ogham Stone and many more.
Daragh has given a TEDx Talk about how we can use creativity to forge a path through poor mental health.
POETRY IN THE PARK with CORK CITY LIBRARIES: SWERVE Artists and Writers
SWERVE writers and artists were invited by Cork City Libraries’ Chief Executive Librarian, Patricia Looney to showcase their work around the parks of Cork City as part of this inspired initiative to get new writing to the general public. We were honoured to take part.
ARTISTS and WRITERS
Henny Lees and Kemi George Simpson
Niamh Moloney and Dan Fraser
Lisa Power and Catherine Ronan
Tetiana Milshyna and Mary Mc Carthy
Krystina Stimakovits and Susan Wolff
Antony Buonomo and Nate van Sweden
Jake Williams and Annette Skade
ULYSSE MASSEY & CHRISTOPHER COLM MORRIN
SWERVE PROJECT SPACE is pleased to present works-in-progress by Ulysse Massey and Christopher Colm Morrin, artists-in-residence at CARRAIG-NA-GCAT, the Albers Foundation residency in Glandore, West Cork.
ULYSSE MASSEY
Ulysse Massey is a French artist who works with observation and collected residuals.
His weavings, sculptures and drawings take inspiration in his passion for the underwater world; connecting geological time scales during which the seas build grounds with the most recent layers of life.
He shapes materials to pay homage to their origins and characteristics, avoiding any kind of symbolism and emphasizing processes instead of finalities. This also shows in the techniques he uses; crochet, threading or weaving work in cycles that help to persevere.
CHRISTOPHER COLM MORRIN
Christopher Colm Morrin is an Irish artist from Dublin, currently living in Berlin. Morrin has a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy and a major in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
Morrin makes enigmatic and philosophical pieces of art across various media, including painting, drawing, poetry, and music composition. His work embraces the often hidden, underlying patterns of life and shifting nature of reality, states like mutability, impermanence and ambiguity. Initially trained in psychology, philosophy, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, his work has been driven by a deep, serious, and irreverent questioning of reality in an attempt to get to grips with what is going on at any time.
Abstract and small in scale, Morrin's paintings often use elemental shapes and raw saturated colours. His work has been praised for its careful and sensitive understanding of composition and the ways in which forms and colours relate to one another in different arrangements and styles. All his work is united by an open, loose and untethered exploration of what painting is and what it can do. Morrin is motivated by painting’s rich expanse rather than its categories.
In 2024, Morrin was awarded the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation artist-in-residence program, Carraig-na-gCat.
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘notes’ at Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, Antwerp (2024) and ‘Witnessing Change’ and Galerie Mutter Fourage, Berlin (2023).
Christopher Colm Morrin is represented by Gallery Sofie Van de Velde.
SWERVE 3: Zoom Launch
SWERVE Writers met on Zoom to share their work and launch SWERVE 3.
If you would like to view the reading please contact us and we will send you the recording.
HANNAH HOARE: reads from PARAHUMANITY
SWERVE WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE JULY 2024
CHARLOTTE MALIK (sculptor) and HANNAH HOARE (writer) have been invited to SWERVE’s base in Skibbereen, West Cork as our 2024 Artist- and Writer-in-Residence.
They worked together in 2023 as part of SWERVE artist/writer collaboration scheme and as a result Charlotte produced an extraordinary soft sculpture installation, FEED, that has already been show at the Jeannie Avent Gallery in London to an enthusiastic public.
The sculpture installation will go on show on 29 July at SWERVE Gallery and Project Space when Hannah Hoare will give a reading from her dystopian/science fiction novel that inspired it.
Hannah and Chalotte will continue their collaborative practice whilst living and working together at SWERVE. We are very excited to be welcoming two such interesting creative artists.
CHARLOTTE MALIK studied sculpture at St Martins, Chelsea School of Art, The Royal Academy. She lives and works in London as a sculptor and therapist and will create an installation at the SWERVE Gallery in 2024. Instagram: CHARLOTTE MALIK.
HANNAH HOARE Hannah’s stories have appeared in the Mechanics Institute Review, Open Pen, Infinity Wanderers Magazine, and been performed by Liars League. She won the Book Edit Writers' Prize (2021) and was semi-finalist for Writers of the Future (2021, Fourth Quarter). Her novel, Parahumanity, is available through Amazon and Waterstones. Hannah’s website: https://hannahhoare.co.uk.k
CHARLOTTE MALIK: Feed
SWERVE ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE JULY 2024
CHARLOTTE MALIK (sculptor) and HANNAH HOARE (writer) have been invited to SWERVE’s base in Skibbereen, West Cork as our 2024 Artist- and Writer-in-Residence.
