Online Festival Stage
& Via Facebook
(facebook.com/winter.warmer)
& Via YouTube
(www.youtube.com/OBheal)
Ó Bhéal’s 8th Winter Warmer (and 1st online) festival presents 36 poets live from fifteen countries, over four days in November. The festival will feature two poetry workshops, four newly recorded Mini-Concerts from Tionscadal na nAmhrán Ealaíne Gaeilge (the Irish Language Art Song Project) devised by Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess, the shortlist screening and prize-giving for Ó Bhéal’s International Poetry-Film Competition, a Many Tongues of Cork session and a closed-mic set for new voices – poets who have featured regularly in Ó Bhéal’s online open-mic sessions during 2020.
(€3 suggested donation)
Thursday 26th November
3.00pm – 5.00pm
Your One Human Experience: with Tongo Eisen-Martin
WORKSHOP FULL
The objective of this workshop is to share strategies for writing and editing poems generated by the idea that your poetry is a part of your one human experience taking place in and revealed by an interconnected reality. For each strategy, you will complete a corresponding in-class writing prompt drawing on your own life experiences and worldviews, as well as the critical perception of your craft.
Poems will be shared both for possibilities of revision and expansion. As a group, we will also work on the practice of reading poems aloud in order to realize the full potential of the poem as it exists in a shared moment. By the end, students will begin an approach to craft in which the objective of craft is the perpetual creation of new writing strategies and new opportunities to relax into one’s own voice. This workshop is for people of all levels and backgrounds.
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Pocket Poets series, 2017), was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.
5.30pm – 5.45pm
Irish Language Art Song: Mini Concert 1/4
Andrew Gavin, Ana Sokolovic & Garrett Sholdice
Tenor: Andrew Gavin
Piano: John Hess
Recitation: Dáirine Ní Mheadhra
Trí Amhrán/Three Songs
Dínit an Bhróin/The Dignity of Grief (Téacs/Text: Máirtin Ó Direáin)
Maileo léró (Lúibín)/Mallo lero (Loobeen) (Téacs/Text: Ni fios cé a chum/Anonymous)
Amhrán an treabhdóra (Amhrán oibre)/Ploughing song (Work song) (Téacs/Text: Ni fios cé a chum)
Ceol/Music: Garrett Sholdice
Trí Véarsa As ‘Dónall Óg’/Three Verses from Dónall Óg
Tá mo chroíse chomh dubh le háirne/My heart is as black as the sloe
A Dhónaill Óig, má théir thar farraige/ O Dónall Óg, if over the sea you go
(Téacs/Text: Ni fios cé a chum/Anonymous)
Recording engineer: David Stalling
Dáirine Ní Mheadhra & John Hess
The Irish Language Art Song Project, devised by project director Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and John Hess, is a collection of fifty new art songs set exclusively to Irish language texts. These were commissioned in 2019 from Irish and international composers with a three-fold goal: to enliven the interaction between classical composers and Irish language poets, to make a significant contribution to the canon of Irish language art song, and to provide the resources to allow singers in Ireland and throughout the world the opportunity to sing art song in the Irish language.
Is é atá sa Tionscadal na nAmhrán Ealaíne Gaeilge, a cheap stiúrthóir an tionscadail Dáirine Ní Mheadhra agus John Hess, bailiúchán de caoga amhrán ealaíne, ceol nua curtha le téacsanna Gaeilge amháin. Rinneadh coimisiúnú ar na hamhráin seo i 2019 ó chumadóirí Éireannacha agus idirnáisiúnta agus trí mhór-aidhm in aigne againn: caidreamh a spreagadh idir chumadóirí clasaiceacha agus filí Gaeilge, cur go suntasach le canóin na n-amhrán ealaíne Gaeilge, agus na hacmhainní cuí a chur ar fáil chun go bhféadfadh amhránaithe in Éirinn agus mórthimpeall an domhain tabhairt faoi amhrán ealaíne i nGaeilge a chanadh.
6.00pm – 7.30pm
Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi | Siobhán Ní Dhomhnaill | Karthika Naïr
Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi is a Lagos-born, Galway-bred, and Dublin-based writer, editor, performer, and arts facilitator. Her work is published in Poetry International 25, Poetry Ireland Review 129, RTÉ Poetry Programme, IMMA Magazine, Architecture Ireland, The Irish Times, Writing Home: the ‘New Irish’ Poets, which she co-edited with Pat Boran (Dedalus Press, 2019), as well as The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories (edited by Sínead Gleeson, 2020), amongst others. This year, she participated in Cúirt Festival Culture Night: Celebrating the Irish Short Story online event, CIACLA’s Micro-Moments online series, and the Red Line Book Festival.
Chiamaka was the 2019 recipient of the Poetry Ireland Access Cúirt Bursary and her work is longlisted for An Post Irish Book Awards Writing.ie Short Story of the Year 2020. She is the co-founder of @BlackGirlAtEase, a new online wellness space, exploring embodied emotional ease, esteem, and intimacy. The platform is co-curated with her sister Ihunanya Enyi-Amadi, lawyer and photographer. The Igbo-Irish duo shares poetry, prose, and photography to encourage healing, rest, and hope. Find out more about her work on Instagram @chiamakaenyiamadi and Twitter @AmadiEnyi
Siobhán Ní Dhomhnaill is a bilingual poet. She was born and raised in Listowel, Co.Kerry. After finishing her degree in BCL (Law and Irish), she undertook a Masters in European Law and the Irish Language in University College Cork. She is currently studying to be a Secondary School teacher in NUI Galway. She is the winner of the Collection of Poetry Award at Listowel Writers Week in 2019. Her poems have been published in the magazines Motley and Sonder. Her book Ait agus Iontach Bheith Beo will be coming out with Coisceim soon. The poet Thomas McCarthy has described her poetry as ‘mature yet incredibly youthful, light-footed yet full of terrific literary skill. The unique and sublime bi-lingual collection breaks away from all the competent moulds to create a new kind of energy in poetry.’
