The Mouse
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Sam Szanto lives in Durham, UK. Her poetry pamphlet, ‘Splashing Pink’ was published by Hedgehog Press in 2023. She is published in literary journals including ‘The North’, and won the Charroux Poetry Prize and the First Writer International Poetry Prize. Find her at samszanto.com or on X (Twitter) at sam_szanto
Antidotes to imposter syndrome
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Elizabeth Osmond is a neonatal doctor and a poet. In 2021 she won third prize in the Hippocrates competition for poetry and medicine. She uses poetry to reflect on clinical work. Twitter: @bethosmond
Soulscabber
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Emma Simon first collection, Shapeshifting for Beginners will be published with Salt in September 2023. She has previously published two pamphlets: The Odds (Smith|Doorstop, 2020) and Dragonish (The Emma Press, 2017). She has been widely published in magazines and anthologies and has won the Live Canon, YorkMix, Ver Poets and Prole Laureate prizes.
Speaking to Boys
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Maria Taylor is a British Cypriot poet and reviewer, who has been highly commended by the Forward Prizes. Her latest collection is Dressing for the Afterlife (Nine Arches Press). Her debut, Melanchrini, was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. She tweets at @MariaTaylor_
These are the good times
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Naoise Gale is a poet from Yorkshire. She was the winner of the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2022, and her debut pamphlet After the Flood Comes the Apologies is published with Nine Pens. Naoise is currently studying an MA at UEA.
Angry Love Song
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Ann Heath lives in York. She has been published in Aesthetica and Dreamcatcher. She previously won the local writer’s prize in the Yorkmix Poetry Competition.
you have to tell them
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D. Parker is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing. Her debut pamphlet ‘Rush’, was published by Bullshit Lit Mag + Press in February. She is the editor of Needle Poetry.
Blind faith
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Rose writes poems like going for a walk, curious to see where they will end up, and what they will show her. She has been published and/or shortlisted in Phare, Stand, Dawntreader, Poetry Village & The Lake, amongst others.
Our featured publication for September and October is Some of These Stories are True by Maurice Devitt, published by Doire Press.
‘Maurice Devitt is a unique voice in contemporary Irish poetry. In Some of These Stories are True he continues to tantalise us with poems brimming with playfulness, imagination and beauty. These poems are lifted from life – often slant versions of lives – and are fuelled by a poetic perception that is wise and uncanny. These lines from ‘Cherry Blossom’ encapsulate the essence of his oeuvre: ‘…the joy of life is often to be found / in the comfort of repetition, reassurance of the mundane, / and just the occasional instance of perfection.’ Brian Kirk
‘Maurice Devitt’s second collection Some of These Stories are True contains many worlds, including a rich inner world, the world of work, the world of innocence, childhood and the past. He depicts an older Ireland with an almost hermetic quality in his poem ‘Antimacassar’, with descriptions of flocked wallpaper and powdery silence. As he says in his poem ‘Dippy Eggs’ (and who of a certain age doesn’t remember them?): ‘For everything there is a perfect point of lift-off / Missed, and the chance is gone.’
And lift-off is what these poems do – often philosophical, sometimes playful – the narrative voice offers us a view of the familiar and everyday in a new light, containing nuggets of wit and wisdom.’ Jean O’Brien
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Born in Dublin, Maurice Devitt completed an MA in Poetry Studies at Mater Dei following a 30-year career in Insurance & Banking. His debut collection ‘Growing Up in Colour’ was published by Doire Press in 2018. His poems have featured in a significant number of journals, both in Ireland and internationally, and been nominated for Pushcart, Forward and Best of the Net prizes. He is a past winner of the Trócaire/Poetry Ireland, Poems for Patience and Bangor Poetry Competitions, and has been placed or shortlisted in many others, including The Patrick Kavanagh Award, The Listowel Collection Competition and Cúirt New Writing Award. Maurice is the chairperson of The Hibernian Writers’ Group, and his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology of the group’s work published by Alba Publishing in 2015. He is curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies Facebook page where he posts featured poems, news and poetry articles on a daily basis.
Copies of Some of These Stories are True can be purchased for the Doire Press website.
atriumpoetry.com 