The Arts Office of Kilkenny County Council is delighted to announce the publication of the ninth issue of the very popular Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet. The aim of the publication is to give local writers a platform for their work.

This years editor is Yvonne Cullen. Yvonne was born and lives in Dublin. Her first collection of poems, 'Invitation to the Air' won the American Ireland fund award at Listowel Writers' Week. Published in 1998, it received the following praise: "A gifted poet" (John Burnside), 'A world of atmosphere and filament' (Kerry Hardie), and 'Poetry which needs to be read' (Howard Wright, Poetry Ireland). Since then, publications in which Yvonne's poems have appeared have included the New Irish Poets anthology (Bloodaxe Books), the Irish Times, Poetry Ireland, The White Page anthology, and, recently, 'Our Shared Japan' from Dedalus Press. Yvonne is also an established creative writing teacher. In 2006, she edited the anthology 'All Good Things Begin,' which gathered the work of more than forty of her adult students, many of whom are now going on to make their own names as writers.

One hundred and eight poems were submitted for inclusion by forty one writers with sixteen poems by thirteen writers selected. Editor Yvonne Cullen says 'Reading the work submitted, I had a wonderful sense of the whole of the County it came from. It was a really lovely experience to enter a region like that, via the contents of a large manilla envelope, and that was truly how it felt. A sense of getting into a seam, and of experiencing the county deeply by way of that seam running through it, that creative layer. And so, I tried to choose poems for the broadsheet in such a way as to pass on that experience I had. And with this in mind, a group of poems emerged which seemed to talk to each other and together add up to more than the sum of their parts, as an experience of Kilkenny in poetry. I hope that when you read it, you'll agree!'

The launch of Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet Issue 9 will take place on Friday 12th June at 5pm in No. 72, John Street, Kilkenny. All welcome.