Dave

Dave Lordan is an Irish writer, performer, and cultural and political activist, a crossover poet who combines excellence on the page and on the stage.He was born in England in 1975 to Irish parents who soon returned to Clonakilty in West Cork where he grew up. He began writing in his teens and his chapbook -18- was published by the English literature society in UCC in 1994. In the early nineties he was a street performer involved in the famous Craic Na Caoilte tarveling street theatre group. He was literary editor of the UCC Gazette and secretary of the Visual Arts Society. While at UCC he gained a reputation as a strong and dynamic reader and performer of his own work and he continues to read regularly to great acclaim. He graduated in 1998 with an MA in English Literature. In 2001 he took the Mphil in Creative Writing in Trinity College Dublin and in the same year was featured as part on Poetry Ireland's Introductions series. He received an Arts Council Bursary in 2004. Also in 2004 he edited the Unnoccupied Minds anthology published by the Irish Anti War Movement and featuring poets from Palestine, Iraq, USA, and Ireland. He was runner up in the Patrick Kavanagh Award, Ireland's most prestigious poetry award in 2002 and he won it in 2005. In 2006 he appeared in The finals of the Cuirt Grand Slam and was a winner of the renowned North Beach Nights Slam. A lifelong activist, he has played a part in numerous political campaigns on local , national and global issues. He was one of the organisers of the 150,000 strong march against the Iraq war which took place in Dublin on Feb 15 2003, and was secretary of his local anti war group for two years. He continues to play a role in the campaign for the demilitarisation of Shannon Airport, an Irish airport through which hundreds of thousands of invading US troops have passed on their way to destroy Iraq. He was part of the organising group for the main Irish delegations to the Prague protest against the world bank in September 2000, the Genoa G8 protests in July 2001, The Florence Social Forum in November 2002, the Paris Social Forum in November 2003 , and the Edinburgh G8 protests in July 2005. He has written numerous articles on social, political and cultural issues for a variety of publications.His poetry has been widely published at home and abroad and has been translated into Arabic and Serbo-Croat. The Boy in The Ring is his debut collection and will be published shortly by Salmon Poetry. Poems have appeared in numerous journals including Al Quds Al Arabi, Poetry Ireland News, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Kit magazine, Nth Position, and in the Unoccupied Minds anti-war anthology published by the Irish Anti War Movement. Message him for poems or performances.