Top mentoring opportunity for Cornafulla poet

Photo: Cornafulla poet Amy Barry.

Local poet Amy Barry has been selected for the Words Ireland National Mentoring 2020 Programme.

The Cornafulla resident will receive professional literary mentoring months from acclaimed Irish writer, Thomas McCarthy for approximately six months.

With almost 250 applications this year, the quality and ambition of applicants’ work continue to rise, according to Words Ireland who awarded mentoring opportunities to 23 writers nationwide in conjunction with councils, libraries and arts organisations.

Amy is thrilled to have the opportunity to benefit from the professional guidance and feedback on her work-in-progress from Thomas McCarthy.

The literary mentorship is supported by Roscommon Arts Centre and the Arts Council Ireland.

An author of ten collections of poetry, two novels and a book of essays, Thomas McCarthy is also the former Editor of Poetry Ireland Review and The Cork Review as well as Director of Poetry Workshops at The Arvon Foundation (Yorkshire), Molly Keane House in Waterford, and at Listowel Writers’ Week.

He is a member of Aosdána and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London. He has won The Patrick Kavanagh Award, The Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, The O’Shaughnessy Prize and the Annual Literary Award of The American-Ireland Funds.

His collection, 'Pandemonium' was shortlisted for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Award in 2017.

His work has appeared in more than thirty anthologies of Irish poetry, including the recent Harvard Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry and Penguin Book of Irish Poetry as well as in periodicals such as New Statesman, The Guardian, Poetry (Chicago), Cyphers, Honest Ulsterman, Irish Times, London Magazine, Times Literary Review, Paris Review, Times of London and Financial Times.

Amy’s work has been published in anthologies, journals, and press and e-zines globally, including Southword, A New Ulster, the Sunday Tribune, The Blue Nib, Paris Lit Up, Opiate, Live Encounter and Galway Review. Her poems have been translated into many languages including Irish and Italian.

She has read her work all over Ireland and internationally in recent years, and took 1st and 2nd prize in the English Poetry at PAU World Poetry Day in 2017 and 2018. Amy was the recipient of the Neruda Award in 2017 (Poetry) Crispiano, Italy.

Other achievements include being Highly Commended (Poetry) in SiarSceal International Literary Festival in 2017 and 2019, Highly Commended in the Francis Ledwidge Award 2019, and shortlisted for the Roscommon Poets Prize 2020.

The Cornafulla poet was also featured in the RTE Radio One Extra in Reverberations Series 2, Nov.2019 produced by Alan Meaney.

Amy has organised many poetry events including at the Dean Crowe Theatre, Athlone Springs hotel, Cornafulla NS, Athlone & Roscommon library and; at the Books Upstairs (Dublin). Amy previously served as Chairman of the Making Space group in Athlone.

She’s an Honorary member of the Neruda Cultural Association, Italy.