They worked together in 2023 as part of SWERVE artist/writer collaboration scheme and as a result Charlotte produced an extraordinary soft sculpture installation, FEED, that has already been show at the Jeannie Avent Gallery in London to an enthusiastic public.
The sculpture installation will go on show on 29 July at SWERVE Gallery and Project Space when Hannah Hoare will give a reading from her dystopian/science fiction novel that inspired it.
Hannah and Chalotte will continue their collaborative practice whilst living and working together at SWERVE. We are very excited to be welcoming two such interesting creative artists.
CHARLOTTE MALIK studied sculpture at St Martins, Chelsea School of Art, The Royal Academy. She lives and works in London as a sculptor and therapist and will create an installation at the SWERVE Gallery in 2024. Instagram: CHARLOTTE MALIK.
HANNAH HOARE Hannah’s stories have appeared in the Mechanics Institute Review, Open Pen, Infinity Wanderers Magazine, and been performed by Liars League. She won the Book Edit Writers' Prize (2021) and was semi-finalist for Writers of the Future (2021, Fourth Quarter). Her novel, Parahumanity, is available through Amazon and Waterstones. Hannah’s website: https://hannahhoare.co.uk.k
SWERVE at DE BARRA's SPOKEN WORD
SWERVE writers were invited to share their work at De Barra’s SpokenWord which is held at the world famous De Barra’s Bar in Clonakilty. We were honoured to take part.
POETRY
Moze Jacobs: The Alien (Soundscape)
Jenny Horgan: Dismiss This/Safer Distances/Taxi
Anton Floyd: Longing/Unholy/That Lone Tree on the Edge of a Dream/Air
Kemi George Simpson: There is a Palm Tree Near Adel/Zorob’s Apartment/George and the Dragon
Dan Fraser: In the Garden/Self-talk/Heron/Sports and Social
Catherine Ronan: Policing Mary/Butterfly Eyes
Mona Lynch: Words dropped in Silence/Rooks in Schull/Sabbath Ritual
Mary Mc Carthy: Journey of Discovery/A Song is Sung/Dream Big/Call of The Sea/Truly Shining
Rob Worrall: Mixed Myths of the Yoruba Brummie
Moze Jacob: The Stuff of Dreams/Trickling to the River/Soundscape
PROSE
Mike Guerin: Love is an Awful Curse
Gillian Watt: A Joyful Thing
Marika O’Sullivan: Counting Sheep
Mich Maroney: Ink Blood Brick Bone
Melanie Furniss: Honouring Grief
SHAHD MAHNAVI
SWERVE WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE MAY 2024
Shahd I Karaeen, formerly known as Mahnavi, is a Palestinian poet, activist, advocate, and entrepreneur from Jerusalem, Palestine. Born into a family deeply rooted in politics and writing, her father, Ibrahim Karaeen, is a prominent Palestinian poet and journalist from Silwan, Jerusalem.
At the age of 18, Shahd left home and moved to the UK to pursue higher education, finding a sense of belonging and comfort in London, a stark contrast to the oppression she felt back home in Jerusalem. Utilising her writing and poetry as a formidable tool, Shahd raises her voice against oppression and injustice, amplifying the narratives of the Palestinian people. She recently released a poetry book titled White Shoes with all proceeds going towards Medical Aid for Palestinians. Her EP, also named White Shoes, supports the same cause. Additionally, Shahd is currently working on a fictional novella centered on empowering women navigating abuse and adversity. She also was awarded as a writer-in-residence with Swerve Magazine in Ireland in May 2024.
Actively engaging in initiatives supporting Gaza, Shahd has played a significant role in fundraising efforts, aiding in raising over half a million pounds in the last 7 months. With a commitment to her creative endeavors, Shahd aims to uplift the voices of women worldwide. In November 2024, Shahd will launch her own TV show, offering viewers an authentic portrayal of life in war-torn Gaza and a platform to hear the stories of women and their families residing in the region. The show will provide a platform for real women to share their experiences, highlighting their remarkable strength and resilience. Shahd is set to be featured in a documentary named “Palestinians in London” scheduled next year.
ROSITA KINGSTON: Reclaimed Baggage
ROSITA KINGSTON: RECLAIMED BAGGAGE
In late 2017 I called an end to the relationship I’d been in for almost 30 years. Along with the photo albums and other stuff left over from a life together, I had a suitcase, a white suitcase, in which I put all the cards we had made and given to each other over the years. The white suitcase made two further house moves with me. I opened it on occasion to try to decide its fate. I asked myself why I was holding on to the cards and letters. I didn’t want to retain unnecessary stuff. But the creativity the suitcase contained wouldn’t let me destroy it.
He too was an artist. We made all the cards, (if we did buy the odd one, we altered it in some way). The collection started with the first card he gave me, on Valentine’s Day 1989, a collage which opened out accordion style. We later had a frame made for it & it hung in our homes. It measures five foot five, the same length as me.
