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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20221121T193000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20221121T210000
DTSTAMP:20240925T015256Z
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SUMMARY:David Ireland - 21 November 2022
DESCRIPTION:The award-winning playwright\, David Ireland\, known for his wickedly dark humour and biting satire\, will be joining Dr Michelle Paull for a discussion on his work. The evening will also feature a live performance from the cast of Not Now\, Ireland’s play running in November at The Finborough Theatre.   \n\n“Cyprus Avenue was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre Dublin. I was aware I was being commissioned as an Irish writer – but I’ve always felt British. I’ve always identified as British. And yet\, I’m undeniably influenced by so much of the Irish canon – especially O’Casey\, Wilde\, Beckett and Joyce. In some ways\, I was trying to write a traditionally Irish play from an Ulster loyalist perspective. To try to encapsulate all the rage and frustration\, fear and defiance of the Planter experience in Ireland- but with the epic sweep of O’Casey and the existentialist absurdism of Beckett. I didn’t quite get to that level of genius but I did ok with my limited talent.” \n\n  Speakers and performers:  David Ireland \n\n\n\n David Ireland David Ireland is from Belfast and trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. His first play\, WHAT THE ANIMALS SAY\, was produced at Oran Mor\, Glasgow in 2009. His other plays include EVERYTHING BETWEEN US (Tinderbox\, Belfast) which won the Stewart Parker Award and the Meyer-Whitworth Award\, THE END OF HOPE (Oran Mor)\, HALF A GLASS OF WATER (Field Day)\, YES SO I SAID YES (Ransom Productions\, Belfast)\, CAN’T FORGET ABOUT YOU (Lyric\, Belfast) and I PROMISE YOU SEX AND VIOLENCE (Northern Stage\, Newcastle). In 2015\, he adapted Lorca’s BLOOD WEDDING for Dundee Rep and Graeae. He has also written extensively for television and radio.. His 2016 play CYPRUS AVENUE (Royal Court London/Abbey Theatre Dublin/Public Theatre NYC) won the Irish Times Award for Best New Play and the James Tait Black Award for Drama and in 2018 ULSTER AMERICAN (Traverse\, Edinburgh) won a Scotsman Fringe First\, the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh award and the Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland Award for Best New Play.  Dr Michelle Paull \n\n\n\n Dr Michelle Paull Dr Michelle Paull is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Michelle’s PhD at Goldsmiths’ College\, University of London focused on the theatre of Sean O’Casey and she is currently working on her monograph\, Sean O’Casey: Critical Controversies. Michelle’s research and teaching interests include contemporary theatre\, London theatre\, Irish plays\, Sean O’Casey\, adaptations on stage and screen and contemporary writing in English.    \n  \n \n 
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/david-ireland-21-november-2022/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Belfast,Border,emigration,theatre,tradition
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20201208T190000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20201208T200000
DTSTAMP:20210312T135835Z
CREATED:20201202T115341Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210312T135835Z
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SUMMARY:7th Annual Yeats Lecture - 8 December 2020
DESCRIPTION:The Irish Literary Society is delighted to announce that the speaker for this year’s Annual Yeats Lecture will be Garry Hynes\, Director of Druid. Following an introduction by the President of the Irish Literary Society\, Bernard O’Donoghue\, Hynes will give a short presentation and then join in conversation on the recent DruidGregory season with the novelist and Druid board member\, Colm Tóibín. \n\nThroughout September and October Druid defied the pandemic to mount a return to live theatre in the magic fields\, woods and gardens of Coole Park in a tribute to\, and an animation of\, the life and works of Galway’s Augusta Lady Gregory. Launched in the historic setting of her Coole Park home\, DruidGregory included five of Lady Gregory’s one-act plays\, performed by a company of 12 actors and musicians\, and directed by Garry Hynes. \n\nSpeaker: Garry Hynes\n\n\n \nGarry Hynes co-founded Druid in 1975 and has worked as its Artistic Director from 1975 to 1991 and from 1995 to date. From 1991 to 1994 she was Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre\, Dublin. Garry has also worked with the Gate Theatre (Ireland); the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court (UK)\, Center Theatre Group\, Second Stage\, Signature Theater\, Manhattan Theater Club\, the Kennedy Center\, the Mark Taper Forum and the Spoleto Festival (USA). Follow Garry on twitter: @DruidTheatre \n  \n\n  \nSpeaker: Colm Tóibín\n\n\n \nColm Tóibín’s novels include ‘Brooklyn’ (2009) and ‘Nora Webster’ (2015) and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize for ‘The Blackwater Lightship’ (1999)\, ‘The Master’ (2005). His play ‘The Testament of Mary’ (2012)\, was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 2013. His ninth novel ‘House of Names’ appeared in 2017. His other work includes collections of short stories\, poetry\, many works of non-fiction and editorial works. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages.  He is a member of the board of Druid. \n  \n\n\nSpeaker: Bernard O’Donoghue\n\n\n \nBernard O’Donoghue is a Professor and Emeritus Fellow in English at Wadham College\, Oxford. He is a poet and literary critic\, and author of Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry (1995) – he succeeded Heaney as President of the ILS. His most recent poetry collection is The Seasons of Cullen Church (2016). Previous volumes include Farmer’s Cross (2011)\, Gunpowder (1995)\, Here Nor There (1999); Outliving (2003); his Selected Poems came out in 2008. O’Donoghue was winner of the 1995 Whitbread Poetry Award and Cholmondeley Award in 2009. 
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/7th-annual-yeats-lecture-8-december-2020/
CATEGORIES:Collaboration,feminism,history,theatre,tradition,women
LOCATION:https://www.crowdcast.io/e/72rr9q1k/register
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20200512T193000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20200512T203000
DTSTAMP:20200506T162247Z
CREATED:20200126T115034Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200506T162247Z
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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
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20200427T193000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20200427T210000
DTSTAMP:20200404T103549Z
CREATED:20200126T204729Z
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SUMMARY:The Moth\, 10th Anniversary - POSTPONED
DESCRIPTION:THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO CONCERNS ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS. THE EVENT WILL RUN IN OUR 2020-21 SEASON. \nJoin the Society to celebrate the 10th birthday of The Moth\, one of Ireland’s foremost art and literature magazines. Founded in 2010 by Rebecca O’Connor and Will Govan\, The Moth features poetry\, short fiction and art by established and up-and-coming writers and artists. Each issue also hosts two interviews – with writers such as Sally Rooney\, Sharon Olds\, Colm Toibin and Paul Muldoon. They also publish The Caterpillar and run several art and literary prizes\, including one of the biggest prizes in the world for a single poem. \n  \nWill and Rebecca will regale you with stories about The Moth\, which they run from their home in rural Ireland\, and will be joined by a stellar line-up of past contributors including the novelist Thomas Maloney\, former Moth Poetry Prizewinners Ann Gray and Abigail Parry\, the winner of The Moth Short Story Prize 2019 Conor Crummey\, and newcomers Mark Lawlor and Bryony Littlefair (who recently won a Moth Retreat Bursary). \n\n ‘Exquisitely designed and choc-a-bloc with exciting new artworks and wordworks.’Paul Durcan‘If you want to keep your finger on the pulse\, The Moth magazine is all you need.’Christine Dwyer Hickey \n  \nCopies of The Moth will be available for sale at the event. \n  \nSpeaker: Conor Crummey\n\n\n \nConor Crummey’s story ‘Journeys’ was chosen by author Kit de Waal as the winner of the €3\,000 Moth Short Story Prize 2019. Crummey\, from Belfast\, now lives in London\, where he is a lecturer in public law at Queen Mary University of London. Follow Conor on twitter: @ConorCrummey \n  \n  \nSpeaker: Will Govan\n \n\n\n \nWill Govan is co-founder and director of The Moth. He studied portraiture at The Heatherley School of Fine Art in London and paints at The Moth Studios in Cavan Town in Ireland. He had his first solo exhibition\, Shark With Plunger & Other Paintings\, at the Johnston Central Library in Cavan in July 2019 Follow Will on twitter: @WillGovan1 \n  \nSpeaker: Ann Gray\n \n\n\n \nThe author of a number of collections including Painting Skin (Fatchance Press\, 1995) and The Man I Was Promised (Headland\, 2004)\, Ann was commended for the National Poetry Competition 2010 and won the Ballymaloe Poetry Prize in 2014. \n  \nSpeaker: Bryony Littlefair\n\n\n \nBryony Littlefair is a poet and workshop facilitator living in South London. Her pamphlet Giraffe won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize in 2017 and is out now with Seren Books. She was shortlisted for the inaugural Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize in 2018 and in 2019 received the Moth Retreat Bursary Award. Follow Bryony on twitter: @B_Littlefair \n  \n \n  \n  \nSpeaker: Thomas Maloney\n\n\n \nThomas Maloney was born in Kent in 1979\, grew up in London\, and studied Physics at Oxford. His first novel\, The Sacred Combe\, was published in 2016. He lives in Oxfordshire with his family. \n  \n  \nSpeaker: Rebecca O’Connor\n\n\n \nRebecca is co-founder and director of The Moth. She edits and designs The Moth and The Caterpillar. Her debut poetry collection We’ll Sing Blackbird was shortlisted for the Strong Shine Award and she is a recipient of a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize from Poetry Review. Her debut novel He Is Mine and I Have No Other was published by Canongate in 2018. Follow Rebecca on twitter: @RebeccaMoth \n  \nSpeaker: Abigail Parry\n\nAbigail Parry spent seven years as a toymaker before completing her doctoral thesis on wordplay. She has won a number of prizes and awards for her work\, including the Ballymaloe Prize\, the Troubadour Prize\, and an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection\, Jinx\, published by Bloodaxe in 2018\, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2018 and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize 2019. Follow Abigail on twitter: @ginpitnancy \n 
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/the-moth-10th-anniversary-27-april/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell St\, London\, WC1B 3NN\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:anniversary,art,Collaboration,history,interview,poetry,Reading,short story,tradition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20191120T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20191120T200000
DTSTAMP:20211015T045046Z
CREATED:20190915T202447Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211015T045046Z
UID:12407-1574272800-1574280000@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Michael Wood\, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen - 20 Nov
DESCRIPTION:The Irish Literary Society is delighted to announce that the speaker for this year’s Annual Yeats Lecture will be Professor Michael Wood. Drawing on his book Yeats and Violence (2010) Professor Wood reflects on how poetry\, seen through the instance of a single poem\, seeks to make sense of a turbulent and dangerous world. Poetry must introduce order and shape where there is none\, and also\, in certain crucial cases\, remain faithful to the disorder and shapelessness of experience. Many poems manage the first of these tasks; very few manage both. W.B. Yeats ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ (written and first published in 1921) is one of them. It is a work which asks what happens when what is taken to be civilisation crumbles. What apocalyptic events wait in the wings? What are history’s victims (and executors) to do except mock and mourn? One hundred years on from the historical setting of the poem we have asked Wood to consider the poem in its historical context and its place in Yeats’ work. Wood will then join our Vice President\, Roy Foster\, in conversation and the poet Martina Evans will offer a poem\, commissioned for this event\, in response to Yeats’ work. “The appeal to the dream has all kinds of echoes in Yeats…we might think the dream justifies the dreamer\, since that is part of the argument of ‘Easter 1916’\, and this is the argument the speaker of ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ helplessly gestures towards: ‘We know their dream\,’ the earlier poem says\, ‘enough/To know they dreamed and are dead.’ This particular dream had its price\, even apart from the death of the dreamers. It turned hearts to stone\, it was part of the old myth of sacrifice Yeats himself used to be so eloquent about.”  \n \nWood’s criticism is exuberantly characterful\, adventurous in its scholarship\, and greedily\, giddily speculative. Leo Robson\, New Statesman\n \n \n  \nSpeaker: Professor Michael Wood\n\nMichael Wood was born and educated in England but has worked for much of his life in the United States\, first at Columbia University and then at Princeton. He has written books on Luis Buñuel\, Franz Kafka\, Vladimir Nabokov\, and Gabriel García Márquez\, as well as The Road to Delphi\, a study of the ancient and continuing allure of oracles. Among his other works are America in the Movies and Children of Silence. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature\, a member of the American Philosophical Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences\, he is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books. Selected Works: Stendhal (1971); America in the Movies (1975\, 1989); The Magician’s Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction (1994); Children of Silence: on Contemporary Fiction (1998); The Road to Delphi: the Life and Afterlife of Oracles (2003); Literature and the Taste of Knowledge (2005) and Yeats and Violence (2010). \n  \nSpeaker: Martina Evans\n Martina Evans is a poet\, novelist and teacher. She grew up in County Cork in a country pub\, shop and petrol station and is the youngest of ten children. She is the author of ten books of prose and poetry. She is currently Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University\, London and a Lector for the Royal Literary Reading Round 2014-2016. Watch\, a pamphlet was published by Rack Press in January 2016 and The Windows of Graceland\, New & Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in May 2016. Her latest collection Now We Can Talk Openly About Men was published by Carcanet in May 2018. It featured in the Times Literary Supplement\, Observer and Irish Times Books of the Year and has been shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Times Poetry Now Award as well as the Pigott Poetry Award. Currently she is Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and poetry reviewer for the Irish Times. \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 Image above shows detail from Jack B Yeats’ Something in the Air\, 1948.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/michael-wood-nineteen-hundred-and-nineteen-20-nov/
LOCATION:The Embassy of Ireland\, 17 Grosvenor Pl\, London \, London\, SW1X 7HR
CATEGORIES:art,biography,history,lecture,poetry,politics,tradition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190930T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190930T210000
DTSTAMP:20200203T213016Z
CREATED:20190903T204313Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200203T213016Z
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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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190506T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190506T203000
DTSTAMP:20200126T130051Z
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190429T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190429T210000
DTSTAMP:20190319T122821Z
CREATED:20190111T123643Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190319T122821Z
UID:11239-1556566200-1556571600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:29 April - Ciaran Carson
DESCRIPTION:UNFORTUNATELY THIS EVENT IS NOW CANCELLED. NOTICE OF A REPLACEMENT EVENT WILL BE SENT OUT TO SUBSCRIBERS ASAP. TICKET REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED.  \n\nThe poet Ciaran Carson visits the Society to deliver our joint annual Noel O’Connell memorial talk with the Irish Texts Society. Carson’s title for this talk ‘From There to Here: Some Reflections on Translation’ references his retrospective collection ‘From There to Here’ which opens “slender-beaked\, my pen jets forth/a stream of beetle-coloured ink”. That ink has flowed prodigiously over the years since his first publication\, The New Estate (1976). While firmly rooted in Belfast life Carson’s work has embraced an unusually wide range of forms\, style and subject matter. His translations from the Irish include versions of the Táin (2007) and Merriman’s The Midnight Court (2006)\, and this collection contains more previously unpublished translations from the Irish. Translation has informed his own poetry\, in particular\, the his translation of the Old Irish epic\, The Tain (Penguin Classics\, 2007)\, suggested a new linguistic territory to him and led to three collections of poems in quick succession: For All We Know (2008)\, On the Night Watch (2009)\, and Until Before After (2010).  From his dazzling\, astonishingly inventive translations to his own poems and prose\, Ciaran Carson continues to demonstrate what it means to have ears that truly work. He is one of the best poets on either side of the Atlantic and the publication of every one of his books is a major event in our literatures.Charles Simic\nCarson’s translations have looked abroad too and include works from Ovid\, Rimbaud\, Mallarmé\, and a revelatory version of Dante’s Inferno. Carson’s work is both political and personal as it engages recent history—including the Troubles and violence in Northern Ireland—and the past. In The Irish for No\, Carson’s long lines encompass listings of both urban realities and nostalgic images of the past\, linking memory and cartography to give a portrait of life in Belfast. The more recent On the Night Watch and Until Before After offer more personal lyrics. Carson’s interest