File dátheangach í Siobhán Ní Dhomhnaill. I Lios Tuathail i gcontae Chiarraí a rugadh agus tógadh í. Fuair céim mháistreachta sa Ghaeilge agus i nDlí na hEorpa le gairid ó Choláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh i ndiaidh a bhunchéim BCL (Dlí & Gaeilge) a chríochnú. Tá sí ag déanamh an Máistreacht san Oideachas Gairmiúil i nGaillimh fé láthair. Buaiteoir an Chomórtais Chnuasach Fhilíochta ag Seachtain na Scríbhneoirí Lios Tuathail 2019. Tá a dánta foilsithe sna hirisí Motley agus Sonder. Beidh a leabhar Ait agus Iontach Bheith Beo ag teacht amach le Coisceim gan mhoill. Chuir an file Thomas McCarthy síos ar a cuid filíochta mar ‘mature yet incredibly youthful, light-footed yet full of terrific literary skill. The unique and sublime bi-lingual collection breaks away from all the competent moulds to create a new kind of energy in poetry.’
Photo by Koen Broos
Poet, dance producer and librettist, Karthika Naïr is the principal scriptwriter of several dance productions, including the multiple-award-winning DESH (2011), choreographer Akram Khan’s dance solo. The dance pieces she has scripted and co-scripted have been staged at venues across the world, such as the Palais des Papes (Avignon), Sadler’s Wells (London) and L.G. Arts Center (Seoul).
Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, her reimagining of the Mahabharata in multiple voices, won the 2015 Tata Literature Live! Award for fiction and was highly commended in the 2016 Forward Prizes (UK). Akram Khan adapted one chapter of the book into a dance show, also called Until the Lions, winner of the 2016 Tanz Award for Outstanding Production. Naïr is a 2012 Sangam House Fellow, a 2013 Toji Foundation Fellow, and was also awarded a Villa Marguerite Yourcenar Fellowship in 2015.
Her latest book is the collaborative Over and Under Ground in Mumbai & Paris (2018), a travelogue in verse, written with Mumbai-based poet Sampurna Chattarji, and illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet and Roshni Vyam. As dance enabler, Naïr’s closest associations have been with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet. She is the executive producer of shows including Babel(words), Puz/zle – both winners of the prestigious Olivier Award – and co-founder of Cherkaoui’s company Eastman.
8.00pm – 9.30pm
Julie Morrissy | Musawenkosi Khanyile | Ellen Hinsey
Photo by Butler Photographic
Julie Morrissy is an Irish poet, academic, critic, and activist. Her recent projects emphasise collaboration, and her practice engages animation, moving image and performance. She is the inaugural John Pollard Newman Fellow in Creativity at University College Dublin, where she also teaches creative writing. Her debut collection Where, the Mile End (2019) is published by Book*hug (Canada) and tall-lighthouse (UK).
Morrissy completed her PhD in Creative Writing at Ulster University, and she holds separate degrees in Literature (Ryerson University, Toronto) and Law (University College Dublin/University of Minnesota). She is a recipient of the ‘Next Generation’ Artist Award from the Arts Council, and she has represented Ireland at the O, Miami Festival and the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Her poetry has been published internationally, including in The Manchester Review, Winter Papers, The Irish Times, gorse and bath magg. Her website is juliemorrissy.com.
Musawenkosi Khanyile is a South African poet and clinical psychologist from Nseleni, KwaZulu-Natal, currently living in Cape Town. He is the author of All the Places (uHlanga Press, 2019), a debut collection of poems shortlisted for the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Prize and declared co-winner of the 2020 South African Literary Award (SALA) for Poetry. His chapbook, The Internal Saboteur, was published by Akashic Books in collaboration with the African Poetry Book Fund as part of the 2019 New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set: Sita.
Ellen Hinsey is the author of eight books of poetry, essays, dialogue and literary translation. Her most recent volume of poetry The Illegal Age explores the rise of authoritarianism and was the Poetry Book Society’s 2018 Autumn Choice. Hinsey’s reports and essays on democracy in Central and Eastern Europe are collected in Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europeand the Rise of Illiberalism (2017). Her book-length dialogue with Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova, Magnetic North, explores post-war culture and ethics under totalitarianism.
Hinsey’s other volumes of poetry include Update on the Descent, a National Poetry Series Finalist, which draws on her experience at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague, The White Fire of Time and Cities of Memory, which received the Yale University Series Award. She has also edited and co-translated The Junction: Selected Poems of Tomas Venclova (Bloodaxe 2008). Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Irish Times, Der Tagesspiegel, Poetry Review, Poetry and others. A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, she is the international correspondent for the New England Review. She lives in Paris.
