BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Irish Literary Society - ECPv6.16.3//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Irish Literary Society REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20190331T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20191027T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20200329T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20201025T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20210328T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20211031T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20220327T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20221030T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20230326T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20231029T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20240331T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20241027T010000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:UTC BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:UTC DTSTART:20110101T000000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231127T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231127T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20231008T180552Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231121T133218Z UID:20028-1701113400-1701118800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Resting Places - 27 Nov DESCRIPTION:Join us for the London launch of a fascinating new work by Dr Ellen McWilliams. Resting Places: On Wounds\, War and the Irish Revolution could be read as a memoir or a collection of personal essays\, but it is neither – literary scholar Lucy McDiarmid describes it as ‘the creation of a new literary form’. Resting Places offers up an Irishwoman’s elegy for two revolutionists\, Oliver Cromwell and Terence James MacSwiney\, a meditation on the unexpected correspondences between the English Civil War of the seventeenth century and the Irish Civil War of the 1920s\, a prayer to John Milton and William Shakespeare\, and a keen for a Famine Road and for the troubled history of the plantation town of Bandon in Co. Cork. The book emerged from an article in the Irish Times. \nAt the centre of McWilliams’s threnody is a massacre that took place a century ago in West Cork but might as well have been yesterday. It is unforgotten and will continue to be so as her son learns about that “exquisitely painful” time and finds the solace she found in taut prose which is a balm even though it treats of colonial crimes\, republican crimes\, the contagion of faith\, the weight of history and fractured families.’Jonathan Meades\n\nMcWilliams reflects on her Catholic upbringing in West Cork in the 1980s and 1990s\, and on relations with her Protestant neighbours. She is haunted by the killings in the period of Ireland’s War of Independence and Civil War\, and in particular by the ‘Dunmanway massacre’ of April 1922 which marked the area where she grew up. Her great grandmother was active in Cumann na mBan and her granduncle fought for independence as well as in the anti-Treaty IRA. The book reveals why the events of those days remain deeply personal and how they shape her adult life as she moves to England\, marries an expert on Cromwell and the English Civil War\, teaches Irish literature at an English university\, experiences pregnancy and childbirth\, and nurtures her son in his early years. \nImage: Crowds of onlookers throng St Patrick St on the day following the burning of Cork City centre by crown forces. \n The event will be followed by a signing. \n\n\n \n  \n Speakers: Dr Ellen McWilliams\n\n\n\n Dr Ellen McWilliams\nDr Williams’ interests are in the fields of twentieth-century women’s fiction\, anti-colonial history and the aftershocks of colonial violence\, intergenerational memory/postmemory\, literary responses to the pain of revolution and civil war\, political violence and literary form\, and migration and diasporic identity. She is a member of the Routes: Migraton\, Mobility\, Displacement Network and the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict. She has written three academic books\, Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009)\, Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction (2013)\, and Irishness in North American Women’s Writing: Transatlantic Affinities (2021). She is a member of the University’s research network\, Routes: Migration\, Mobility\, Displacement. She also has a special interest in New York magazine culture and has published four essays on Maeve Brennan’s writing for The New Yorker\, including ‘”A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design”: Maeve Brennan\, Self-Fashioning\, and the Uses of Style’ for Women: A Cultural Review and an article on Brennan’s years at Harper’s Bazaar\, ‘Maeve Brennan\, Celebrity\, and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s’. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/resting-places-27-november/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:anniversary,book signing,feminism,interview,Nationalism,Reading,research,social history,violence,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/resting-places-redo.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20231023T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20231023T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20231008T095914Z LAST-MODIFIED:20231008T172632Z UID:19990-1698089400-1698094800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:ILS/ITS Joint Lecture - 23 Oct DESCRIPTION:The Annual Noel O’Connell Memorial Lecture\, a joint venture of the Irish Literary Society and Irish Texts Society will be delivered by Dr. Mary MacDiarmada on ‘Art O’Brien and Irish Nationalism in London\, 1900-25’. \n\nLondon-born and reared\, Art O’Brien’s journey from wealthy electrical engineer to leader of Irish militant nationalism in London was\, by any measure\, quite extraordinary. In her talk and in the book on which it is based MacDiarmada uses the life of O’Brien (1872–1949) as a central axis on which to construct an analysis of Irish nationalism in London from 1900 to 1925. \nShedding light on the work of the ‘presiding genius’ of the Irish movement in London [this] publication of Art O’Brien and Irish Nationalism in London 1900-25 by Dr Mary MacDiarmada is a long overdue biography of one of the most fascinating characters of the Irish revolution …Ronan McGreevy (Irish Times\, October 2020)\nO’Brien was a member of the Gaelic League\, Sinn Féin\, the Irish Volunteers\, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain. He also established a prisoner relief organization and had significant involvement in gun-running for the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. Appointed London envoy of Dáil Éireann in 1919\, he was a close confidant of Michael Collins\, Arthur Griffith and Éamon de Valera and was a mediator in various peace initiatives between the British and Sinn Féin during 1920 and 1921. Yet\, despite his extensive contribution to the Irish revolution\, little is known of O’Brien’s activities. \n\nBased on rigorous research in British and Irish archives\, MacDiarmada recounts the vital contribution O’Brien made to the prosecution of the Irish revolution. The talk will also recount the hitherto little-known story of Irish cultural\, political and militant nationalism in London between 1900 and 1925. \n\nImage credit: Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney (left) and Art O’Brien (right) congratulating JJ O’Kelly (centre) on his re-election as President of the Gaelic League at the Mansion House in Dublin in August 1920. Photo: National Library of Ireland\, NPA POLF 170 \n\n \n  \n Speaker: Dr Mary MacDiarmada\n\n\n\n Dr Mary MacDiarmada\nDr Mary MacDiarmada is a Research Fellow in the School of History and Geography\, Dublin City University (DCU). URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/ils-its-joint-lecture-23-oct/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:emigration,history,Irish language,lecture,London-Irish,Nationalism,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/art-obrien.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20230925T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20230925T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20230905T161850Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230907T231545Z UID:19758-1695670200-1695675600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:A Thread of Violence - 25 Sept DESCRIPTION:Mark O’Connell’s latest book\, A Thread of Violence\, concerns the murders committed by Malcolm Macarthur in 1982 of a nurse\, Bridie Gargan\, and a farmer\, Dónal Dunne. It is both an utterly compelling account of one of Ireland’s most notorious crimes and an interrogation of the nature of true crime writing itself. When Macarthur\, the heir to a small fortune\, found himself suddenly without money\, he decided to rob a bank. To do this\, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them\, he killed two people\, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest nearly brought down the Irish government. When Mark O’Connell set out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes\, he tracked down Macarthur himself\, living out his days in Dublin. O’Connell will be in conversation with Brian Dillon. In A Thread of Violence Mark O’Connell has investigated\, with immense skill and insight\, the mind of a double murderer\, and in the process has shown the essential mysteriousness of such a mind-perhaps of any mind. The result is a beautifully wrought narrative that is at once frightening and thrilling. A masterly workJohn Banville\n\nThis event will be followed by a signing and a book sale. \n \n  \n Speakers: Mark O'Connell\n\n\n\n Mark O’Connell\nMark O’Connell is an award-winning Irish writer. He previously visited the ILS to discuss his first book\, To Be a Machine\, which won the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. In 2019\, he became the first ever non-fiction writer to win the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second book\, Notes From an Apocalypse was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. He is a contributor to the New York Review of Books\, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker. \n\nBrian Dillon\n\n\n\n Brian Dillon Name\nProf Dillon studied English and Philosophy at University College Dublin\, and completed a Ph.D. (on concepts of time in twentieth-century criticism and theory) at the University of Kent in 1999. Before joining Queen Mary in 2019\, he was head of the Writing programme at the Royal College of Art. His first book\, a memoir titled In the Dark Room\, was published in 2005. His creative and critical writing has appeared in publications such as the Guardian\, The London Review of Books\, Artforum\, The New York Times\, The New Yorker\, Granta and The White Review. Dillon has curated exhibitions for Tate and Hayward galleries\, and is an editor at Cabinet\, an arts and culture magazine based in New York. \n\n\n\n\nTickets at our Shop page. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/a-thread-of-violence-25-sept/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell St\, London\, WC1B 3NN\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:crime,history,interview,research,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/thread-of-violence.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20230327T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20230327T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20221205T175715Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230316T092321Z UID:19577-1679945400-1679950800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Jess Kidd and Mike Dash on the Batavia - 27 March DESCRIPTION:We’re delighted to welcome back Jess Kidd to the Society to discuss her novel\, The Night Ship. The novel is based on the extraordinary story of the Batavia\, the flagship of the Dutch East India Company that in 1628 was wrecked on Morning Reef\, on the Houtman Abrolhos islands off western coast of Australia. Its wrecking was followed by factions in the crew instigating a massacre of most of the survivors. This was amongst the first contacts of europeans with the continent of Australia and provides a brutal alternative to the myth of Cook’s arrival bringing Enlightenment values.