I stumbled blindly away from that relationship. It was a very confusing and scary time. What I had believed to be real and true had steadily been deconstructed. It felt as if not only had the rug been pulled from under me but that the solid floor beneath had been ripped up too. I couldn’t quite absorb the reality that was dawning on me, the truth I was slowly waking up to.
One day I opened the white suitcase and looked through the cards. I saw what I hadn’t been able to see before. The cards showed me, in glowing technicolour, the truth of the basis of that relationship. Sex.
The cards he made for me are a visual representation of how he viewed me. He exhibited his ‘love’ for me in a very creative way but came to treat me as a sexual commodity. Painful though it was to see the reality, the truth was there, and it had been there from the start.
I was love bombed by creativity, is how I’d put it. The overwhelming level of focus on my body and casting of me as a sexual being, evolved gradually into a controlling and ultimately destructive situation. The cards showed me how I often responded in kind, sometimes representing myself sexually in my own artwork. This is difficult to see and to accept, but that was the ‘love’ that was offered, and I reciprocated. When we met, at art school, I was 21. He was 36.
Exhibiting this piece has become part of my personal process of recovery from the trauma of coercive control.
The title Reclaimed Baggage speaks to my wish to reclaim the self that I lost in that relationship, to reintegrate the parts of me I abandoned, to stand in my own life and reality and take my power back.
INSTA: ROSITA KINGSTON
GALYNA ZAITSEVA: New Photography
GALYNA ZAITSEVA: About
I was born in Kherson in Ukraine. My hometown is on the front line, and it is bombed every day by the Russian army. The kindergarten where I went when I was little has been obliterated. The secondary school where I studied has been destroyed. The hospital where I was born, and where I gave birth to my children, has disappeared. My home and my children’s home, an apartment in Kherson, was wiped out.
Ireland has become my second home. It was in the spirit of immense gratitude to Ireland and the Irish people that I formulated this photographic project and the exhibition is dedicated to all of you! Most of the photographs in this exhibition are from the Old House Memories project. I have noticed many abandoned houses in West Cork; their magical appearance inspired me to "revitalise" them. Even though they only come to life in the imagination, perhaps the viewer will be reminded that someone once lived there, that each house has a unique history.
Before the war I was a successful art director of fashion photo shoots, a popular stylist and photographer. Beauty has always been important to me; I see it in every person, in nature, architecture and life itself. And I have always wanted to make life and people even more beautiful. In the recent years before the war my work as creative director, stylist and photographer was published in over fifty international fashion magazines. My work as a stylist was honoured by being published in L'Officiel magazine in France and on the cover of KODD Paris magazine.
2021: My work was awarded a prize as one of the 50 best fashion photographs in the prestigious FAPA UK photography competition.
2020: My project What is the Future? was exhibited at London's Boomer Gallery in the What is Art exhibition.
2019: I was the winner of the MAG Fashion Forum and Award international competition collaboration in Austria.
2016: I was the winner of Woman in Men's Clothing competition and stylist of the month by the magazine Scuola Italiana di moda e Stile.
2012: At the photo symposium Man and Nature in Zingst Germany I raised the issue of human pollution of the environment, which is even more urgent today.
The first thing I did on arrival at Skibbereen was to become a member of the Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre and take part in the members' exhibition. My photo was sold in the first half hour, which was a wonderful surprise. This was very affirming and inspired me to create some of the works in this exhibition. Ireland's ancient and magnificent landscapes, magical old houses and lovely people continue to inspire me to continue with my work each and every day.
READING AT SKIBBEREEN LIBRARY
Swerve writers read poetry and prose. Q & A. Tea and coffee will be served when you can meet the writers.
WEST CORK LITERARY FESTIVAL Read on …
LAUNCH AT WEST CORK LITERARY FESTIVAL!
11 JULY 2022 - 1 pm BANTRY LIBRARY
BALLYMALOE MAY FESTIVAL Read on …
An informal afternoon of readings by the writers in Swerve Magazine Issue 1: Donal Hayes, Janet Heeran, Mich Maroney, Amanda Leahy, Monda Lynch, Sean O’Riordan, Moze Jacobs, Ger Hedigan, Lauren O’Donovan, Holly Hickey, Catherine Ronan, Assumpta Curran.
BALLYMALOE MAY FESTIVAL Read on ….
An informal afternoon of readings by the writers in Swerve Magazine Issue 1: Donal Hayes, Janet Heeran, Mich Maroney, Amanda Leahy, Monda Lynch, Sean O’Riordan, Moze Jacobs, Ger Hedigan, Lauren O’Donovan, Holly Hickey, Catherine Ronan, Assumpta Curran.