10.00pm – 11.30pm
Alba Cid | Brian Kirk | Susan Musgrave
Alba Cid (Ourense, 1989) is a Galician poet and researcher. She lives between Santiago de Compostela and Oxford, where she directs the John Rutherford Centre for Galician Studies at the University of Oxford. She is a contributing editor to Dorna (a Galician literary magazine), reviews poetry as a frequent guest on a Galician radio program and various journals, takes photographs and occasionally illustrates.
Her debut poetry collection is Atlas (Galaxia, 2019), for which she won the Miguel Hernández National Young Poetry Prize 2020. To date, her poems have been translated into English, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish. As one of the four winners of 2019 Words Without Borders Poems in Translation Contest in partnership with the Academy of American Poets, translations of her poems by Jacob Rogers have appeared in Poem-a-Day, also in Asymptote, Action Books, The Offing (tr. Megan Berkobien) and are forthcoming from the Kenyon Review online.
Brian Kirk is a poet and writer from Dublin. His first poetry collection After The Fall was published by Salmon Poetry in 2017. His poem “Birthday” won the Listowel Writers’ Week Irish Poem of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2018. His short fiction chapbook It’s Not Me, It’s You won the Southword Fiction Chapbook competition and was published in 2019.
Recent poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Abridged, Boyne Berries, Skylight 47 and 14 Magazine. He was granted a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland’s Covid 19 Response Award 2020 to write and film a series of formal poems called “Freedom in Constraint” focusing on the themes of isolation and social distancing and the wider issues and challenges to community and family arising out of the current Covid 19 pandemic. He is a member of the Hibernian Poetry Workshop and he blogs at www.briankirkwriter.com.
Susan Musgrave has published more than 30 books. She has been nominated and won awards for writing in five different categories: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, children’s books, and for her work as an editor. A new book of poetry, Exculpatory Lilies, will be published by McClelland & Stewart in 2022. In April 2020 her poem, “Wild and Alone,” took third place in the Fish Poetry Prize Competition in Cork, judged by Billy Collins.
She lives on Haida Gwaii, off Canada’s northwest coast, where she owns and manages Copper Beech Guest House, and teaches poetry in UBC’s Optional Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. She spends part of every year in the west of Ireland, and would like her obituary to read, “She died in Ireland.” But not yet.
3.00pm – 5.00pm
Praising our mutilated world: with Jo Burns
WORKSHOP FULL
In a testament to resilience, Adam Zagajewski’s poem “Try to praise the mutilated world” weaves beauty, enigma, hope and praise into a poetic call to see the joy of small things, both in our day to day and in treasured memories. Poetry can be a source of reassurance in hard times.
Think of Walt Whitman’s lines: “Affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet; Those who love each other shall become invincible”,
or Wendell Berry’s: “And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free”.
Remnants of light are what gives us strength; what makes us human. Participants of the workshop will receive poetry prompts that inspire this. The prompts will be sent after registration. First drafts will be collated and shared, throughout the group, prior to the Zoom session, where we will workshop our poems together. Hopefully, by the end, we will have polished poems of praise of our own. Let`s try to praise our mutilated, but still beautiful, world!
Born in Northern Ireland, Jo Burns lives in Germany. Jo’s poetry has been published in Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry News, The Moth, Southword, The Stinging Fly, The Tangerine and Magma among many others. Jo won the McClure Poetry Prize 2017 at the Irish Writers Festival, CA, the Magma Poetry Competition 2018, the Hamish Canham Award (Poetry Society) 2020 and the Listowel Single Poem Competition 2020 and has been shortlisted for many others.
Her pamphlet Circling for Gods was published by Eyewear Publishing. Her first full collection White Horses was published by Turas Press in 2018. She is currently working on both a second collection, and a collaboration with Emily S Cooper, exploring the muses of Pablo Picasso.
5.30pm – 5.45pm
Irish Language Art Song: Mini Concert 2/4
Linda Buckley & Daire Halpin
Ceol/Music: Linda Buckley
Soprano: Daire Halpin
Piano: John Hess
Recitation: Dáirine Ní Mheadhra
marginalia (forais gan fhaobhar)/marginalia (impossible forest)
Sólás/Solace
Faoi Shamhain/In November
(Téacs/Text: Doireann Ní Ghríofa)
Recording engineer: David Stalling
For more / Le haghaidh tuilleadh faisnéise, tabhair cuairt ar: www.cmc.ie.
6.00pm – 7.30pm
Natalya O’Flaherty | Mike Garry | David Wheatley
Now established as one of the most exciting names on the Irish spoken word scene, Natalya O’Flaherty has emerged from the dankest of dive bars of the Dublin scene to perform at some of the country’s most prestigious cultural centres and undertake many major commissions. Her words carry hard hitting notions and criticisms of modern Ireland, tackling everything from (so called) daddy issues to drug abuse.
Having found her voice through the cheap rhymes and hard hitting nature of spoken word, an appearance as part of the St Patrick’s Day Festival Young Blood concert at the National Concert Hall brought her to the attention of many, especially the Word Up Collective – whom she joined in 2018. Key appearances since have included RTE Culture Night (at the request of Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan), St Patrick’s Festival, The Late Late Show, the Mansion House as part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Dáil’s first sitting, Electric Picnic, Music Town and All Together Now. So far in 2020 she has undertaken several online festival projects, recorded a special set for Body & Soul’s virtual weekend and taken part in RTE’s Shine commission, for which she wrote an exclusive new piece.
