Accommodation Magherafelt District : Bed & Breakast and Guest House Magherafelt

Accommodation Magherafelt District Council Area : If you're looking for quality Bed & Breakfast or Guest House Accommodation in the Magherafelt District then Laurel Villa is the ideal with a welcoming home from home atmosphere and personal attention to guests' needs

Check this page for up-to-date information on our Poetry Readings and news of other Magherafelt events. Some of these events are promoted by Magherafelt Arts Society, a group which has come together to promote participation in the Arts in Magherafelt and the greater Mid-Ulster area.

Check our Availability to book hotel quality Magherafelt accommodation.

Special Offers are sometimes available for online bookings - keep checking this page for current Special Offers.

In October 2007 we had a Poetry Evening with Joan Newmann and Ray Liversidge

Ulster poet Joan Newmann was born in 1942. Originally from County Armagh, she was a member of the Philip Hobsbaum Belfast Group – other members included James Simmons and Seamus Heaney - which was at the centre of the poetry renaissance in Northern Ireland in the 1960’s. Joan has six poetry publications to her credit, the first of which was First Letter Home, a pamphlet published for the famous 1965 Belfast Festival. Her first full collection Coming of Age was published by Blackstaff Press in 1995 and in 1998 Abbey Press published Thin Ice. Her most recent collection Prone was published in May 2007. Her poems have been included in a number of anthologies including the hip flask edited by Frank Ormsby for the Blackstaff Press in 2000. Joan has been writer-in-residence for the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Hospital. She is co-founder of Summer Palace Press, a Donegal-based publishing house founded to provide a platform for new poetic talent. Joan is a popular reader at events in Ireland and abroad and was the recipient of the Samhain International Poetry Festival’s Craobh Na hEigse Award in 2004.

Ray Liversidge is a Melbourne-based poet whose first collection Obeying the Call was published in 2003. He is a well-known reader at literary festivals throughout Australia and he has won a number of awards in his native country.

In 2006 he published a verse novel titled The Barrier Range which was inspired by the exploits of the nineteenth century Australian explorers Sturt, Burke and Wills. His poems have been published in newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times and in numerous literary journals at home and abroad including Poetry Australia, Agenda (UK) and Antipodes (USA). His work has also been included in a number of anthologies including The Best Australian Poems 2004. Ray’s early influences include the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. When not writing Ray is a regular facilitator at poetry workshops. This is a unique opportunity to hear an exciting new poetic voice as this will be Ray’s only appearance in Northern Ireland during his seven week tour of Britain and Ireland. During the evening Ray will read some of his most recent poems including a suite called The Divorce Papers.

The evening proved a huge success. Both Joan and Ray were delighted with the reception they received and they signed copies of their books for those present, some of whom had travelled from Belfast. The evening concluded with supper being served and many stayed on enjoying the craic till the wee small hours of the morning.

The author Virginia Aitken launched her latest book Red Scar at Laurel Villa on the evening of Saturday 17th November 2007.

At the launch in Laurel Villa the author read from selected passages of Red Scar and answered questions about the book. She also talked about the special problems facing writers of historical fiction based on fact. Virginia Aitken signed copies of the book which were available to purchase on the night. Copies of Red Scar [ISBN 978-1-906206-42-0] are available by mail-order from www.amazon.co.uk and www.penpress.co.uk and available to order via all good bookshops.

Maura Johnston was the latest poet to feature in this series of poetry readings - described by Seamus Heaney as being "uniquely successfull" - which had to date featured poets Cathal O’Searcaigh, Iggy McGovern, Ray Liversidge and Joan Newmann.

It gave us particular pleasure to play host on this occasion to an established poet from within our own locality.