\n\nJess will be joined by the historian Mike Dash whose fascinating account of the Batavia story\, Batavia’s Graveyard (2002) opens up a wider history of the Dutch Republic\, seventeenth century trade and exploration. In both Dash’s history and Kidd’s novel the later discovery of the Batavia and its archeological recovery feature. Kidd establishes a connection over the span of centuries via the lives of two young characters: in 1628 a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and\, in the 1980s\, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island. Dash’s book was the invaluable starting point to Kidd’s research which led her from Haarlem and Amsterdam to Australia. The wreck was discovered in 1963\, over the next two decades\, archaeological excavations of the ship and various campsites evidenced the extent of the savage campaign. Find out more about Kidd’s research trip on her site: jesskidd.com \n\nLyrical\, haunting\, a beautiful and elegant fictional interpretation of history\, I loved it.Kate Mosse on Kidd's The Night Ship\nScholarly and exhilarating. Not only history\, but an enthralling sea yarn and true-crime thriller.Associated Press on Dash's Batavia's Graveyard\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis event will be followed by a signing and a book sale. \n\n Speakers: Jess Kidd\n\n\n\n Jess Kidd\nJess Kidd is the author of three novels and is the winner of the 2016 Costa Short Story Award. Jess’ debut novel\, Himself\, was published by Canongate in October 2016. The Hoarder\, her second novel\, hit the shelves in February 2018. Jess’s third book the marvellous Victorian\, supernatural thriller\, Things in Jars came out in 2019 featuring the intrepid detective Bridie Devine. She is also currently developing her own original TV projects with leading UK and international TV producers\, her children’s book Everyday Magic was published in 2020. Find out more on her website: jesskidd.com \n\nMike Dash\n\n\n\n Mike Dash\nDash read history at Cambridge and went on to complete a PhD back in 1990. Since then he has enjoyed an eclectic career as a journalist\, magazine publisher and author\, in the course of which he has written five heavily-researched and acclaimed books: Tulipomania\, Batavia’s Graveyard\, Thug\, Satan’s Circus and The First Family. He has also run the Smithsonian Museum’s history blog. Find out more on his website: mikedash.com URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/jess-kidd-and-mike-dash-on-the-batavia-27-march/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Australia,book signing,history,interview,Mutiny,naval history,novel,politics,religion,research,social history,violence ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Batavia-night-ship-date-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20220909T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20220909T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20190413T191332Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220909T220842Z UID:11596-1662751800-1662757200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Essaying the Body\, Sinéad Gleeson and Emilie Pine - 5 June DESCRIPTION: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 influence\, certainly his cosmopolitan sensibility is present in the recent creative non-fiction of Brian Dillon\, Kevin Breathnach\, Ian Maleney… I’ve never read anything quite like these essays. Pine’s fluent intelligence flows through each question\, each dilemma\, in its own inimitable way. It’s the kind of book you want to give to everyone\, especially young women and men\, so that we can learn together to take ourselves and each other more seriously.Martina Evans in the Irish Times on Notes to Self\n  \nThe personal essays of Pine and Gleeson share the ambition of those authors\, yet move inward reflecting on their own bodily traumas and the politics of the female body in Ireland in the last 50 years. In its variously raw\, funny\, acute manner Pine’s vivid collection addresses addiction\, fertility\, feminism\, sexual violence and depression. The formal experimentation of Gleeson’s Constellations is startling\, throughout this intimate account of pain is illuminating of art and the wider world. \n \n  \nSpeaker: Sinéad Gleeson\n\n\n \nSinéad Gleeson is a writer of essays\, criticism and fiction. Her writing has appeared in Granta\, Winter Papers and Gorse\, and a story of hers will appear in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories published by Faber in May 2018. She is the editor of three short story anthologies\, including The Long Gaze Back: an Anthology of Irish Women Writers and The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland\, both of which won Best Irish Published Book at the Irish Book Awards. Sinéad has worked as an arts critic and broadcaster and has presented The Book Show on RTÉ Radio 1. She is working on a novel. \n  \n  \n  \nSpeaker: Dr Emilie Pine\n\n\n \nEmilie Pine is Associate Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin. Emilie is Editor of the Irish University Review and Director of the Irish Memory Studies Network (www.irishmemorystudies.com). She is PI of the Irish Research Council New Horizons project Industrial Memories a digital humanities re-reading of the Ryan Report on institutional child abuse (https://industrialmemories.ucd.ie). Emilie has published widely in the field of Irish studies and memory studies\, including The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture (Palgrave\, 2011) and The Memory Marketplace: Performance\, Testimony and Witnessing in Contemporary Theatre (forthcoming Indiana University Press\, 2019). Her first collection of personal essays\, Notes to Self\, was published by Tramp Press (2018). \n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/essaying_the_body/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,book signing,feminism,history,interview,lecture,medical,nature,Reading,research,social history,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/essaying-the-body.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20220627T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20220627T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20220510T134754Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220621T183242Z UID:19066-1656358200-1656363600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Multiple Joyce - 27 June 2022 DESCRIPTION:In this centenary year of the publication of Ulysses we are delighted to welcome David Collard back to the Society with his new book\, Multiple Joyce: One Hundred Short Essays About James Joyce’s Cultural Legacy (Sagging Meniscus Press\, June 2022). Springing from the essays we’ll have discussion\, song\, readings and music to mark the UK launch of the book and to bring our season to a close. \n The story goes that a man in  Zürich once asked James Joyce if he could kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses. Joyce declined\, saying that it had done many other things as well. Multiple Joyce is a book inspired by those other things – it fizzes and astonishes at every turn\, springing Joyce’s masterpiece free from the idolatry of academe and reminding us how strange and hip it must have seemed in 1922. John Mitchinson\, co-host of Backlisted Podcast\nHolding up a funhouse mirror to our times\, Collard finds a multitude of Joyces\, in often ludicrous disguises\, wherever he looks—whether at Anthony Burgess\, Cher\, first editions\, Flann O’Brien\, Guinness\, Hattie Jacques\, John Cage\, Kim Kardashian\, Lego\, Moby-Dick\, numismatics\, perfume\, pianos\, Princess Grace\, puns\, The Ramones\, Sally Rooney\, Stanley Unwin\, Star Wars\, waxworks or Zylo spectacles. Endlessly reinvented and exploited\, Joyce emerges as a ubiquitous\, indispensable and ruthlessly commodified Everyman. An excerpt riffing on Timon of Athens\, Walter Benjamin and Ironman can be read on the RTÉ site. As Rónán Hession puts it in his foreword\, Collard is above all “good company” and “I wish that the first time anyone heard about Joyce was from David Collard.” We’re delighted that Hession\, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul and Panenka will be joining Collard in discussion. \n Collard’s Joyce nerdiness excels! Eimear McBride\nThe event will be followed by a sale of Multiple Joyce and a signing by the author. There will also be a grand giveaway of Joyce titles. \n Speakers and performers: \n  \n David Collard\n\n\n\n David Collard\nDavid Collard is a London-based writer\, reviewer\, researcher\, editor and occasional broadcaster\, appearing regularly in the Times Literary Supplement\, Literary Review and elsewhere\, in print and online. Previous titles include About a Girl\, a reader’s guide to Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (C B Editions\, 2016).Find out more on David’s website. \n\nRónán Hession\n\n\n\n Rónán Hession\nRónán Hession is a writer and musician based in Dublin. His debut novel\, Leonard and Hungry Paul\, was published by Bluemoose Books in 2019. The book was shortlisted for numerous awards and chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 50 great Irish novels of the 21st century. Ronán’s second novel. \n\n Melanie Pappenheim\n\n\n\n Melanie Pappenheim\nMelanie Pappenheim is a singer\, performer and composer. Her versatility has allowed her to explore several different genres. She has worked with with many leading contemporary composers including Jocelyn Pook\, Orlando Gough\, Gavin Bryars and Graham Fitkin and performed in a huge variety of venues ranging from The Royal Opera House\, the ENO\, The Royal Albert Hall\, the National Theatre\, Glyndebourne\, a barge on the Thames\, a tent in Sussex\, a tower in Wells\, in clubs\, in lighthouses\, hillsides\, halls and basements everywhere. Find out more on Melanie’s website. \n Sarah Angliss\n\n\n\n Sarah Angliss\nSarah Angliss’ music explores the sonorities of voices and ancient instruments\, revealing and augmenting them with her distinctive electronic techniques. In 2021 she received a Visionary Award from the Ivors Academy for her body of work. Sarah draws on her lifelong interest in European folksong\, cybernetics and esoteric sound culture. These inspire her progressive and strikingly original music for film\, theatre and the live music stage.Find out more on Sarah’s website \n Frank Grimes\n\n\n\n Frank Grimes\nFrank Grimes was born in Dublin and trained at the Abbey Theatre School of Acting. He was a member of the Abbey Players for seven years and performed in O’Casey\, Synge\, Yeats\, Lady Gregory\, Joyce and O’Connor. He scored an early success as the young Brendan Behan in Borstal Boy. rank has worked extensively in the theatre in London; at the National Theatre\, Royal Shakespeare Company\, the Royal Court and in London’s West End\, as well as in Dublin and New York. Amongst his many Joyce related credits he performed in Anthony Burgess’s Joyce musical Blooms of Dublin and has previously performed his hit one-man show on James Joyce\, “…the he and the she of it…” in Dublin\, London and Paris.Find out more on Frank’s website \n\nStephanie Ellyne\n\n\n\n Stephanie Ellyne\nStephanie Ellyne is an American actress based in London and Dublin. She recorded the 45-hour audio book of Booker nominee Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks\, Newburyport (Whole Story/W.F. Howes) in 2020\, and plays Amy Jennings in on-going British/American audio drama Dark Shadows with Big Finish\, nominated for the BBC Audio Drama Awards. Other work includes The Confessions of Dorian Gray (Big Finish; Open Book (BBC Radio 4); and The Man Behind The Prophet (BBC World Service). Stephanie records stories for the annual Costa Short Story Award\, and is a frequent narrator for RNIB Talking Books. Her most recent audio book is Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann (W.F. Howes).   \n\n\n\n  \n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/multiple-joyce/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,emigration,exile,history,Joyce,music,Reading,research,Ulysses ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Multiple-Joyce-slider8.