Dr. Mike Garry was a librarian for 15 years before becoming a poet. His work with Manchester Libraries began with the development of Study Support Units or “Homework Centres” throughout Manchester’s local library network. His work with young people in inner city Manchester won him awards from the Princes’ Trust and the National Literacy Trust, awarding him the title of “Champion Reader” for his work in promoting reading to young people.
Mike has toured with John Cooper Clarke for a decade performing in over 500 venues throughout the UK, US and Europe. He has had many a musical collaboration; working with New Order and performing with Iggy Pop, Patti Smith and the National in New York’s Carnegie Hall, working with classical composer Philip Glass, and collaborating with The Cassia String Quartet, The Northern Chamber orchestra and the Halle orchestra players. Mike has four books – Men’s Morning, Mancunian Meander, God is a Manc and Men’s Mourning, which have become schemes of work in hundreds of British schools, receiving wide critical acclaim and success.
David Wheatley was born in Dublin in 1970 and has published five collections of poetry, most recently The President of Planet Earth (Carcanet, 2017). He is also a widely published critic, and has edited the poetry of James Clarence Mangan for Gallery Press and Samuel Beckett for Faber and Faber. With Ailbhe Darcy, he has co-edited The Cambridge History of Irish Women’s Poetry, due in 2021. He lives with his family in rural Aberdeenshire. 8.00pm – 9.30pm
Jean Boase-Beier | Mary O’Malley | Sinéad Morrissey
Jean Boase-Beier is a translator and editor of poetry and an academic writer. She is Professor Emerita of Literature and Translation at the University of East Anglia, where she founded the MA in Literary Translation in 1992 and ran it until 2015. She is Translations Editor for Arc Publications.
Her academic work focuses on translation, style and poetry, and especially on the translation of Holocaust poetry. Academic publications include Translating the Poetry of the Holocaust (2015, Bloomsbury), the co-edited Palgrave Handbook of Literary Translation (2018), and Translation and Style (2020, Routledge). Jean’s poetry translations (all from Arc Publications) include collections by modern German poets Ernst Meister (2003), Rose Ausländer (2014), and Volker von Törne (2017), and she has recently co-edited (with Marian de Vooght) Poetry of the Holocaust: An Anthology (2019).
Photo by Bobbie Hanvey
Mary O’Malley has published eight books of poetry and her ninth, Gaudent Angeli is due out from Carcanet this September. She has lectured in NUI Galway for many years and is the Trinity College Writer Fellow for 2019. She has won a number of awards, is published in several languages, is working on a book of essays and a prose book, both on the subject of place. She was awarded the Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at the University of Villanova in 2013 and has held residencies in Paris, Tarragona and the US.
O’Malley was writer in resident on the Celtic Explorer, a marine research ship, in 2007 and Valparaiso was written in part on the ship. She has been involved in environmental education, specifically of the ocean, for over twenty five years, working at Bog Week and Sea Week, and she was on the organizing of an international conference on the de-militarisation of the ocean in 1992. She comes from a fishing background and is currently concerned with the cultural and human fallout from the destruction of the small fishing industry off the West Coast of Ireland, and the rise of questionable EU policy on fishing.
Photo by Florian Braakman
The author of six poetry collections, Sinéad Morrissey was born in 1972 and grew up in Belfast. Her awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, first prize in the UK National Poetry Competition, the Irish Times Poetry Prize (2009, 2013), and the T. S. Eliot Prize (2013). In 2016 she received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
On Balance was the winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, 2017 and of the European Poet of Freedom Award 2020. Morrissey has served as Belfast’s inaugural Poet Laureate and is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
10.00pm – 11.30pm
Rachael Hegarty | John McCullough | Chris Mansell
Rachael Hegarty is a Dubliner. She was educated by the Holy Faithers in Finglas, the U.Mass Bostonians, the Trinity M.Phillers in Dublin and the Ph.D. Magicians at Queens University, Belfast. Her debut collection, Flight Paths Over Finglas won the 2018 Shine Strong Award. A child survivor of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, her collection May Day 1974 (Salmon, 2019) has won national and critical acclaim.
Rachael has also edited a book of poems by community groups from hometown in Making Sense of Finglas (2019). Her third collection, Dancing with Memory (Salmon, 2021) is a ballroom for her mother who lives with Alzheimer’s. Rachael’s kids say she uses the 3 F- words too much: Finglas, feminism and feckin’ poetry.
Photo by Stephen Wells
John McCullough lives in Hove. His latest book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins) won the 2020 Hawthornden prize for literature and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. The Costa judges said ‘This collection – hilarious, harrowing and hyper-modern – offers a startlingly fresh insight into vulnerability and suffering.’ In the Times Literary Supplement, head judge for the Hawthornden, Christopher Reid, described it as ‘a rare literary phenomenon . . . a frank and militant declaration of joy.’
McCullough has won other awards including the Polari First Book Prize and his collections have been named Books of the Year in The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer as well as his work often appearing in magazines such as Poetry London, Poetry Review and The New Statesman. He teaches creative writing at the University of Brighton and New Writing South.
Photo by Richard Tipping
Chris Mansell studied Economics at the University of Sydney – because she’d read Das Kapital as a teenager and thought economics was the way to understand what is going on. She spent the first ten years of her life on the central coast of NSW, and then she moved to Niugini (Papua New Guinea).