in traditional Irish music informs Last Night’s Fun: About Music\, Food and Time (1997)\, a book of prose\, and the history of Belfast plays in his memoir\, The Star Factory (1998). Carson is also author of the novel Shamrock Tea (2001). \n\nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society: \n\n\n\n\nA signing of From There to Here will be held after the talk. \n\nSpeaker: Ciaran CarsonBorn in Belfast\, Northern Ireland\, into an Irish-speaking family\, poet Ciarán Carson attended Queen’s University\, Belfast. He held the position of traditional arts officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1975 to 1998 and was appointed director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University in 2003. Carson is the author of a number of collections of poetry\, including The Irish for No (1987)\, winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award; Belfast Confetti (1989); First Language: Poems (1994)\, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; Breaking News (2003)\, winner of the Forward Poetry Prize; For All We Know (2008); On the Night Watch (2010); and Until Before After (2010). Wake Forest University Press has published his work for American readers\, including The Midnight Court (2006)\, a translation of the 18th-century Irish poet Brian Merriman’s work\, and Carson’s own Collected Poems (2009). \n\n 
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/29-april-ciaran-carson/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:folklore,history,Irish language,lecture,politics,Reading,social history,tradition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190325T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190325T203000
DTSTAMP:20190219T072740Z
CREATED:20180724T141112Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190219T072740Z
UID:10534-1553542200-1553545800@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:25 March - Working Class Irish Literature
DESCRIPTION:In the recent years of political and social turbulence in the UK\, state of the nation debates have become commonplace and discussion on the representation of working class lives in literature has become a hot topic. A clearer recognition is emerging that publishers must overcome barriers of class and social mobility with the same level of commitment that has developed to respond to inequities in relation to race\, disability and gender. A false notion persisted beyond the early years of the state that Ireland was a classless society\, but shared political struggles cannot erase huge differences of opportunity and wealth. Recent non-fiction books have made significant contributions to such debates across both countries (Chavs – the Demonization of the Working Class; Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class and the History of Irish Working-Class Writing) and helped to highlight the marginalisation of working class voices and\, conversely\, the rich and various history of working class writing. We are delighted to bring together two writers whose work has embraced their origins and created compelling fictions peopled by working class characters. \n‘…when I began writing I wanted to imitate my heroes\, to take ordinary\, everyday people and make them the centre of the story\, as James Joyce does in Dubliners\, or as Kevin Barry and Lisa McInerney do with their spot-on\, lyrical descriptions of small city lives today.’Kit de Waal in The Guardian\nThe poet\, publisher\, sometime factory hand and journalist Dermot Bolger has throughout his plays\, poems and novels chronicled the lives of those around him in his native housing estate of Finglas in Dublin. His work often puzzles over the sustained power of nationalist concepts of Irishness. Bolger’s will read from his latest novel An Ark of Light which features the remarkable Eva Fitzgerald who defies convention in 1950s Ireland by leaving a failed marriage to embark on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery. It takes her from teeming Moroccan streets and being flour-bombed in radical marches in London.  \nWhen Kit de Waal was growing up in 1970s Birmingham\, no one like her – poor\, black and Irish – wrote books. After securing a book deal for her first novel My Name is Leon de Waal used some of her advance to set up a creative writing scholarship to try to improve working-class representation in the arts. Her most recent novel\, A Trick to Time\, features Mona\, a young Irish girl in the big city\, with the thrill of a new job and a room of her own in a busy boarding house. On her first night out in 1970s Birmingham\, she meets William\, a charming Irish boy with an easy smile and an open face. They embark upon a passionate affair\, a whirlwind marriage – before a sudden tragedy tears them apart.