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Sinéad Gleeson and Emilie Pine join the ILS to discuss their recent books of essays. Pine's winning last year's An Post Irish Book of the Year seemed to mark a reemergence of the essay form in Irish literature. Perhaps the flourishing of literary journals in Ireland has encouraged this, perhaps the renewed appreciation of Hubert Butler's work has been an ...
As we approach yet another Brexit deadline (31 October) the Society has banded-together with the Irish Pages journal to reflect on the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and to consider possible futures for the union, Anglo-Irish relations, power sharing and the border. The current special issue of Irish Pages is given over to reflections on the agreement. The essays and poetry ...
The Irish Literary Society is delighted to announce that the speaker for this year's Annual Yeats Lecture will be Professor Michael Wood. Drawing on his book Yeats and Violence (2010) Professor Wood reflects on how poetry, seen through the instance of a single poem, seeks to make sense of a turbulent and dangerous world. Poetry must introduce order and shape ...
Irish was his cradle language, and his writing in English always had the verve and zest of a learned language. This was particularly true of his translations – of Merriman’s Cúirt an Mheán Oíche and the Táin, or Dante’s Inferno. As well as from Irish and Italian, he translated short poems from French and Spanish with great style and lucidity. ...
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS. THE EVENT WILL RUN IN OUR 2020-21 SEASON. Join the Society to celebrate the 10th birthday of The Moth, one of Ireland’s foremost art and literature magazines. Founded in 2010 by Rebecca O’Connor and Will Govan, The Moth features poetry, short fiction and art by established and up-and-coming writers ...
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS. THE EVENT WILL RUN IN OUR 2020-21 SEASON. The scholar Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail visits the Society to deliver our joint annual Noel O'Connell memorial talk with the Irish Texts Society. Her subject is Thomas O’Connor (alias Tomás Ó Conchubhair, b. 1798), originally from the civil parish of Templemolaga, Co. ...
The Irish Literary Society is delighted to announce that the speaker for this year’s Annual Yeats Lecture will be Garry Hynes, Director of Druid. Following an introduction by the President of the Irish Literary Society, Bernard O'Donoghue, Hynes will give a short presentation and then join in conversation on the recent DruidGregory season with the novelist and Druid board member, ...
Professor Richard Kirkland joins in conversation with Roy Foster, the Society's Vice President, on Kirkland’s new book Irish London: A Cultural History 1850–1916 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). In the years following the Irish Famine (1845–52), London became one of the cities of Ireland. The number of Irish in London swelled to over 100,000 and from this mass migration emerged a distinctive ...
As tension persists over the future of the Protocol and frustration is leading to renewed speculation of the possibility of a United Ireland we engage with four writers whose work is gathered in a landmark new anthology reflecting on the border. The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border (New Island, 2021) is a landmark anthology of fiction, non-fiction ...
2021 saw the passing of the brothers Thomas (1928-2021) and John Kinsella (1932-2021). Our event will look back over their careers as poet and composer and include music and readings. Thomas is credited with bringing the techniques of international modernism to Irish verse. He published his first collection, The Starlight Eye (1952), with Dolmen Press, helping to set the type ...