At 14, she decided that she would be a poet. Mansell has won the Queensland Premier’s Award for Poetry, Amelia Chapbook Award (USA) and the Meanjin Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize, and was short-listed for the National Book Council Award and the NSW Premier’s Award. Her Latest book is 101 Quads (Puncher & Wattmann, 2020), a formal experimental work.
1.00pm – 2.30pm
Many Tongues of Cork is a space filled with prose & poetry in different languages. All are welcome to enjoy the flavourful sounds of just a few of the many tongues spoken in our diverse city. Five women will read their poems in languages including Ndebele, Swedish and Arabic. This popular Cork event, produced by Joanna Dukkupati, takes place throughout each year, reaching further on each occasion into new corners and immigramt populations of the wider Cork community. Poems will be presented simultaneously in sign language (ISL), by Cork sign-language interpreter Ray Greene.
Asmae Ourkiya is a 27 years old Moroccan researcher, artist, and human rights activist who is currently a third year Ph.D. candidate majoring in ecofeminism. Asmae masters four languages and has never missed an opportunity to speak for minority rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and women’s rights. As a non-binary queer activist, they use their art to break gender norms through their paintings. They have been based in Cork city for over a year now and they love the city! Celine Thrane is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker. She has been living in Cork with her partner since July 2019 and they are aiming to found their very own media production company (Shade 52 Media) in January 2021. “Creativity and beauty are all around us, intertwined with the very seams of our reality. Our goal is to capture a little bit of this magic and share it with the world.” Nqobizitha Vella is a feminist Zimbabwean writer living in Ireland. She has been in the country for five years and it is here that she has finally found a voice to raise awareness of the injustices of her culture in relation to the girl child and women in the form of writing. She has published a book written in her native language IsiNdebele titled (Umendo So!) and a few short stories she wants to turn into films at a later stage. Sananda Mukhopadhyaya is an art based Educator and theatre maker. Her favorite interests are children, cats, trees and textiles. She writes about life as she sees it closely and slowly. Sananda is based in Mumbai and we’re thrilled that she’ll be joining us. Susanne Araya is a 29 year old Norwegian engineer, who has a great love for art. Susanne is also a musician, activist and poet. She is extremely passionate about justice and equality. She uses her music and poems to speak for those who can’t, but also for herself, because she believes that everybody should be heard. Susanne moved to Cork with her partner about a year ago, and enjoys the charm of the city and the people.
Joanna Dukkipati is an enthusiastic gatherer of all things that raise kindness and positivity in our community. Joanna grew up in India and has the experience of living and working in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Australia, Zambia and Mozambique. She believes in the strength of diversity. She is the founding editor of Good Day News, a magazine that only features local uplifting news. Joanna began Many Tongues of Cork to highlight the different languages spoken in Cork with the goals of bringing people closer together and learning about different cultures.
Ray Greene became a qualified Irish Sign Language/English Interpreter in 2004. She has been working as a full time Interpreter ever since and works in a broad variety of settings such as education and training, employment, religious ceremonies, theatre, counselling, medical work … and poetry sessions. This is Ray’s third time interpreting at the festival.
For more about Ray, visit corkinterpreter.com/aboutus/raygreene.
3.00pm – 4.30pm
Ó Bhéal’s annual Closed Mic session will showcase new voices – poets who have contributed to Ó Bhéal’s open-mic sessions on Monday nights, over the past year. Contributors include Augustina Adéọlá Jekennu, Máire Stephens, Ada Miles, Massimo Lavelle, Pam Campbell, Eoin Hurley, Melisa Mauriño, Doc Janning, Kemi George Simpson, Lauren O’Donovan and Susanna Trifiletti.
5.30pm – 5.45pm
Irish Language Art Song: Mini Concert 3/4
John Kinsella & Gavan Ring
Ceol/Music: John Kinsella
Tenor: Gavan Ring
Piano: John Hess
Recitation: Dáirine Ní Mheadhra
Bóithre Bána/ White Roads (Téacs/Text: Eoghan Ó Tuarisc)
Filleadh ón Antartach/Return from Antartica (Téacs/Text: Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh)
An Muince Dreolíní/A Necklace of Wrens (Téacs/Text: Michael Hartnett)
Recording engineer: David Stalling
For more / Le haghaidh tuilleadh faisnéise, tabhair cuairt ar: www.cmc.ie.
6.00pm – 7.30pm
Jane Clarke | Ranjit Hoskote | Mary Jean Chan
Jane Clarke is the author of two poetry collections, The River and When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books, 2015 & 2019), as well as an illustrated chapbook, All the Way Home, (Smith|Doorstop 2019). In 2020 When the Tree Falls was shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award as well as being longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. ‘Copper Soles’ from When the Tree Falls was highly commended in the Forward Book of Poetry 2021.
Her first collection The River was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. In 2016 she won the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry and the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. Originally from a farm in Roscommon, Jane now lives in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow. She holds a BA in English and Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin and an MPhil in Writing from the University of South Wales. For more visit www.janeclarkepoetry.ie.
Photo by Nancy Adajania
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, translator, cultural theorist and curator based in Bombay. His seven collections of poetry include Vanishing Acts (Penguin, 2006), Central Time (Penguin/ Viking, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton, 2018) and, most recently, The Atlas of Lost Beliefs (Arc, 2020). His translation of a 14th-century Kashmiri woman mystic’s poetry has appeared as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011). He is the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2012). With Ilija Trojanow, Hoskote has co-authored Confluences: Forgotten Histories from East and West (Yoda, 2012). With Maria Hlavajova, he has co-edited Future Publics: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art (BAK/Valiz, 2015).
Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011) and co-curated the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008). He is an alumnus of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa (1995) and has been writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich (2003) and the Polish Institute, Berlin (2010). India’s National Academy of Letters has honoured Hoskote with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award. His poems have been translated into German, Hindi, Bangla, Marathi, Irish Gaelic, Swedish, Spanish, and Arabic. He is on Twitter at @ranjithoskote and on Instagram at @rhoskote.
Mary Jean Chan is a London-based poet, lecturer and editor from Hong Kong. Her debut poetry collection, Flèche (Faber & Faber), is the winner of the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry. Chan has twice been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, and is the recipient of a 2019 Eric Gregory Award and the 2018 Poetry Society Geoffrey Dearmer Prize. In Spring 2020, Chan served as guest co-editor at The Poetry Review. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University.8.00pm – 9.30pm
Tongo Eisen-Martin | Jacob Polley | Imtiaz Dharker
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Pocket Poets series, 2017), was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.
Jacob Polley was born and grew up in Cumbria. He has published four books of poems with Picador, winning the 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry for his fourth, Jackself, which was described by the judges as ‘a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling.’ His 2009 novel, Talk of the Town, set in and around Carlisle, won the Somerset Maugham Award.
A poet of the uncanny and the startlingly lyrical, Jacob’s work explores his rural upbringing, the forces of tradition and history, and the power of speech as it approaches song. Jacob is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and lives with his family on the North East coast.
Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and video film maker, awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014. She has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library and worked on several projects across art forms in Leeds, Newcastle and Hull as well as the Archives of St Paul’s Cathedral. Her seven collections include Over the Moon (Bloodaxe, 2014) and the latest, Luck is the Hook (Bloodaxe, 2018), with poems featured on radio, television, the London Underground and Mumbai buses.
Dharker has had eleven solo exhibitions of drawings and scripts and directs video films, many of them for non-government organisations working in the area of shelter, education and health for women and children in India.
10.00pm – 11.30pm
James O’Leary | Nuar Alsadir | Robert Sullivan
James O’Leary is a poet from Cork. His chapbook There are Monsters in this House was published by Southword Editions in 2018. He was selected for The Poetry Ireland Introductions Series in 2017 and received the Poetry Ireland and Cúirt bursary in 2016. His poems have been broadcast on RTÉ radio and published in The North, The Irish Examiner, The Honest Ulsterman, Banshee, Magma, Southword and elsewhere. He has written and directed several short plays and his poetry-films have screened at festivals in Ireland, Scotland, and Canada. His poems will appear in A Wild and Precious Life: A Recovery Anthology in April 2021.
Photo by Grace Yu
Nuar Alsadir is a poet, essayist and psychoanalyst. She is the author of two poetry collections – most recently Fourth Person Singular (Liverpool University Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the 2017 Forward Prize for Best Collection ; and More Shadow Than Bird (Salt, 2012).
Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Granta, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Grand Street, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, tender, Magma, Poetry London, and the Poetry Review. She has a book of nonfiction forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions. She lives in New York.
Photo by Rachel J. Fenton
Māori poet Robert Sullivan‘s tribal affiliations are to Ngāpuhi, and Kāi Tahu. He is also Irish. His seven collections of poetry include Captain Cook in the Underworld (Auckland University Press), Shout Ha! to the Sky (Salt Publishing) and the bestselling Star Waka (Auckland University Press). He has co-edited three major anthologies of Pacific and Māori poetry.
Robert has served on writing committees and judging panels in New Zealand and overseas including the board of the Auckland Writers’ Festival, the Māori Writers’ Committee, Te Hā, and the 2018 poetry panel for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Robert for a time led the Creative Writing programmes at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, and Manukau Institute of Technology where until recently he was Deputy Chief Executive Māori.
See also https://www.anzliterature.com/member/robert-sullivan/
2.00pm – 4.30pm
(Two Screenings: 2pm-3pm and 3.30pm-4.30pm)
Ó Bhéal’s 8th International Poetry-Film Competition
This year’s shortlist of 38 films was chosen from 288 submissions received from 181 filmmakers in 49 countries. The shortlist represents 14 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Canada, England, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Scotland, Sierra Leone, Spain & the USA.
Judges Dareina Ní Chinnéide and Paul Casey will select one winner to receive the Ó Bhéal award for best poetry-film, designed by glass artist Michael Ray. The winner will be announced directly after the screenings.
5.30pm – 5.45pm
Irish Language Art Song: Mini Concert 4/4
Jonathan Nangle & Daire Halpin
Ceol/Music: Jonathan Nangle
Soprano: Daire Halpin
Piano: John Hess
Recitation: Dáirine Ní Mheadhra
An Croí/The Heart (Téacs/Text: Colm Breathnach)
Snáth/Yarn (Téacs/Text: Nuala Ni Chonchúir)
Chugat/Towards You (Téacs/Text: Michael Davitt)
Recording engineer: David Stalling
For more / Le haghaidh tuilleadh faisnéise, tabhair cuairt ar: www.cmc.ie.