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20200512T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20200512T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20200126T115034Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200506T162247Z UID:16793-1589311800-1589315400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:ILS / Irish Texts Society Annual lecture - POSTPONED DESCRIPTION:THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS. THE EVENT WILL RUN IN OUR 2020-21 SEASON. \nThe 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. Cork\, he emigrated to London in 1820 where he worked as a tailor until his death around 1870. \nThe evidence in extant Irish manuscripts suggests that he had already begun working as a scribe in his native home place\, but that this role progressed significantly during his years in the Victorian city. His scribal material (in Irish and in English) provides an intriguing insight into a native man of letters who appears to have integrated himself into his host society\, while at the same time preserving a distinctive Irish identity. Moreover\, his fascinating collection of correspondence in English reveals a man with informed views about the language and literature of his native country. And\, in his thirty or so poetic compositions\, personal vignettes come to the fore as well as a great admiration for the Young Ireland movement and\, in particular\, for William Smith O’Brien\, the fair-haired boy (an buachaill bán). \n  \nNí Úrdail first discovered O’Connor while conducting research some years ago on a text known in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish manuscripts as Leabhar Oiris (Book of History)\, which is essentially an encomium of the O’Briens of Thomond and this dynasty’s battles for supremacy in Ireland in the tenth and eleventh centuries. She was intrigued to discover that of this work’s twenty-six sources\, one was completed outside Ireland in 1848 by O’Connor “in the city of London” (a ccathair Londoine). Subsequent findings have uncovered eighteen extant manuscripts written entirely or in part by this Cork scribe when he was living in London\, and these are preserved today in the National Library of Ireland\, the Royal Irish Academy\, University College Cork\, NUI Galway and St. Malachy’s College\, Belfast. A further source containing O’Connor’s Irish translation of the first book of Milton’s Paradise Lost (written about the year 1860) is now lost\, but a copy may be consulted on microfilm. In looking through old MSS\, which I purchased in Dublin a good number of years ago\, I find a translation into Irish of the 1st Book of Paradise Lost. It is by one Thomas O’Connor\, who\, from letters accompanying it\, seems to have been a tailor\, resident for many years in London…Letter 23 December 1893\, from Monsignor James O’Laverty to Fr Eugene O’Growney \n\nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society: \n  \n \nSpeaker: Associate Professor Meidhbhín Ní ÚrdailMeidhbhín Ní Úrdail is Associate Professor of Modern Irish at University College Dublin. Ní Úrdail’s areas of research include the Irish manuscript tradition; Ireland’s vernacular written tradition from medieval times to the nineteenth century; narrative discourse and historical representation; the complementary relationship between script and print in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland; and contemporary Irish writing and its heritage. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/ils-irish-texts-society-annual-lecture/ LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,history,Irish language,lecture,London-Irish,poetry,politics,research,social history,tradition ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/its_ils_2020-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20191125T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20191125T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20190915T181936Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200203T214611Z UID:12390-1574710200-1574713800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Polly Devlin\, Writing Home - 25 Nov DESCRIPTION:Polly Devlin joins Joan Bakewell to discuss the latest collection of her work\, Writing Home\, and to reflect on a rich career as a writer\, her working as features editor of Vogue in London in the Swinging Sixties\, to encounters with Bob Dylan\, Janis Joplin\, Barbara Streisand\, John Lennon…In the pieces brought together in Writing Home\, Polly Devlin OBE\, covers subjects that range over her whole life and thought. She writes about places: about her childhood deep in the countryside of Northern Ireland (where\, in the late 1950s\, the first electricity poles looked ‘literally out of place’); her sudden transition\, at the age of twenty-one\, to Swinging Sixties London\, where she worked for Vogue and became very much part of the scene (although – ‘it’s like being a provincial at Versailles’)\, on to New York\, back to London\, then to the English countryside\, and to Paris\, Venice\, the world over – and always back to Ireland\, London and New York. \nShe writes about the people she has known\, among them Yoko Ono\, Mick Jagger\, Peggy Guggenheim\, Diana Vreeland (‘as fantastical as a unicorn’)\, Jean Shrimpton (‘she looks as though she sleeps in cathedral pews and sucks artichoke hearts for sustenance’)\, Princess Margaret (who came to dinner and did the washing up\, ‘which I gabbled she didn’t need to – she looked at me frostily and the royal hands went back into the Fairy Liquid’). And she writes about the issues that have preoccupied her: about emigration\, feminism (‘I grew up in a society where men were fundamental and women were secondary’)\, reading\, writing\, collecting\, shopping\, houses\, dogs\, rooks\, hares\, dreams\, friendship and the kindness of strangers; about daughters and mothers. \n \n \n\n“…affectionate sketches of friends including Nuala O’Faolain and her brother-in-law Seamus Heaney…ring with truth and tenderness.”Irish Times\n\nThe event will be followed by a book sale and signing by the author. \n  \nOur thanks to the publishers of Writing Home: \n  \n\nSpeaker: Joan Bakewell\n\n\nJoan Bakewell has a distinguished career as an author\, journalist and broadcaster. She has served on the board of the National Theatre and as Chair of the British Film Institute and of the National Campaign for the Arts. Joan was made a CBE is 1999 and Dame in 2008. In January 2011 she took her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Bakewell of Stockport. In April 2013\, she became President of Birkbeck College.She has led some of the BBC’s most well-remembered documentaries and news programmes\, challenging taboos around sex; examining religion from a critical\, objective standpoint; and being a champion for arts and culture and their relevance to life. \n\n  \nSpeaker: Polly Devlin\n\n\nPolly Devlin is a writer\, broadcaster and filmmaker. She holds an OBE for services to literature. After spending her childhood in Northern Ireland\, at the age of twenty-two she took up her first job – as a writer\, and soon features editor\, on British Vogue\, at the heart of 1960s London. A couple of years later she was again transported\, to New York\, to work for Diana Vreeland on American Vogue – where\, once more\, she was very much part of the scene she wrote about in her newspaper column and articles including for The Sunday Times\, New Statesman and Observer. Her first book\, All of Us There\, is now a Virago Modern Classic. The most recent\, New York: Places to Write Home About (Pimpernel Press\, 2017; published in the United States by Gibbs Smith\, as New York: Behind Closed Doors) was greeted with delight on both sides of the Atlantic. She now divides her time between London and New York\, where\, until her recent retirement\, she taught Creative Non-Fiction at Barnard College\, Columbia University. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/polly-devlin-writing-home-25-nov/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,book signing,exile,feminism,interview,Reading,research,social history,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/polly-devlin-slider.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20191028T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20191028T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20190913T151626Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220909T174253Z UID:12299-1572291000-1572296400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:The Belfast Agreement and Brexit - 28 Oct DESCRIPTION: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 therein record not just relief that peace was achieved in Northern Ireland but anger at the compromises of the agreement and frustration at the lack of representation throughout the two years since the breakdown of power sharing: the devolved executive and assembly which have powers over the region collapsed in January 2017. The region currently holds the world record for the longest period without a sitting government\, which it passed after 589 days. \nThe UK’s future in the EU remains uncertain\, the referendum result and ongoing political turmoil leaves the country in a febrile atmosphere. Before some definitive point is reached we are inviting a range of voices (political\, poetic\, academic) to consider the probity of past choices\, the problems caused by the current vacuum and what comes next. The event will be followed by a sale and signing of the Irish Pages journal. \n   \nIn diametric opposition to The Agreement\, like (dog-) whistling in the dark\, the Brexit vote preceded (incredibly now) its assumed unknown text. It has taken most of three years to come up with even the first stage of this massive modern codex – with many more scrolls and codicils to come\, if in fact Brexit does materialize.Chris Agee\, editor of Irish Pages\n  \nSince the Good Friday Agreement had concluded without any discussion on what constituted the seeds of the conflict\, it was unsurprising that the legacy of the past turned up as a troubling spectre over its future.Monica McWilliams\, Making and implementing the Agreement in Irish Pages \nSpeaker: Chris Agee\n\n\n \nA poet\, essayist and photographer\, Chris Agee is the Editor of Irish Pages. His third collection of poems\, Next to Nothing (Salt\, 2008)\, was shortlisted in Britain for the 2009 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. He recently edited Balkan Essays (The Irish Pages Press\, 2016)\, the sixth volume of Hubert Butler’s essays. His fourth collection of poems\, Blue Sandbar Moon (The Irish Pages Press) appeared in 2018. He lives in Belfast\, and divides his time between Ireland\, Scotland and Croatia. \n  \nSpeaker: Jean Bleakney\n\n\n \nJean Bleakney was born in Newry where her father was a Border Customs Officer. She studied Biochemistry at Queen’s University Belfast and has worked in medical research and horticulture. Her first three collections were published by Lagan Press. Here Selected Poems were issued by Templar Poetry in 2016 to coincide with the appearance of her work on the GCE Advanced Level syllabus in Northern Ireland. Her most recent collection is No Remedy (2017)\, also published by Templar Poetry \n  \nSpeaker: Moya Cannon\n\n\n \nMoya Cannon was born in Dunfanaghy\, Co Donegal and now lives in Dublin. She holds degrees in History and Politics and in International Relations from\, respectively\, University College\, Dublin and . Corpus Christi College\, Cambridge. She is the author of five collections of poetry\, most recently Keats Lives (Carcanet\, 2015). A sixth collection from Carcanet Press is forthcoming in 2019. She is a member of Aosdána. \n  \n \n  \nSpeaker: Professor Roy Foster Roy Foster recently retired as Carroll Professor of Irish history at Oxford\, he is a fellow of Hertford College. He has written widely on Irish history\, society and politics in the modern period\, as well as on Victorian high politics and culture. Foster produced a widely acclaimed biography of William Butler Yeats which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In Words Alone: Yeats and his inheritances (2011)\, he presents a re-reading of Irish literary history throughout the nineteenth century and places Yeats and his inspirations in apposition to a much wider range of literary and political precursors than is usually the case. His most recent book is Vivid Faces: the revolutionary generation in Ireland 1890-1914. \n  \nSpeaker: Professor Ronan McCrea\n\n\n \nA native of Dublin\, Ronan McCrea is Professor of Constitutional and European Law at University College London. He is also a member of the Bar of Ireland and the Bar of England and Wales. He was previously a ‘référendaire’ (judicial clerk) at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and was for ten years a visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest. In addition to his academic work he practices law at 11 King’s Bench Walk Chambers in London and comments frequently on legal matters and EU affairs for RTÉ\, BBC\, Sky News and in publications such as The Irish Times\, The Irish Independent and The Financial Times. \n  \nSpeaker: Sir Richard Needham\n\n\n \nSir Richard Needham\, 6th Earl of Kilmorey\, Kt PC was a Member of Parliament from 1979 to 1997\, he served as Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland between 1985 and 1992 and as Minister of State for Trade between 1992 and 1995. He served under Thatcher and later John Major as a Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland between 1985 and 1992 and under Major as Minister of State for Trade between 1992 and 1995\, and was instrumental in transforming Northern Ireland’s economic base and the UK’s export strategy under Michael Heseltine. He was the longest serving British government Northern Ireland minister. Needham’s book Honourable Member and Battling for Peace: Northern Ireland’s Longest-Serving British Minister (1999); is an account of his years in Northern Ireland and his contribution to peace. Needham holds an honorary degree of Doctor of laws from the University of Ulster. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1994 and knighted in 1997. \n  URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/the-agreement-and-brexit/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,history,interview,poetry,politics,Reading,research,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/belfast-and-BREXIT_bw.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190930T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190930T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20190903T204313Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200203T213016Z UID:12007-1569871800-1569877200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:I Wouldn't Start from Here - 30 Sept DESCRIPTION:The ILS is delighted to start its 2019-20 season with a showcase of second-generation Irish writers in Britain. Not quite British\, not quite Irish\, through their essays\, fiction and poetry about music\, family\, and history these distinguished writers explore questions of identity and belonging and ask the perennial question: where is home – here or Ireland? When questions of authenticity arise\, the slur “plastic Paddy” cannot be far behind and this shameful epithet is referenced in several of the essays here. Moy McRory’s excellent Memory and Authenticity states that the term was “in part given spurs…by the new influx of educated and highly-skilled Irish who encountered the seismic shock of how openly hostile they found their new neighbours on relocation to Britain. When we were lumped in together as ‘English’ we were made invisible. In this way\, a group who had been barely perceived and described were being excluded and silenced”. Martina Evans review in The Irish Times The event also launches the volume I Wouldn’t Start from Here from the new publishing house The Wild Geese Press set up to publish on the Irish diasporic experience. The writers gathered in the volume hold up a mirror to the diverse and complicated experience of the Irish in Britain. \nThe collection features essays\, fiction and poetry from Elizabeth Baines\, Maude Casey\, Ray French\, Maria C. McCarthy\, Dr Tony Murray\, Moy McCrory\, Kath Mckay and John O’Donoghue and many more. \nDuhig’s The Road reflects on his upbringing in London and of family talk of ‘home’ of Irish pub and music culture of North London ‘…near where my father worked in Cricklewood\, was the Galtymore pub/club complex\, a great barn of a place where Sligo flute player Roger Sherlock had been a regular performer in a semi-professional house band. Even so\, Nuala O’Connor’s Bringing It All Back Home reports him saying\, “It still wasn’t enough to make a living out of\, nothing like it.” He also worked “six days a week with pick and shovel . . . mostly roads\, you know\, which was hard work.” Near the Galtymore\, the Crown was effectively a labour exchange for Irish construction workers where cheques could be cashed on pay nights.’ \nThe event includes the editors and contributors to the collection and features the poet Ian Duhig. The moving and insightful essay Ian contributed to the volume was also featured in the Irish Times recently to great acclaim. A book sale and signing will follow the event. \n  \nL TO R: JOHN O’DONOGHUE (PUBLISHER); IAN DUHIG; RAY FRENCH; MOY MCCRORY; KATH MCKAY\, VINCE BURKE \nBefore the launch event on 30 September Vince Burke recorded interviews with the panel and the ILS Chairman\, James Lazar\, you can listen below: \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n I Wouldn't Start From Here- final version \n \n \n\n \n  \n  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nSpeaker: Ian Duhig\n\n\n \nIan Duhig became a full time writer after working with homeless people for fifteen years and having being made redundant. He has published since then\, among other things\, seven books of poetry\, most recently The Blind Roadmaker (Picador\, 2016) which was shortlisted for the TS Elliot and Forward prizes. He works with musicians\, artists and socially excluded groups\, recently editing Any Change: Poetry in a Hostile Environment (2018)\, a small poetry anthology from Leeds immigrant communities chosen as a Poetry School Book of the Year. Duhig has won the Forward Best Poem Prize once and the National Poetry Competition twice. Follow Ian on twitter: @ianduhig \n  \nSpeaker: Ray French\n \nRay French is the author of The Red Jag & other stories and the novels All This Is Mine and Going Under (both Vintage). He is also the co-author of Four Feathers and the co-editor of with Kath Mckay of End Notes: Ten stories about loss\, mourning and commemoration. His short stories have been broadcast on Radio 4 and appeared in numerous magazines and compilations\, including Best European Fiction 2013. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Hull. Some of his essays and podcasts can be found on the Royal Literary Fund website. Follow Ray on twitter @RayFrench15 \n  \n \n \n  \nSpeaker: Moy McCrory\n\n\n \nMoy McCrory is a writer and academic of Irish patronage who writes about identity and class. As a fiction writer she has had three collections of short stories and a novel published. Two of her books were serialised by the BBC and her work has been translated into 15 languages. Her short fiction is widely anthologised and she was included in the seminal Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. She was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Award. She is a Hawthornden Fellow\, a Senior Fellow of the HEA\, has lectured in Bremen University\, London University and is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Derby and is a PhD examiner. \n  \nSpeaker: Kath Mckay\n\n\n \nKath Mckay has published two novels\, three poetry collections\, and short stories. Work includes Hard Wired (Moth\, 2016)\, Collision Forces (Wrecking Ball\, 2015) and Telling the Bees (Smiths Knoll\, 2014). Her short stories are anthologised and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She taught creative writing in London and now lectures at the University of Hull. Her most recent book (co-edited with Ray French) is End Notes: Ten stories about loss\, mourning and commemoration (2017). URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/i-wouldnt-start-from-here-30-sept/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell St\, London\, WC1B 3NN\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:archive,book signing,exile,London-Irish,poetry,politics,Reading,research,social history,tradition,women ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/start-from-here-slider.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190506T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190506T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20190322T134608Z LAST-MODIFIED:20200126T130051Z UID:11449-1557171000-1557174600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:6 May - Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century Dublin and London DESCRIPTION:Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century Dublin and London: Charles Henry Wilson and Irish Literature \n\n\nThe scholar Dr Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh visits the Society to deliver our joint annual Noel O’Connell memorial talk with the Irish Texts Society. O Muircheartaigh will speak on the work of Charles Henry Wilson\, an eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish Protestant with an interest in Irish-language literature\, who studied at Trinity College Dublin before moving to London in the 1780s to pursue the life of a writer. He would spend the rest of his life ‘struggling with adversity in London’\, but came to be a prolific journalist\, writer and translator. He would go on to edit Beauties of Edmund Burke (1798) and the papers of Henry Brooke as Brookania (1804)\, as well as writing two comedies\, Poverty and Wealth (1799) and The Irish Valet (1811). One of his most significant contributions to Irish literature was as the editor of two slim and little-known anthologies and translations of Irish-language verse (1782; 1792). Although not as sophisticated as Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish Poetry\, Wilson’s Irish anthologies have much to tell us about the nature of the interaction between Anglo-Irish Protestants and Irish literary and scribal culture in the late-eighteenth century\, in both Dublin and London. This talk will look at that interaction through the prism of Wilson’s anthologies and his collaboration with one of the most prolific and entrepreneurial Irish scribes of his time – Muiris Ó Gormáin. \nA faithful poetic translation of Pleraca na Ruarcach has since been published by Charles Wilson\, a neglected genius\, now struggling with adversity in London…Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards\, London 1786\n\n\nCharles Henry (1757–1808) \, translator and dramatist. Born in Bailieborough\, Co. Cavan\, he studied law at TCD and became a parliamentary reporter. He edited Beauties of Edmund Burke (1798) and wrote two comedies\, Poverty and Wealth (1799) and The Irish Valet (1811). He was associated with the Brooke family\, and edited the papers of Henry Brooke (Brookiana\, 2 vols.\, 1804); he anticipated Charlotte Brooke ‘s Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789) by several years with his Poems Translated from the Irish Language into the English (1782; 1792). Although not as sophisticated as Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish Poetry\, Wilson’s Irish anthologies have much to tell us about the nature of the interaction between Anglo-Irish Protestants and Irish literary and scribal culture in the late-eighteenth century\, in both Dublin and London. This talk will look at that interaction through the prism of Wilson’s anthologies and his collaboration with one of the most prolific and entrepreneurial Irish scribes of his time – Muiris Ó Gormáin. \n\n\n\nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society: \n\n \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Dr Peadar Ó MuircheartaighPeadar Ó Muircheartaigh is Lecturer in Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University where he teaches Gaelic languages and literature. He studied for degrees in Modern Irish and Medieval Irish at NUI Galway before undertaking postgraduate research at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Edinburgh. He has held fellowships at NUI Galway’s Moore Institute for the Humanities and at the School of Celtic Studies in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. In 2016 he was the recipient of the Zeuss Prize from the Societas Celtologica Europaea and in 2018 received a Charlemont Award from the Royal Irish Academy. Among his research interests are Irish literature and literary history of the long eighteenth century\, most especially Irish literary intersections with Gaelic Scotland and the relationship between print and Irish manuscript culture. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/6-may-peadar-o-muircheartaigh/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,history,Irish language,lecture,research,tradition ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/down-and-out.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20181029T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20181029T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20180911T070122Z LAST-MODIFIED:20181112T135217Z UID:10758-1540841400-1540846800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Troubling the Classics - 29 Oct DESCRIPTION:For our October event we’re bringing together a poet\, a novelist and a dramatist to reflect on their work and its place in a rich seam of Irish literature inspired by the Greeks. The continuing interest of Irish writers in Greek and Latin classical literature as a model and source for inspiration is somewhat surprising given the almost complete disappearance of the teaching of classical languages in Irish schools over the last 50 years. Yet the myths and stories of the ancient world still fascinate audiences and our writers continue to deliver fresh interpretations which reflect on Irish society.  \n‘The violence lies in Carr’s language\, shocking and extraordinarily vivid: we almost hear the buzzing of carrion flies\, smell the stench of carnage.’The Times\nThe nationalist attempt to recover the native\, suppressed\, literary tradition of Ireland found a model in 5th century BCE Athenians and their reaching back to the foundational epics of Homer. From the 19th century Irish translations of Greek tragedy were tied up in a project of recovery of a bardic tradition; from Yeats to Heaney this poetic tradition continued and absorbed great figures of modern poetry like MacNeice\, Boland\, Mahon and Kennelly. More recently that tradition has broadened and our dramatists and novelists have found intriguing correspondences in form and culture with the Greeks e.g. Alan McMonagle’s novel Ithaca\, Theo Dorgan’s collections Orpheus and Greek\, Peter Fallon’s versions of Hesiod and of the Georgics of Virgil\, and Frank McGuinness’ startling new versions of Greek drama. Our three guests representing the dramatic\, poetic and prose novel forms will discuss their work and the appeal and relevance of ancient literature. ‘Part of the thrill is recognising the correspondences between the characters and Homer’s originals . . . the language is enough to keep you enthralled . . . Hughes’s achievement is to prove that Homer remains ignoble\, messy and horribly familiar — Guardian’The Guardian Marina Carr’s plays bring alive the Greek classics in a uniquely contemporary and Irish manner. In By the Bog of Cats she reconstructs Medea\, in her Hecuba she positions the Queen at the centre of a drama clearly intended as a corrective to Euripides\, who portrays Hecuba as an enraged avenger. Michael Hughes’s widely praised second novel Country transposes the Illiad to border country\, Northern Ireland\, post-ceasefire\, 1996. After a woman turns informer\, an IRA gang takes matters into its own hands and storms the local British army base. But there is a falling out between Pig\, the gang’s leader\, and the sniper\, Achill. Death and betrayal follow. The poet Peter McDonald’s has lately developed an interest in verse translation from Greek and in 2016 produced The Homeric Hymns (2016)\, a series of verse translations into different English forms\, along with detailed notes on the ancient Greek poems themselves. Speakers: Marina CarrOne of Ireland’s most celebrated playwrights whose poetic tragedies often reinterpret ancient myth and address violence and the place of women in Irish life. Across her great Midlands-set plays Carr creates a timeless version of Ireland\, replete with ghosts\, ill-fated women and tragic families. Throughout her work Carr’s engagement with myth and folktale can be read as a richly imaginative reflection on the development of Irish cultural identity. In 2017 Carr was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize. She is a lecturer in Dublin City University’s School of English. She is working on new plays for the Abbey and the Kiln Theatre in London\, the latter about Clytemnestra in the aftermath of the Trojan war will appear in 2019-2020 season. Dr Florence Impens (Chair)Dr Impens holds a PhD in English from Trinity College\, Dublin\, as well as MAs in French and in Irish Studies from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. Her book Classical Presences in Irish Poetry after 1960: The Answering Voice provides the first overview of classical presences in Anglophone Irish poetry after 1960. Focusing on classical presences in the work of Seamus Heaney\, Michael Longley\, Derek Mahon\, and Eavan Boland. She is the author notably of ‘Classics and Irish Poetry after 1960’ in the forthcoming 5th volume of the Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature (Kenneth Haynes Ed.)\, and of ‘Classical Roots’ in Seamus Heaney in Context (Geraldine Higgins Ed.)\, due out with Cambridge University Press. Michael HughesMichael Hughes grew up in Keady\, Co. Armagh\, and now lives in London. He attended St Patrick’s Grammar School in Armagh and read English at Corpus Christi College\, Oxford before training in theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. He has worked for many years as an actor under the professional name Michael Colgan\, and he also teaches creative writing. His first novel\, The Countenance Divine\, was published by John Murray in 2016. His widely praised novel Country is published by Hodder & Stoughton and available now. Professor Peter McDonaldProfessor Peter McDonald (born 1962 in Belfast) is a poet\, Professor of English and Related Literature\, he holds the post of Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in the English Language at Christ Church\, Oxford and is a Fellow of St Hugh’s College. He produced the modern edition of the Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice (2007). The focus of his research now is the editing of W.B. Yeats’s Complete Poems for the Longman Annotated Poets series. He has published six original volumes of poetry since 1989\, most recently Herne the Hunter (2016)\, and his Collected Poems were published in 2012. A signing of Michael Hughes’ Country and Peter McDonald’s The Homeric Hymns will follow the event. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/troubling-the-classics/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell St\, London\, WC1B 3NN\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Classics,Greek,history,Latin,novel,poetry,Reading,research,theatre,tradition,translation ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/troubling-classics_slider.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20181016T110000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20181016T123000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20181003T165420Z LAST-MODIFIED:20181004T071700Z UID:10959-1539687600-1539693000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Archive of the Irish in Britain visit - 16 Oct DESCRIPTION:We are delighted to announce a special members-only visit to the Archive of the Irish in Britain. The Archive consists of collections of documents\, audio and video recordings\, books\, photographs and ephemera cataloguing the history of the Irish in Britain from the late nineteenth century to the present day.  \nDr Tony Murray\, the curator of the archive\, will give an introductory talk and lead two groups through unique materials in the archive before leading a question and answer session.  There are two sessions available to paid-up ILS members with a capacity of 10 members for each session\, so we’ll have to operate on a first-come\, first-served basis for this visit. If you would like to book for the visit please e-mail the Honorary Secretary stating your time-slot preference: irishlitsoc@gmail.com. We expect this event will be over-subscribed so we’re sorry if we cannot accommodate everybody on this occasion. \nSLOT 1: 11am-12.30pm \nSLOT 2: 2pm-3.30pm   \nThe archive has been a crucial resource for the development of The Irish Studies Centre\, see the video above for more details on the history of the archive and the centre.  \n  \nTransport: \nNearest underground (Tube): Aldgate East (Circle and Hammersmith & City) and Aldgate (Metropolitan) \nNearest Bus(es): 415\, 25\, 67\, 115\, 205\, 254Parking Details: Parking is very restricted. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/archive-of-the-irish-in-britain-visit-16-oct/ LOCATION:Archive of the Irish in Britain\, 16 Goulston Street\, London\, E1 7TP\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:archive,Collaboration,documentary,exile,history,Members only-event,research,social history END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180219T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180219T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20171207T203821Z LAST-MODIFIED:20180208T101132Z UID:9857-1519068600-1519074000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Jews in Irish Literature - 19 Feb DESCRIPTION:The Irish Literary Society is engaging with writers and academics to reflect on ‘Representations of Jews in Irish Literature’. The innovative research project of the same title was developed out of NUI Galway and Ulster University and forms the centre of tonight’s event. The main objective of the project is to analyse representations of Jews in Irish literature from the earliest times to the present. The project is investigating references to Jews in Irish literature\, whether in Irish or English\, and is collecting more substantial references into an anthology of such writing. In addition to a talk on the findings we will be welcoming a novelist\, poet and scriptwriter to read from and reflect on their work which explores Jewish-Irish connections. \nThe academic and creative work presented explores the processes of othering by investigating the forces in consciousness and culture which generate the assumptions\, biases\, stereotypes and myths out of which the Jewish other is produced. The representation of the Jew in Irish literature actually tells us much more about Irish than about Jewish identity\, how in fact a whole psychohistory of Irishness is hidden in these neglected representations. \nPresented in association with the Representations of the Jews in Irish Literature Project:\n\n\nSpeaker:\n\nDr Barry Montgomery \nBarry Montgomery is an Irish literary scholar specialising in Irish Jewish Studies and Irish Fiction. He has contributed seven chapters (from the Early Modern Period to the present in Irish fiction\, drama and poetry) to the forthcoming co-authored critical volume of the AHRC funded Ulster University and NUI Galway Representations of Jews in Irish Literature project. He forms part of the project team for the accompanying Exhibition\, which he has promoted on RTÉ radio\, Irish television\, and newspaper interviews\, delivering lectures on Irish Jewish Literary Studies at the Royal Irish Academy\, Dublin\, at The Linen Hall Library\, Belfast (to mark Holocaust Memorial Day\, 2017)\, and related conference papers at The University of Notre Dame\, Indiana\, and Georgetown University\, Washington DC. He has written on Ruth Gilligan’s Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan\, has contributed to the forthcoming Crime Fiction – A Critical Casebook (Peter Lang)\, writing on Richard Head’s The English Rogue (1665)\, and contributed several entries on early nineteenth century fiction to The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel\, 1660-1820.\n \n\nRuth Gilligan\nRuth Gilligan is an Irish novelist and journalist now living in London and working as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. She has published four novels to date\, and was the youngest ever person to reach number one on the Irish bestsellers’ list. Her most recent novel\, Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan (2016)\, was based around the history of the Jewish community in Ireland\, and garnered major critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Her short stories have appeared in publications such as The Istanbul Review\, The Irish Pages\, Ambit and Banshee Lit. She writes regular literary reviews for the Guardian\, the TLS\, the LA Review of Books and the Irish Independent where she was a columnist for a number of years. She is also part of the global organisation Narrative 4 which uses storytelling as a tool to foster empathy between diverse communities. \n \n\nSimon Lewis\nSimon Lewis was the winner of the Hennessy Prize for Emerging Poetry and the runner up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2015. He also featured in Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series the same year. He has been shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award\, Listowel Poetry Prize\, Strokestown International Poetry Prize and Bridport Prize and received commendations in the Gregory O’Donoghue prize and Dromineer Literary Prize. He has also been published in many literary journals and magazines including The Stony Thursday\, Boyne Berries\, Literary Orphans\, The Stinging Fly\, Bare Hands\, and Irish Literary Review. His first collection\, Jewtown\, was published in 2016 by Doire Press. \nSpread the word: URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/jews-in-irish-literature-19-feb/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,exile,folklore,history,interview,judaism,lecture,novel,poetry,politics,Reading,religion,research,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/jews-irish-lit-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180116T140000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180116T170000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20171212T211710Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171212T214305Z UID:9929-1516111200-1516122000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:National Theatre Archive screening -16 Jan DESCRIPTION:The ILS has arranged for a group visit on 16 January to the National Theatre Archive for a screening of the recording of the NT production of Conor McPherson’s The Veil from 2011. The screening room at the Archive has only limited capacity so we must limit this event to members-only\, there are 25 places. If there is sufficient demand we will arrange a further screening. Please contact the Honorary Secretary if you wish to reserve a place: irishlitsoc@gmail.com. \nMay 1822\, rural Ireland. The defrocked Reverend Berkeley arrives at the crumbling former glory of Mount Prospect House to accompany seventeen-year-old Hannah to England. She is to be married off to a Marquis in order to resolve the debts of her mother’s estate. However\, compelled by the strange voices that haunt his beautiful young charge and a fascination with the psychic current that pervades the house\, Berkeley proposes a séance\, the consequences of which are catastrophic. \nThe Veil weaves Ireland’s troubled colonial history into a transfixing story about the search for love\, the transcendental and the circularity of time. The play is directed by McPherson. The cast includes Jim Norton\, who won both Tony and Olivier awards for his performance in McPherson’s The Seafarer. This is a three-camera recording made for research purposes\, it does not therefore offer the cinematic experience of an NT Live broadcast. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/national-theatre-archive-visit-16-jan/ LOCATION:National Theatre Studio\, 83-101 The Cut\, Lambeth\, London\, SE1 8LL\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:archive,Members only-event,research,theatre ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/the-veil-screening.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20161031T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20161031T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20160917T181822Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T233613Z UID:8138-1477942200-1477947600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Rattlebag\, Looking West - 31 Oct DESCRIPTION:Our eclectic Rattlebag forum returns with the novelist Jess Kidd\, poet Kimberly Campanello and academic Clare Walker Gore. Kidd’s brilliantly original debut novel Himself is a gothic detective story set in 1970s Mayo with a cast of ghosts. Having been abandoned on the steps of an orphanage as an infant\, lovable car thief and Dublin charmer Mahony assumed all his life that his mother had simply given him up. But when he receives an anonymous note suggesting that foul play may have led to his mother’s disappearance\, he sees only one option: to return to the rural Irish village where he was born and find out what really happened twenty-six years ago. … “I love this book. It’s a magic realist murder mystery set in rural Ireland\, in which the dead play as important a part as the living. It’s one of those books that has you smiling as you read\, and that you plan to read again very soon.”. Louis de Bernières\, bestselling author of Corelli’s Mandolin on Himself \nDr Campanello is an Irish-American poet who has produced fine work in Strange Country (Dreadful Press\, 2015) which inhabits the complexity of the sheela-na-gigs – ancient stone carvings of female figures that prominently display the vulva\, which are found on churches\, castles and town walls across Ireland and some of Britain. Campanello will read from Strange Country and present her sonically rich project about the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam\, MOTHERBABYHOME (zimZalla Avant Objects\, forthcoming in 2016). \nDr Clare Walker Gore of the University of Cambridge discusses The Life of Arthur Macmurrough Kavanagh and what this fascinating biography contributes to our understanding of disabled people in the 19th century. Born at Borris House in County Carlow without hands and feet\, he was an adventurous traveller and a Member of Parliament\, a tiger-hunting landowner whose attempts to resist the rising tide of Irish nationalism were ultimately defeated\, and whose amazing career has been largely forgotten. But how did his first biographer meet the challenge of writing his life? \nOur three panelists will be in conversation with Gavin Clarke. \nSpeakers:\n\nDr Jess Kidd\nJess Kidd has a PhD in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s University in Strawberry Hill and currently teaches Creative Writing to adult learners and undergraduates. Before that she was a support worker specialising in acquired brain injury. She grew up as a part of a large family from Mayo and now lives in London with her daughter. Himself is Jess’ first novel and she is now completing her second\, a contemporary crime novel called Hoarder and a collection of short stories.\n\n\nDr Kimberly Campanello\nKimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart\, Indiana\, and is a dual American and Irish citizen. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University. Her poetry publications include Spinning Cities (Wurm Press\, 2011)\, Consent (Doire Press\, 2013)\, and Imagines (New Dublin Press\, 2015). In October 2015\, The Dreadful Press published Strange Country\, Campanello’s full-length collection on the sheela-na-gig stone carvings. ZimZalla will publish MOTHERBABYHOME\, a book of conceptual and visual poetry in 2016. \nDr Clare Walker Gore\nEarly career researcher working on disability in Victorian literature especially novels by Charles Dickens\, Wilkie Collins\, Anthony Trollope and George Eliot\, and the biographies of the period. Particular interests in disability history and women’s writing. PhD from Selwyn College\, Cambridge\, Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College\, Cambridge from October 2016. \nShare this Post URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/rattlebag-looking-west-31-oct/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:book signing,interview,lecture,poetry,Reading,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Rattlebag-2016-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20160926T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20160926T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20160917T111218Z LAST-MODIFIED:20180329T121545Z UID:8111-1474918200-1474923600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Alice Milligan\, 150 - 26 Sept DESCRIPTION:It is fitting that first event of the ILS 2016-17 125th anniversary season marks the anniversary of one of its earliest members and a central figure in the Irish Cultural Revival. Dr Catherine Morris will reflect on her life and legacy of Alice Milligan on the 150th anniversary of her birth in her talk ‘Transformative Art and the Irish Cultural Revival.’ \nMorris’ book is the first study to explore the life and work of Alice Milligan (1866–­1953). A prolific writer for over six decades\, she published her work in a range of genres (including poetry\, short stories\, novels\, travelogues\, biography\, plays\, journalism\, letters\, and memoirs). From 1891 to the 1940s\, she founded a series of cultural\, feminist\, commemorative and political organizations that put the north on the map of the Irish Cultural Revival and provided a new resonance to Irish visual culture. The biography not only reclaims an unjustly forgotten Irish cultural and political activist during this foundational era in modern Ireland\, but also provides new ways of interpreting the Irish Cultural Revival itself. \n… A profound and moving analysis of one of the greatest inventors of modern Ireland\, this account of Alice Milligan itself displays those qualities of intellectual versatility and imaginative audacity which ennobled her life through its many astonishing phases.Professor Declan Kiberd \nA graphic novel exploring the life of Alice Milligan and her role in the revival of Irish culture during the early 20th century is available to download and view. Developed by Dr Morris and Nerve Centre’s Creative Centenaries project\, in conjunction with Revolve Comics\, the short story charts some of the experiences of Alice Milligan and her work in the preservation of Irish cultures and beliefs: Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival \nSpeaker:\n \nDr Catherine Morris\nCatherine Morris is Liverpool Central Library’s first Writer-in-Residence. Her project\, Intimate Power: Autobiography of a City\, montaging life-writing with photo-essays and community interviews is being made on location at resonant sites across Liverpool. Her monograph\, Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival\, uncovered the forgotten arts practice of one of the founders of modern Ireland. In 2016\, she worked with Nerve Centre in Derry to launch a graphic novel of Milligan’s life as part of the Key Stage 3 National Curriculum for schools in Northern Ireland. Her exhibition Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revival at the National Library of Ireland was opened by Fiona Shaw (2010). In 2012\, she gifted her research archive to Omagh Public Library. She was curatorial advisor on the Irish Museum of Modern Art exhibition El Lissitzky: the Artists and the State; is co-founder of the Artist Centre for Human Rights\, co-editor of The Cassandra Echo & an Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/alice-milligan-150-26-sept/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:interview,lecture,Reading,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/milligan1-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20160120T130000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20160120T150000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20151212T215659Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T233248Z UID:7382-1453294800-1453302000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Kew\, National Archives records of Dublin 1916 DESCRIPTION:An exciting opportunity to engage with British primary sources documenting the 1916 Rising. This members-only event will take place in The National Archives in Kew. In a supervised 2-hour session ILS members will have an opportunity to examine newspapers\, proclamations and court martial files. The event is limited to 30 places. Please contact the Honorary Secretary to reserve a place\, places will be issued on a first-come\, first-served basis: irishlitsoc@gmail.com \nOn Easter Monday\, 24 April 1916\, members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army occupied buildings in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The records at The National Archives in Kew have detailed information on the political and military activities as well as the events leading up to and following the Easter Rising. They also contain detailed information on some key figures of the Rising. With reference to these documents you will be encouraged to explore the intentions of the leaders of the Rising\, public reaction and the British Government’s response to the Easter Rising and its aftermath.\n \nThe General Post Office on Sackville Street\, after the Easter Rising. \n \nIf there is sufficient demand we will endeavour to programme a second visit.\nInstructions on meeting the group at Kew railway station with be issued with tickets. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/national-archives-dublin-1916/ LOCATION:The National Archives\, Kew\, Richmond\, Surrey\, \, London\, UK\, TW9 4DU\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:archive,research,special event,visit END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20150323T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20150323T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20150523T202353Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T234714Z UID:7004-1427139000-1427142600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Dublin as Global City - 3 Feb DESCRIPTION:In recent decades\, national history has bifurcated\, moving both down (micro-history) and up (Atlantic\, global history). This illustrated lecture is an exercise in regarding history as a panorama rather than as a close-up in considering the global positioning through space and time of a small but influential city. It approaches the evolution of Dublin through a series of flows – of people\, ideas\, goods\, and culture. It tracks Dublin’s rise as a ‘city of brick’\, as it surged from a mere 10\,000 in 1600 to 200\,000 by 1800 – a response to the northwards migration of the centre of gravity of the European economy from its old Mediterranean heart to the Atlantic facade. It anatomises Dublin under the Union\, a ‘city of shadows’\, as its trade\, population and prospects were all constricted. It considers the influence of two global systems -Imperialism\, Catholicism – on Dublin in the nineteenth century. The ‘city of words’ emerged in the early twentieth century\, when Joyce\, Yeats and Beckett found ways to universalize the city. The 1916 Rising is considered\, as is the exhausted city of the post-imperial phase. Finally the lecture looks at the emergence of the ‘silicon city’\, and how Dublin functions as a transnational city in the current global economy. By looking at Dublin over a long time frame and in a wider geographical frame\, its distinctive evolution can be tracked through comparative perspectives. \nSpeaker:\n \nProfessor Kevin Whelan\nBiography: Kevin Whelan was named the inaugural Director of the University of Notre Dame Centre in Dublin in 1998. He has been a visiting professor at New York University\, Boston College and Concordia University (Montreal). He has lectured in over a dozen countries\, and at the Sorbonne\, Cambridge\, Oxford\, Torino\, Berkeley\, Yale\, Dartmouth\, and Louvain. He has written or edited twenty books and over one hundred articles on Ireland’s history\, geography\, literature and culture. These include The Tree of Liberty (1996)\, Fellowship of Freedom(1998)\, and the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (2011). Among influential articles are those on ‘An underground gentry?\,’ ‘The republic in the village\,’ ‘The Memories of “The Dead\,”’ ‘Between: the politics of culture in Friel’s Translations’ and ‘The Green Atlantic.’ URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/ils-23-february-2015-prof-kevin-whelan-on-ireland-as-a-global-city-1600-2015/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:lecture,Reading,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/kevin-whelan.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20141127T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20141127T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20150523T202352Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T234825Z UID:7000-1417116600-1417120200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Dermot Healy and Sense of Place - 27 Nov DESCRIPTION:The annual joint lecture of the Irish Literary Society and the Centre for Irish Studies\, St Mary’s Twickenham. This year’s lecture is to be delivered by Dr. Keith Hopper\, Research Fellow\, Centre for Irish Studies\, St Mary’s University\, Twickenham.\n\n“The Passionate Transitory”: Dermot Healy and the Sense of Place. \nUntil his untimely death in June 2014\, Dermot Healy was frequently regarded as ‘Ireland’s greatest living writer’. In a documentary devoted to Healy’s work in 2011\, the late Seamus Heaney hailed him as the poetic heir to Patrick Kavanagh: ‘Kavanagh was the poet of\, as he said\, “the passionate transitory”\, bits and pieces of the everyday snatched out of time. He was the poet of praise for those things. It isn’t just nature poetry\, it’s gratitude for the whole gift of existence in Healy’. Outside of Ireland\, Healy is probably better known as a novelist\, but he was also a playwright\, screenwriter\, actor\, editor\, and all-round literary enabler. This talk will present an overview of Dermot Healy’s work\, focussing on the importance of time\, memory and place in his eclectic oeuvre. \nPresented in association with the Centre for Irish Studies\, St Mary’s University\, Twickenham:\n\n\n \nSpeaker:\n\nDr Keith Hopper\nDr Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education\, and is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University\, Twickenham. He is the author of Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-modernist (revised edition 2009)\, general editor of the twelve-volume Ireland into Film series (2001–2007)\, and co-editor of The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (2013). He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement\, and is currently completing a book on the writer and filmmaker Neil Jordan. Forthcoming publications include co-editing a series of four books by and about the late Dermot Healy (Dalkey Archive Press\, 2015). URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/ils-cis-lecture-the-passionate-transitory-dermot-healy-and-the-sense-of-place/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:biography,lecture,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/healy-slider.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140530T073000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140530T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20161015T180828Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T234943Z UID:8491-1401435000-1401483600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Irish Atlantic World - 30 May DESCRIPTION:Whores\, Wenches\, and the Blake Family in the Early Modern Irish Atlantic World \nProfessor Jenny Shaw will explore the lives of two women: one an indentured Irish servant (the “whore”); one an enslaved woman (the “wench”) who labored in the household of Irish merchant John Blake in Barbados 1675. She explores the techniques historians use to write the lives of ordinary people\, even when their stories are only available through a handful of letters\, and demonstrates how race\, gender\, and status combined to shape the role of Irish Catholic elites in the early modern English Caribbean. \nSpeaker:\n \nProfessor Jenny Shaw\nShaw received her Ph.D. from New York University in Atlantic History in 2009. Her first book\, Everyday Life in the Early English Caribbean: Irish\, Africans\, and the Construction of Difference is forthcoming this autumn with the University of Georgia’s Early American Places series. She is the co-author (with Kristen Block) of an article entitled Subjects without an Empire: The Irish in the Early Caribbean\, which appeared in Past and Present in 2011\, and she has received funding for her work from (among others) the Lewis L. Glucksman Foundation at University College\, Cork\, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation\, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/irish-atlantic-world-30-may/ LOCATION:Westminster City Hall\, Westminster City Hall 64 Victoria Street London \, London\, SW1E 6QP\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:history,lecture,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/atlantic.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140424T073000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140424T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20161013T221030Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235006Z UID:8465-1398324600-1398371400@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Women and Exile - 24 April DESCRIPTION:This talk will look at the place of the Irish woman migrant in contemporary Irish fiction and examine how Irish writers have demonstrated a sustained interest in recovering the story of the Irish woman emigrant\, a story that until relatively recently was absent or under-represented in both historical accounts and literary representations of Irish emigration. In spite of the fact that the theme of ‘exile’ has near cult status in Irish literature\, it seems to be a cultural preoccupation that overlooked the experience of the woman emigrant; it too often appointed her to roles that served only to define the losses suffered by her male counterpart and\, in particular\, the male artist in his journey into the world. \nEdna O’Brien and Colm Tóibín offer two different models for recovering this history. Toibin’s work\, particularly his novel Brooklyn (2009)\, shows an historically sensitive concern with the vanishing Irish woman emigrant in Ireland of the 1950s\, while O’Brien’s more recent writing\, especially her 2006 novel\, The Light of Evening\, remodels the familiar paradigm of the Irish artist in exile in ways most meaningful to the Irish woman writer. Drawing on archival material from the Tóibín Papers at the National Library of Ireland and the O’Brien Papers at the James Joyce Library at University College Dublin\, McWilliams makes a case study of how these authors contribute to the larger recovery of the history of the woman migrant in contemporary Irish fiction.\nSpeaker:\n\nEllen McWilliams\nEllen’s teaching and research interests are in the fields of women’s writing\, Irish\, American\, and Canadian literature\, and writing and diasporic identity. She has written two monographs\, Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009) and Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction (2013)\, and is working on a new book\, Irishness in North American Women’s Writing: Transatlantic Affinities. She has a special interest in New York magazine culture and has recently completed a series of articles on Maeve Brennan’s writing for The New Yorker\, including an essay for Women: A Cultural Review: ‘”A Sort of Rathmines Version of a Dior Design”: Maeve Brennan\, Self-Fashioning\, and the Uses of Style’. Ellen has received a number of awards for research\, including an AHRC Fellowship\, a Fulbright Scholar Award\, and a British Library-Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship in North American Studies. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/women-and-exile-24-april/ LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:exile,history,lecture,research,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/mcwilliams.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140227T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140227T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213558 CREATED:20161015T120324Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235259Z UID:8480-1393529400-1393534800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Dublin Lockout - 27 Feb DESCRIPTION:This month’s lecture will be delivered by Padraig Yeates on the Dublin Lockout\, the past year of commemoration and lessons drawn from the experience. \nOn 26 August 1913 the trams stopped running in Dublin. Striking conductors and drivers\, members of the Irish Transport Workers’ Union\, abandoned their vehicles. They had refused a demand from their employer\, William Martin Murphy of the Dublin United Transport Company\, to forswear union membership or face dismissal. The company then locked them out. Within a month\, the charismatic union leader\, James Larkin\, had called out over 20\,000 workers across the city in sympathetic action. By January 1914 the union had lost the battle\, lacking the resources for a long campaign. But it won the war: 1913 meant that there was no going back to the horrors of pre-Larkin Dublin. Yeates outstanding survey in Lockout: Dublin 1913 has already established itself as the definitive work on the Lockout. \nImage: Part of the 1913 Lockout tapestry as designed by Robert Ballagh \nSpeakers:\n\nPadriag Yeates\nPadraig Yeates is a member of the 1913 Committee that co-ordinated events around the Lockout Centenary during 2013. He is a former Industry and Employment Correspondent of the Irish Times and has been a union activist all his life. He has written several books including Lockout: Dublin 1913\, A City in Wartime: Dublin 1914-1918 and A City in Turmoil: Dublin 1919 -1921. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/dublin-lockout-27-feb/ LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:history,lecture,politics,research,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/dublin-lockout-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140126T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140126T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213559 CREATED:20160923T164912Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235842Z UID:8238-1390764600-1390768200@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:In the Ould Long Ago - 26 Jan DESCRIPTION:Jonny McKeagney spent 40 years collecting stories\, events\, crafts\, traditions and ways of life from people around Co. Fermanagh and neighbouring Ulster counties. In the Ould Ago\, published in October 2010\, has won international book awards and is due to be displayed in a dozen university libraries in North America including Harvard\, Notre Dame\, Library of Congress in Washington\, UCLA\, Boston College and New York Public Libraries. Sadly Jonny passed away five weeks after publication but his youngest son Paul\, will talk about his father’s work to the ILS.