‘Pound for pound\, word for word\, I’d have Bolger represent us in any literary Olympics.’Colum McCann\nA signing of both books will be held after the talk. \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Kit de WaalKit de Waal\, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father\, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the 60’s and 70’s. She worked for fifteen years in criminal and family law\, was a magistrate for several years and sits on adoption panels. She used to advise Social Services on the care of foster children\, and has written training manuals on adoption\, foster care and judgecraft for members of the judiciary. Her writing has received numerous awards including the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller\, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award\, long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. Her second novel The Trick to Time is an unforgettable tale of grief\, longing\, and a love that lasts a lifetime. \n\n\n \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Dermot Bolger\n\n\n\nBorn in Dublin in 1959\, Dermot Bolger is one of Ireland’s best known writers. His fourteenth novel\, An Ark of Light (2018) follows titles such as The Journey Home\, Father’s Music\, The Valparaiso Voyage\, The Family on Paradise Pier\, A Second Life: A Renewed Novel\, New Town Soul  and the novella\, The Fall of Ireland. His first play\, The Lament for Arthur Cleary\, received the Samuel Beckett Award; his acclaimed Ballymun Trilogy of plays has been staged in several countries and in 2012 his stage adaption of James Joyce’s Ulysses was widely praised. A poet\, his ninth collection of poems\, The Venice Suite: A Voyage Through Loss\, was published in 2017. Bolger writes for Ireland’s leading newspapers and in 2012 received the Commentator of the Year Award at the Irish Newspaper awards. \n\n\nChair: Dr Tony Murray \nTony Murray is Director of the Irish Writers in London Summer School and Curator of the Archive of the Irish in Britain. Murray’s research is in literary and cultural representations of the Irish diaspora with a particular focus on the Irish in Britain. He is especially interested in the role of narrative in the construction and mediation of migrant identities. Publications include London Irish Fictions: Narrative Diaspora and Identity (2012) and Writing Irish Nurses in Britain (2018).
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/working-class-irish-writing/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Class,feminism,interview,lecture,politics,Reading,social history,tradition,women
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20181029T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20181029T210000
DTSTAMP:20181112T135217Z
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180430T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180430T203000
DTSTAMP:20180422T224539Z
CREATED:20180116T231722Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180422T224539Z
UID:10083-1525116600-1525120200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Micheál Ó Conghaile - 30 April
DESCRIPTION:The ILS is delighted to announce that the ILS / ITS Noel O’Connell Annual Memorial Lecture will be given by Micheál Ó Conghaile on his Irish language translations of the London-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh and the Irish language literary scene today. Ag aistriú Martin Mc Donagh ansin dfheadainn labhairt faoi scribhneoireacht agus foilsitheoireacht na Gaeilge inniu agus ceisteanna a fhreagairt. Ó Conghaile’s translations of McDonagh’s work – The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Banríon Álainn an Líonáin)\, The Cripple of Inishmaan (Cripil Inis Meáin)\, and The Lonesome West (Ualach an Uaignis) – have received acclaimed productions by the Galway International Arts Festival.  \nPlease note that the venue for this event is the Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith. For the ILS April and May events while our usual home the Bloomsbury Hotel is being refurbished we will be at the ICC Hammersmith. \nÓ Conghaile was born and is based in Connemara\, Galway\, he is a member of Aosdána and established the publishing house\, Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 1985. This event is organised in conjunction with the Irish Texts Society. You can read his short story The Colours of a Man here. The talk will be delivered in English with readings in Irish and English by the actor Aonghus Weber. \nPresented in association with the Irish Texts Society:\n\n\n\nSpeaker:\n\nMicheál Ó Conghaile\nMicheál Ó Conghaile was born in Inis Treabhair\, Galway\, in 1962. He established the publishing company Cló Iar-Chonnachta (CIC) in 1985 and has since published over 300 books and 200 traditional Irish music albums and spoken word albums to date. \nHis short stories are collected as Mac an tSagairt (Gallimh\, Cló Iar-Chonnachta\,1986); An Fear a Phléasc (Cló Iar-Chonnachta\, 1997)\, An Fear nach nDéanann Gáire (Cló Iar-Chonnachta\, 2003); and The Colours of Man (Cló Iar-Chonnachta\, 2012). His novels include Sna Fir (Cló Iar-Chonnachta\, 1999)\, which was shortlisted for The Irish Times Literature Awards 2001; and the novella Seachrán Jeaic Sheáin Johnny (Cló Iar-Chonnachta\, 2002). His poetry is collected as Comhrá Cailí (1987). His plays include Cúigear Chonamara (Gallimh\, An Taibhdhearc\, 2003)\, translated by Una Ní Chonchuir as The Connemara Five (Galway\, Arlen House\, 2007); and Jude\, one of the winners of Gradam Cuimhneacháin Bháitéir Uí Mhaicín\, and published as Jude (Cló Iar-Chonnachta\, 2007). He has translated Martin McDonagh’s plays The Beauty Queen of Leenane as Banríon Álainn an Líonáin; and The Lonesome West as Ualach an Uaignis (Cló Iar-Chonnachta\, 2002). He translated the Irish-language film Kings (directed by Tom Collins. 2007)\, based on the English-language play The Kings of the Kilburn High Road\, by Jimmy Murphy. His works have been translated into various languages\, including Romanian\, Croatian\, Albanian\, German and English. A member of Aosdána\, he lives in Indreabhán\, County Galway. \n\nAonghus Weber\nAonghus was born and has lived most of his life in Ireland. He moved to London after training at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. In Ireland Aonghus worked extensively in TV and film: a founding cast member of TG4’s long running soap opera Ros na Rún and a cast member of RTE’s television drama series Glenroe. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/micheal-o-conghaile-30-april/
LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:history,Irish language,lecture,Reading,theatre,tradition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20171030T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20171030T203000
DTSTAMP:20180117T005153Z
CREATED:20170903T131534Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180117T005153Z
UID:9456-1509391800-1509395400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Writing Gay Irish Lives - 30 Oct
DESCRIPTION:In light of social and legal changes in Ireland over recent years the ILS is drawing together Irish writers to consider the representation of queer people in Irish literature. Our panel will be reflecting on London as a place of escape\, queer representation in Irish writing\, homosexuality in the discourse of what constitutes Irishness\, and the integration of queer characters and narratives into the wider culture. Here in London the 50-year anniversary since it stopped being illegal for two men (criminal law\, until Section 28\, targeted only men) to be in a relationship in England and Wales has been widely celebrated\, the law changed in Scotland and Northern Ireland later – not until 1993 was same-sex sexual activity decriminalised in Ireland. Historically many Irish queer people felt compelled to emigrate in search of a more supportive social climate\, the attraction of London was obvious as a metropolitan centre associated with tolerance of sexual diversity and established queer communities. Yet now Ireland now has gay marriage (passed by 62% vote share)\, a young\, openly gay taoiseach and progressive trans recognition legislation – the influence of Catholic dogma has clearly waned. The rich and varied work of our panel will be discussed in the context of these changes and each writer will read from their work.  \nSpeakers:\n\nDr Michael G Cronin\nMichael G Cronin is a Lecturer in English\, specialising in twentieth-century and contemporary Irish literature and in sexuality studies. He received his MA from the University of Sussex\, having studied on the renowned Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change programme. He subsequently completed a doctorate on the twentieth-century Irish Catholic bildungsroman at Maynooth University\, where he was an IRCHSS Government of Ireland scholar.  Along with Impure Thoughts\, he has published essays on twentieth-century and contemporary Irish fiction\, and on contemporary Irish sexual politics.  He was Guest Editor of a special issue of Irish Review (Irish Review 46\, Autumn 2013) on Irish Studies in the wake of the 2008 crash. He is currently working on a project provisionally entitled ‘Revolutionary Bodies: homoeroticism and the political imagination in Irish writing’.  \n\nMary Dorcey – UNFORTUNATELY MARY WILL NOT NOW BE ABLE TO APPEAR AT THIS EVENT\, 30 OCT\nThe critically acclaimed poet\, short story writer and novelist\, Mary Dorcey was born in County Dublin\, Ireland. She is a member by peer election of ‘Aosdana’ the Irish Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990 she won the Rooney Prize for Literature for her short story collection: ‘A Noise from the Woodshed.’ Her bestselling novel Biography of Desire (Poolbeg) was published in September of 1997 to critical acclaim and reprinted three times. She was writer in residence at Trinity College for the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies for ten years where she gives seminars in contemporary English literature and taught a creative writing course. She also taught for four years at University College Dublin. Dorcey’s most recent collection is Perhaps the Heart is Constant after All. (Salmon Poetry. October 2012) \n\nBarry McCrea\nThe Chair of our panel is Barry McCrea\, a novelist and scholar of modern European\, Latin American\, and Irish literature. He most recent book is Languages of the Night: Minor Languages and the Literary Imagination in Twentieth-Century Ireland and Europe (Yale University Press\, 2015)\, which won the American Comparative Literature Association’s René Wellek prize for the best book of 2016. He is the author of The First Verse\, a novel\, winner of a number of awards including the 2006 Ferro-Grumley prize for fiction and a Barnes and Noble “Discover” prize\, and of In the Company of Strangers: Narrative and Family in Dickens\, Conan Doyle\, Joyce and Proust (Columbia University Press\, 2011)\, which won the Yale Heyman Prize for scholarship in the humanities.Professor McCrea holds has a BA in Romance languages from Trinity College Dublin\, and a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton. Before joining Notre Dame\, he taught comparative literature at Yale University\, where he was appointed full professor in 2012. Professor McCrea teaches fall semesters in the Rome and Dublin Global Gateways and spring semesters on campus. \n\nJamie O’Neill\nJamie O’Neill was born in Dún Laoghaire in 1962. He left for England at the age of 17 and lived and worked in England for two decades\, he now lives in Galway. His first novel\, Disturbance\, was published in 1989 and followed by Kilbrack in 1990. Thereafter O’Neill struggled to write and on parting company with both his agent and publisher he took the job as a night porter at the Cassell Hospital\, a psychiatric institution in Surrey from 1990 up to 2000. His critically-acclaimed novel\, At Swim\, Two Boys (2001) earned him the highest advance ever paid for an Irish novel and frequent claims that he was the natural successor to James Joyce\, Flann O’Brien and Samuel Beckett. At Swim\, Two Boys was re-issued this year to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. The novel describes a burgeoning love between two teenage boys\, Jim Mack and Doyler\, childhood friends – “cara macree\, pal o’ my heart” – in the early years of the 20th century in Dublin. They meet again some years later in a flute band as 15-year old Doyler teaches Jim to swim. They make a pact – on Easter Sunday 1916\, they will swim to Muglin’s Rock to claim it for themselves and for Ireland.  \n\nCherry Smyth\nCherry Smyth is a poet\, novelist and art critic. Her first poetry collection When the Lights Go Up (Lagan Press\, 2001) traces her move from Ireland to London and the negotiations of identity required in a new country. One Wanted Thing (Lagan Press\, 2006)\, her second volume\, is less concerned with loss than with a buoyant affirmation of love\, acceptance and the wider issues of the fall-out of events like 9/11 and 7/7: how these changed our world-view. In Test\, Orange (Pindrop Press\, 2012)\, she brings together a range of poetic forms from haiku to longer free-verse poems dealing with things we face in a female body. In 2000–01\, Cherry was writer-in-residence in a women’s prison and published their extraordinary work in A Strong Voice in a Small Space (Cherry Picking Press\, 2002)\, which won the Raymond Williams community-publishing prize in 2003. She has been teaching writing poetry in the Creative Writing Department of the University of Greenwich since 2004. She was appointed a Royal Literary Fellow\, 2014-2016. Her novel Hold Still (Holland Park Press\, 2013) charts the role of Irish woman Jo Hiffernan as muse to both Whistler and Courbet. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/writing-gay-lives/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,exile,history,interview,novel,poetry,politics,Reading,social history,tradition
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20140126T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20140126T203000
DTSTAMP:20171123T235842Z
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
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