6.00pm – 7.30pm
Deborah Moffatt | Niall O’Gallagher | Ceaití Ní Bhéildiúin
Deborah Moffatt, born in Vermont, USA, has lived in Fife, Scotland since 1982. Her poetry, in English and in Gaelic, has been widely published in the UK and Ireland, and she has won prizes in both languages, including the Wigtown International Competition, the Words on the Waves Award, and the MacDonald of Sleat Poetry Award. She has published two poetry collection in English, Far From Home (Lapwing, 2004) and Eating Thistles (Smokestack Books, 2018). Her first collection in Gaelic is Dàin nan Dùil (Clàr, Inverness).
Is ann à Vermont, anns na Stàitean Aonaichte, a tha
Deborah Moffatt. Tha i air a bhith a’ fuireach ann am Fìobha, faisg air Cill Rimhinn, bho 1982. Chaidh Dàin nan Dùil, a’ chiad chruinneachadh dhen bhardachd Ghàidlig aice, fhoillseachadh ann an 2019. Tha dà chruinneachadh aice ann am Beurla, Far From Home (Lapwing, 2004) agus Eating Thistles (Smokestack Books, 2018). Tha i air deannan dhuaisean a bhuannachd airson a bàrdachd, Duais Bàrdachd MacDhòmhnaill Shlèite agus Duais Bàrdachd Baile na h-Ùige nam measg.
Niall O’Gallagher is the City of Glasgow’s first Gaelic Poet Laureate. Described by Aonghas MacNeacail in the Herald as ‘an exciting new (this time essentially urban) voice’, he is the author of two collections, Beatha Ùr (Clàr, 2013) and Suain nan Trì Latha (2016). A third, Fo Bhlàth, is due in 2020. His poems have been praised for their use of classical Gaelic forms to write modern love poems; Anna Frater described his style as ‘nua-bhàrdachd anns an t-seann nòs’ (‘modern poetry in the old style’) while Alan Titley wrote ‘I don’t know if another poet in our time has managed to cross that causeway between the old and the new so capably and so honestly’. A translator from Gaelic and Catalan into English and Scots, he has also published Scottish Gaelic versions of Irish poems by Biddy Jenkinson in STEALL, where he acts as poetry editor. More information about Niall’s work can be found at www.niallogallagher.com.
Is e Niall O’Gallagher ciad Bhàrd Baile Ghlaschu. A rèir Aonghais MhicNeacail anns an Herald, ‘an exciting new (this time essentially urban) voice’, ‘s e ùghdar dà chruinneachaidh: Beatha Ùr (Clàr, 2013) agus Suain nan Trì Latha (2016). Tha dùil ri treas cruinneachadh, Fo Bhlàth, ann an 2020. Chaidh a bhàrdachd a mholadh airson meadrachd na seann fhilidheachd a chleachdadh gus dàin ghràidh ùra a sgrìobhadh. Thuirt Anna Frater gun sgrìobh e ‘nua-bhàrdachd anns an t-seann nòs’ agus sgrìobh Alan Titley ‘N’fheadar an bhfuil file ar bith eile lenár linn ar éirigh leis dul trasna an cabhsa sin idir an sean agus an nua chomh cumasach, is chomh hionraic sin’. Na eadar-theangaire bhon Ghàidhlig agus bhon Chatalanais don Bheurla agus don Bheurla Ghallda, dh’fhoillsich e tionndaidhean Gàidhlig na h-Alba bho dhàin Biddy Jenkinson ann an STEALL far a bheil e na dheasaiche bàrdachd. Gheibhear barrachd fiosrachaidh mun obair aige aig www.niallogallagher.com.
Ceaití Ní Bhéildiúin is an Irish language writer of poetry and drama. Her latest book, the award winning, Agallamh sa Cheo – Cnoc Bhréanainn, 52.2352°T, 10.2544°I, is the latest of four volumes of her poetry published by Coiscéim, 2007-2019. Her fifth collection is underway. Her two short plays have been staged by An Lab, in Dingle, Co. Kerry. Both Ealaín na Gaeltachta and the Arts Council have awarded Ní Bheildiúin bursaries in support of her work. Two books of her poetry were awarded an Oireachtas prize. She has been both prize winner and judge at Strokestown Poetry Festival, and, in 2015, won Duais Foras na Gaeilge, Listowel Writers’ Week. Ní Bheildiúin made a tour of Scotland with Turas na bhFilí in 2014 and worked as poet in residence at the Díseart in Dingle, 2008-2010.
Is file agus drámadóir í Ceaití Ní Bhéildiúin. Bhuaigh an cnuasach filíochta is déanaí uaithi, Agallamh sa Cheo – Cnoc Bhréanainn, 52.2352°T, 10.2544°I, duais an Oireachtais, 2018. Seo an ceathrú cnuasach óna peann agus tá an cúigiú ceann idir lámha aici anois. Rug sí an chraobh léi i gcomórtas Oireachtais 2007 lena céad leabhar, An Teorainn Bheo. I 2015, ghnóthaigh dán dá cuid Duais Foras na Gaeilge. Stáitsíodh dhá ghearrdhrámaí dá cuid ins An Lab, sa Daingean. Bhronn Ealaín na Gaeltachta (2019, 2014) agus An Chomhairle Ealaíon (2010) sparánachtaí ar Ní Bheildiúin. Ba mholtóir í do Duais de hÍde, Féile Filíochta Átha na mBuillí, 2015. Ghlac sí páirt i dTuras na bhFilí san Albain, 2013, agus chaith sí tréimhse ina scríbhneoir cónaitheach sa Díseart sa Daingean, 2008-2010.