Maura Johnston is a talented and versatile writer who has lived in Swaziland and a number of other places before returning to her roots in Moneymore some thirty years ago. Her poems have appeared in a number of respected journals including Poetry Ireland, the Honest Ulsterman, Fortnight, Belfast Review and The Female Line. She has published two collections, Just Suppose and Patrick, and she is currently working on a third. Recently, Maura was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund to write a poem about the Ballinderry River as part of a project to encourage local community involvement in the conservation of that river. A number of her poems have been broadcast on radio. She is currently poet-in-residence at Palace Stables Armagh. Maura has been involved in education for many years, both as a teacher of dedicated creative writing classes and as an adviser and facilitator on writing projects. Her work with children and adults has taken her to schools and communities right across Northern Ireland and she has acted as tutor for a number of local councils and education authorities, as well as for the Workers’ Educational Authority. Much of her work has involved Peace and Reconciliation projects, including an educational project with the local Loup Women’s Group. While perhaps best known for her poems, Maura is also an accomplished writer of short stories. Three of her stories have been recorded by BBC Radio Ulster and she has been shortlisted for the Brian Moore short story competition. She has written a number of articles on children’s literature and has worked on projects involving the collection and recording of stories by other people.

Despite suffering from an attack of laryngitis, Maura gave a terrific reading and received a great reception from a near-capacity audience. Mick Mc Ilkenny on fiddle accompanied Maura for the last few poems and added a nice little extra to what had already turned out to be a great night.

During 2007 a group of local people got together to form Magherafelt Arts Society with the express purpose of encouraging interest and participation in the Arts in the Magherafelt and greater Mid Ulster area. We at Laurel Villa are delighted to provide the venue for some of the group's events to date.

Magherafelt Arts Society – in association with Poetry Ireland - is organising another evening of poetry on 31st May 2008 featuring readings by established poets Moyra Donaldson and Frank Ormsby. This is the latest of a series of events designed to bring the very best of poetry talent to the Mid Ulster area.

Moyra Donaldson was born and brought up in Co Down. A pamphlet of her poems, Kissing Ghosts, was published by Lapwing in 1996 and her first full collection Snakeskin Stilettos, was published in 1998, followed by Beneath the Ice in 2001, both from Lagan Press. An American edition of Snakeskin Stilettos was published in 2002 from CavanKerry Press, New Jersey and short listed for a Foreword Book of the Year Award.

Her poetry has won a number of awards, including the Allingham Award and the National Women’s Poetry Competition and both her poetry(1998) and her short stories(2002) have been short listed for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Awards. Her poems have been anthologised and have featured on BBC Radio and television, including the Channel 4 production, Poems to Fall in Love With and she has read at festivals in Ireland, England, Canada, America and Hungary .

Moyra has also written for the stage and worked with community theatre. She has had a screenplay, ‘h’, produced and was a founding member of the Creative Writers' Network and a previous Literary Editor for Fortnight Magazine.

Her latest collection is The Horse’s Nest, from Lagan Press. It has been described in Poetry Ireland Review as ‘one of the most enjoyable poetry books of the last few years. A book which transports you to a magical place.’ and the poems ‘spirit gifts as they move between what is intuited and what remains mysterious.’

Frank Ormsby is one of the country’s best-known poets. He has been a central figure in the Ulster literary scene since the late1960’s.

He was born in Enniskillen and has lived in Belfast for many years. His first poem appeared in the Honest Ulsterman in 1969 and over the next decade his reputation as a poet was to become firmly established. He has published three full collections of poems to date including A Store of Candles(1977) which was a Poetry Book Society choice. An eagerly awaited fourth collection, Fireflies, will appear from Carcanet Press in 2009. Frank is also a renowned editor of poetry magazines and books. He edited (or at times co-edited) the influencial The Honest Ulsterman during the period 1969-1989. He has also edited The Collected Poems of John Hewitt and a number of important anthologies, most notably Poets From the North of Ireland, A Rage for Order: Poetry of the Northern Ireland Troubles and The Blackbird’s Nest: An Anthology of Poetry from Queen’s University Belfast. His interest in Japanese and Irish haiku poetry was rekindled, he says, by his experience in editing The Hip Flask: Short Poems from Ireland (2001), which brought him back into contact with the haiku of Irish poets such as Paul Muldoon and Michael Hartnett, among others.In 1974 he was a winner of the Eric Gregory Award and in 1992 he received the Cultural Traditions Award, given in memory of John Hewitt. He was awarded the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry from the University of St Thomas at St Paul, Minnesota in 2002.

Laurel Villa Events & Special Offers