\n… as we turn the pages and travel the roads our eyes will be opened to the wildlife and the landscape and we will begin to see ancient rocks lying in the heather and signs of tillage high on mountain side and appreciate that people lived between the now fallen gables. You could not have a better companion that Jonny McKeagney as you travel along the old roads. \nSéamus MacAnnaidh - Historian & Author \nThough McKeagney was a self-taught historian and artist\, his work was of a quality that attracted academics\, many of them contributing prefaces to his works. In the foreward Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh\, Archivist\, National Folklore Collection\, UCD writes ‘For forty years Johnny collected folklore by pen and tape recorder. He details stories and events then sketches all the salient points with a fine nib so that With the aid of camera\, recording device and pen\, he has pieced together much of the fabric of tradition in the places he has visited. The skills of craftsman\, draughtsman and artist which he combines are used to great effect in the richly-detailed and frequently humorous tapestries he has drawn. The passion and excitement of uncovering an ancient monument\, piecing together the former outline and function of a building or object\, recording a distant craft process or local legend\, all are vividly expressed in John McKeagney’s drawings. They form a unique and invaluable pictorial record of Fermanagh’s hidden past.’ \nFor further interest and examples from this publication\, see folklorebook URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/in-the-ould-long-ago-illustrated-irish-folklore/ LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:art,folklore,interview,research,tradition ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ould-long-ago.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20130425T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20130425T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213559 CREATED:20161015T193055Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235352Z UID:8519-1366918200-1366923600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Robin Flower and The Great Blasket - 25 Apr DESCRIPTION:The 2013 ILS/Irish Texts Society Noel O’Connell Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Professor Seán Ó Coileán\, Professor Emeritus of Modern Irish at University College\, Cork and Member of the Royal Irish Academy. \nThe subject of his lecture will be\, ’The ITS volume that never was: Robin Flower and The Great Blasket’. This annual lecture is organised in conjunction with the Irish Texts Society & will be hosted by the ILS. Flower’s The Western Island tells the history of the Great Blasket\, of the frugality and adversities of life on the island\, its folktales (including stories of ghosts and fairies)\, and also recounts the dramatic day in the Great Blasket’s history when the flying galleons of the Spanish Aramada were destroyed on its coast. \nImage: Tomás Ó’Croimthainn and Robin Flower \nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society:\n\n\n \nSpeakers:\n\nSeán Ó Coileáin\nFollowing undergraduate and postgraduate studies at UCC\, Professor Seán Ó Coileán was awarded the Travelling Studentship of the National University of Ireland in 1967\, choosing to study at Harvard\, where he was greatly influenced by the work of Professor John V. Kelleher in Irish history and literature and of Professor Albert B. Lord in oral theory and composition. Their teaching informs much of his own subsequent writings in the area of Irish literature\, from the Guaire cycle (the subject of his Harvard Ph.D.) to Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. An influence of a different kind\, which also grew into personal friendship\, was that of Seán Ó Ríordáin; his literary biography of Ó Riordáin was awarded the literary prize of the Irish-American Cultural Institute in 1984. Other scholarly interests include the literature of the Great Blasket\, his work on which includes a new edition of An tOileánach (Cló Talbóid\, 2001). A long-time member of the Senate of the National University\, he takes an active interest in Irish-language matters and is Chairman of Gaelachas Teoranta which overseas the operations of Coláiste an Phiarsaigh and Scoil na nÓg in Glanmire\, County Cork. He is a member of the Folklore of Ireland Council. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/robin-flower-and-the-great-blasket-25-apr/ LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:Collaboration,folklore,history,Irish language,lecture,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/robin-fowe.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20120531T073000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20120531T193000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213559 CREATED:20160923T145903Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235551Z UID:8217-1338449400-1338492600@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Bóthar Buí - 31 May DESCRIPTION:A consideration of the house Robin Walker built for his family and friends on the remote Beara Peninsula of Cork\, from 1970–72. Called “Bótharbuí” (meaning ‘yellow road’ in Irish)\, the site comprises a settlement of three ancient and three new structures\, on a steep wooded slope of several acres\, facing across the salt-water Kemare River to the Reeks of Kerry. In the 1970s and 1980s Bótharbuí was a country salon\, where the worlds of Dublin politics rubbed shoulders with the artistic community in an informal yet grand manner. The function and conception of the house\, in Simon Walker’s words reflects the wide ranging interests of the Walkers as “patrons of Irish design and active protagonists in the fabrication of a modern Irish cultural identity”. \n\nA short film on Bothar Bui by Heathcote & Barr featuring the late ILS President Seamus Heaney reading the poems he wrote about Bothar Bui and about Robin Walker\, his friend\, the architect.\nCreated for the Venice Biennale Architecture 2008 \nSpeakers:\n\nPatrick Lynch\nBorn outside London in 1969\, the son of an Irish builder. Director of Lynch architects\, winners of The Young Architects of the Year Award 2005. Patrick studied at Liverpool University and Cambridge University and holds a Master of Philosophy degree in the History and Philosophy of Architecture. He has taught at The Architectural Association\, UCD\, DIT\, and London Metropolitan University. In 2008 he exhibited in the Irish pavilion at The Venice Biennale\, and he will be exhibiting the work of Lynch architects in the official selection of the Venice Biennale\, summer 2012. \n\nSimon Walker\nSimon Walker – an architect in Dublin where he is the recipient of several awards and commendations. His work\, and his writing about architecture\, has been published extensively in Ireland and abroad. He also works as a furniture designer and has been involved in the curation of several exhibitions of architecture and design\, including Designers Block in London\, 2003. He exhibited along with Patrick Lynch at the Venice Biennale of Architecture\, 2008. He currently teaches at the University of Limerick\, at DIT and ENSAN Nantes. \nDavid Heathcote\nDavid Heathcote – a freelance cultural historian. He has written\, published\, exhibited and broadcast work on Modern Architecture and Guide Books. He is currently working on an international history of motorways and a project to develop a new concept of cultural environment stewardship via a new charity established to develop the idea in Essex\, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. With his collaborator Sue Barr he has made books and films about architecture\, infrastructure and landscape\, including Bótharbuí\, a film for the Irish pavilion at the 2008 Venice Biennale. They are currently working on a film for this year’s Venice Biennale on public space in London. David works part time as a lecturer/tutor for Middlesex University\, The RCA and the V&A. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/bothar-bui-the-yellow-road/ LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:architecture,lecture,poetry,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/botharbui.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20120329T193000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20120329T210000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213559 CREATED:20161004T210958Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235657Z UID:8314-1333049400-1333054800@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Louis Lentin - 29 Mar DESCRIPTION:Theatre\, film and documentary maker Louis Lentin will situate his own television work\, specifically his ground breaking production for television\, of Dear Daughter in the wider the role of Irish documentary in film and television. Ireland has experienced dramatic shifts in its social and political make-up in recent decades which has been directly reflected and shaped by the media. Lentin’s work is one of a range of perspectives in the diverse landscape of Irish documentary making. \nThe recent publication of Documentary in a Changing State looks back over the last two decades through the prism of documentary to get a snap shot of the dramatic shifts and upheavals in Irish society\, socially\, culturally and politically it includes an interview with Lentin. The book will be on sale at a discount for members after the talk.\nSpeakers:\n\nLouis Lentin\nLouis Lentin is a theatre\, film and television director. He was born in Limerick\, Ireland\, in 1933 and worked for over forty years in the arts in Ireland. He founded Art Theatre Productions in 1959 and was responsible for the first Irish productions of Krapp’s Last Tape and Endgame. RTÉ Head of Drama Hilton Edwards asked him to work in RTÉ. In 1975\, he received a Jacob’s Award for his direction of three television plays broadcast on RTÉ in the previous year: Aleksei Arbuzov’s The Promise\, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage\, and Jean Anouilh’s The Rehearsal (“La Répétition ou l’Amour puni”).Louis Lentin was also involved in founding Israeli television. Lentin is a member of Aosdána. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/louis-lentin-29-mar/ LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:documentary,film,Reading,research ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Louis-Lentin-slider-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20120223T073000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20120223T203000 DTSTAMP:20260530T213559 CREATED:20160923T173153Z LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T235806Z UID:8247-1329982200-1330029000@irishliterarysociety.org SUMMARY:Matters of Deceit - 23 Feb DESCRIPTION:Matters of Deceit: Breach of Promise to Marry Cases in Ireland in the 19th and early 20th centuries \nBreach of promise to marry cases were tried frequently in a variety of Irish courts from the late eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Such cases provided lawyers with lucrative incomes and newspapers with titillating stories for their reading audience. The majority of breach of promise cases were successfully taken by women and many won substantial damages. One barrister claimed\, in jest in 1873\, that Abbeyfeale\, Co. Limerick\, was ‘notorious for breach of promise cases’. While this was an exaggeration\, focusing on such cases offers a useful way to assess and interrogate social history more generally in Ireland. These cases can tell us a considerable amount about courtship rituals\, reveal the significance of monetary considerations in marriage settlements\, and the value that was placed on women’s\, and men’s\, reputations. Such history also alerts us to the importance of family in either protecting their children from unsuitable marriage partners\, or pursuing appropriate ones. Issues of class are also highlighted and reveal the unwillingness of society\, at least as expressed by jurors\, to condone cross-class alliances. Through their focus on the emotional\, material and financial elements of courtship these cases provide a fascinating insight into social and personal relations in Ireland. \nSpeakers:\n\nProfessor Maria Luddy\nMaria Luddy is Professor of Irish History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Warwick. She has published extensively on Irish social history of the 19th and 20th centuries. She is currently working on a history of marriage in Ireland from 1660-1925 in collaboration with Professor Mary O’Dowd\, Queens University\, Belfast. URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/matters-of-deceit/ LOCATION:The Doubletree by Hilton\, 2 Bridge Place\, Victoria\, London\, SWIV 1QA\, United Kingdom CATEGORIES:lecture,research,social history ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/breach-of-promise.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR