Join us on September 5th at 19:00 for the virtual launch of Neil Young's pamphlet 'After the Riot' with readings from special guest poets Jessamine O’Connor, Antony Owen and Jo Gilbert.

After the Riot' is both elegaic and defiant. The poems begin by revisiting a Belfast doorway where 'no-one has kicked the carpet dust in forty years', then open out to explore themes of migration, displacement, war, legacies of violence and loss but - ultimately - regeneration. These are poems as snapshots that unravel stories; they are acutely concerned with the struggle to extricate memory from myth-making as personal and political histories collide.

Neil Young hails from west Belfast (1964 batch) and now lives in north-east Scotland. He worked as a labourer, kitchen-porter and stage-hand before becoming a journalist, going on to report from New York post 9/11 to the Gaza Strip. His publications include: Lagan Voices (Scryfa, 2011), The Parting Glass – 14 Sonnets (Tapsalteerie, 2016), Jimmy Cagney’s Long-Lost Kid Half-Brother (Black Light Engine Room, 2017), and Shrapnel (Poetry Salzburg, 2019). Neil is also founder of The Poets’ Republic magazine and Drunk Muse Press.

Antony Owen, from Coventry, is one of the leading writers of war and peace poetry writing in English today. His collection The Nagasaki Elder was shortlisted for the coveted Ted Hughes Award and his poems have been translated into Japanese, Mandarin and Dutch. CND Peace Education (UK) selected Owen as one of their first national patrons in 2015, and his poems feature in a national CND peace education resource to schools. His latest collection is The Unknown Civilian (Knives, Forks and Spoons).

Jessamine O’Connor is a Dublin-born writer living on the Sligo Roscommon border in the west of Ireland. She was winner of the inaugural Comórtas Filíochta Chultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich 2020 (with poem translated by Oilí Diarmuid); Poetry Ireland/Butlers Cafe competition 2017, and previously the iYeats and Francis Ledwidge awards in 2011. She is the Ireland editor of the poetry publisher Drunk Muse Press. Jessamine’s collections include Fusebox, Pact, and Silver Spoon (Salmon Poetry).

Jo Gilbert is a writer and spoken word artist from Aberdeen. Jo writes in English and her native tongue of Doric. She has performed all over Scotland and won multiple slams including StAnza 2018.