8.00pm – 9.30pm
Jo Burns | William Wall | Dunya Mikhail
Born in Northern Ireland, Jo Burns lives in Germany. Jo’s poetry has been published in Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry News, The Moth, Southword, The Stinging Fly, The Tangerine and Magma among many others. Jo won the McClure Poetry Prize 2017 at the Irish Writers Festival, CA, the Magma Poetry Competition 2018, the Hamish Canham Award (Poetry Society) 2020 and the Listowel Single Poem Competition 2020 and has been shortlisted for many others.
Her pamphlet Circling for Gods was published by Eyewear Publishing. Her first full collection White Horses was published by Turas Press in 2018. She is currently working on both a second collection, and a collaboration with Emily S Cooper, exploring the muses of Pablo Picasso.
Photo by Liz Kirwan
William Wall is the author of six novels, including Suzy Suzy (2019) and Grace’s Day (2018), three collections of stories including The Islands (2017) and Hearing Voices Seeing Things (2016), and four of poetry including The Yellow House (2017). The first European to win the Drue Heinz Prize (2017), he has won numerous awards and has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has also been widely translated and translates from Italian.
Grace’s Day will soon appear in Italian from Nutrimenti. For more visit www.williamwall.net.
Dunya Mikhail was born in Iraq in 1965 and came to the United States in 1996. Her books include In Her Feminine Sign (2019); The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Literature in Translation; The Iraqi Nights, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea; and The War Works Hard. She also edited a pamphlet of Iraqi poetry titled 15 Iraqi Poets.
Her honors include the Kresge Fellowship, Arab American Book Award, and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. The War Works Hard was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and named one of the New York Public Library’s Twenty-Five Books to Remember from 2005. She is the co-founder of Mesopotamian Forum for Art and Culture in Michigan. She currently works as an Arabic special lecturer at Oakland University in Michigan.
10.00pm – 11.30pm
Florencia Milito | Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird | Iman Mersal
Florencia Milito (Rosario, Argentina, 1972). Bilingual poet, essayist, memoirist, and translator whose work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Indiana Review, Catamaran, Entremares, Digging through the Fat, Diálogo, 92nd Street Y, Kenyon Review, Quiet Lightning, Ninth Letter, and Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA, among others. A Hedgebrook alumna, CantoMundo fellow, San Francisco Grotto fellow, and Community of Writers alumna, she has written extensively on themes of state terror and displacement, as well as imagination and language as counterpoint, influenced by her early experience fleeing Argentina’s 1976 coup, subsequent childhood years in Venezuela, and immigration to the United States at the age of nine.
In 2011, she read her poetry at the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Rosario. A resident of San Francisco for the past sixteen years, she reads in various literary series in the Bay Area, works as an educator, and translates the work of contemporary Latin American poets. Her bilingual book of poetry Ituzaingó: Exiles and Reveries is forthcoming from Nomadic Press in January 2021.
Is as Árainn Mhór i dTír Chonaill do Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird. Tá 3 chnuasach filíochta foilsithe aige, chomh maith le ceithre húrscéal agus leabhair do pháistí. Bhunaigh agus reáchtáil sé An Chúirt Filíochta le deich mbliana anuas agus bronnadh go leor duaiseanna ar a shaothar i gcomórtais éagsúla, ina measc: Comórtas Uí Néill, Comórtas Bhéal na mBuillí agus Reclaim the Vision of 1916. Bronnadh duais Leabhar na Bliana ar a úrscéal Tairngreacht (Cló Iar-Chonnacht) ag na An Post Irish Book Awards sa bhliain 2019. Foilseofar a ceathrú díolaim filíochta, Falscaí, níos moille i mbliana.
Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird hails from Árainn Mhór in the Donegal Gaeltacht. He has published three poetry collections in addition to 4 novels and other books for children. He established and has run the annual Cúirt Filíochta gathering for the past 10 years and his work has been awarded prizes in many competitions, including The Colonel O’Neill competition, Strokestown Poetry and Reclaim the Vision of 1916. His novel Tairngreacht (Cló Iar-Chonnacht) was named Irish Language Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2019. His upcoming poetry collection, Falscaí, will be published later this year.Photo by Randa Shaath
Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet, translator and literary scholar, and Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of five books of Arabic poetry, selections from which have been translated into numerous languages. In English translation, her poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Parnassus, Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review and Michigan Quarterly Review.
A selection of Mersal’s poetry, entitled These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published in 2008 (Sheep Meadow Press- New York). Her most recent publications include an Arabic translation of Charles Simic’s memoir, A Fly in the Soup (Al Kotob Khan, 2016), Kayfa Talta’im: ‘An al-Umuma wa Ashbahiha (Kayfa Ta and Mophradat, 2017), translated into English by Robin Moger as Motherhood and its Ghosts (Kayfa Ta and Sternberg Press – Berlin, 2018), and Fi Athar Enayat al- Zayyat (In pursuit of Enayat al-Zayyat) (Al Kotob Khan – Cairo, 2019).
The Arts Council of Ireland, Cork City Council, Foras na Gaeilge, Dunnes Stores,
Forum Publications, Colmcille, Arc Publications, Cork City Libraries, Poetry Ireland, Paradiso,
The Long Valley and the UCC School of English and Digital Humanities.
