Celebrate the launch of Gill's poetry collection
A Wide River Divides Us
Thursday, 9th October 2025
7.30 p.m.
at Slader's Yard, West Bay
Tickets £10
Call: 01308 459511
Doors open at 6 p.m. Hot supper available from the bar.
What does it mean to be able, at last,
to look back, look straight at – and through – such a formative and formidable childhood?
Greta Stoddart
Audio
The Road to Shroove
The Road to Shroove
Shroove or Stroove - how do you say it? Gill's poem was first published in The Honest Ulsterman.
Read it here.
Listen below.
Magilligan Point
Magilligan Point
The poem was first published in The Honest Ulsterman,
as Point.
Read it here.
Listen below.
The Ordinary Game
A film
by Jesse Adlam
Voiced by Gill Barr
Words by Ben Wilkinson
Sound by Alex Dixon
Cinematography by Arya Kokate
Tristan Seage
The Ordinary Game
A short promotional film by Jesse Adlam, which won a craft award for Best Writing
at the Kodak /Nahemi Student Film Awards, part of Adidas's sponsorship of the Women's World Cup in 2023.
Watch the film here.
Listen to Gill's voice over below.
About the Poet
Gill Barr was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. She was educated at First Derry Primary School and Foyle and Londonderry College, then graduated from Loughborough University, where she played hockey for British Universities. She taught English at comprehensive schools in Cambridgeshire and Dorset for over thirty years.
Her debut poetry collection A Wide River Divides Us will be published by Cinnamon Press in August 2025. Gill's debut pamphlet The Price of Violence (included in her collection) was Highly Commended in the 2023 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition, judged by Imtiaz Dharker. Gill read from this pamphlet in 2024, at Worlds Apart, the inaugural event at the New Gate Arts and Culture Centre in Londonderry. Gill’s poems have also appeared in publications such as: The Honest Ulsterman, New Humanist, The New European, Bad Lilies, Trasna and Riptide’s Climate Change Matters Anthology.
Gill performed at Bridport Literary Festival in 2016, reading her prize-winning short story Skylight, and again in 2018, reading her poems with Annie Freud and Elaine Beckett. She appeared with Greta Stoddart, Elaine Beckett and Helen Evans at Exeter Literary Festival in 2019 and 2021, and then at Ledbury Poetry Festival in 2022.
Gill holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast and has received an award for her poetry from the Northern Ireland Arts Council. She lives in a state of flux between Dorset and Derry/Londonderry.