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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20191120T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20191120T200000
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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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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20191028T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20191028T210000
DTSTAMP:20220909T174253Z
CREATED:20190913T151626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220909T174253Z
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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
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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:20190605T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190605T203000
DTSTAMP:20190604T084909Z
CREATED:20190319T153508Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190604T084909Z
UID:11402-1559763000-1559766600@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… \n\nI’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 \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\nBooks will be for sale after and the authors will be available to sign.\n\n\n \nChair: Dr Lara Feigel\n\n\n \nDr Feigel is a literary critic and cultural historian teaching in the English department at King’s College London. Her most recent book Free Woman is an investigation of freedom that’s part memoir and part biography of Doris Lessing. It interweaves life and literature to think about motherhood\, sex\, madness and communism\, testing the gains and costs of living freely. At King’s she co-directs the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture and runs the Ivan Juritz Prize\, which celebrates creative experiment in all art forms. She reviews regularly for various publications (most frequently the Guardian and the Observer). \n  \n\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  \n\nImage above: Femme nue auprès d’une glace\, 1889 by Paul-Albert Besnard. Held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art\, New York.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/essaying-the-body-sinead-gleeson-and-emilie-pine-5-june-2/
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,politics,Reading,social history,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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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190418T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190418T210000
DTSTAMP:20190412T190927Z
CREATED:20190319T153727Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190412T190927Z
UID:11404-1555615800-1555621200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:The Country Girls\, a celebration - 18 April
DESCRIPTION:I wakened quickly and sat up in bed abruptly. It is only when I am anxious that I waken easily and for a minute I did not know why my heart was beating faster than usual. Then I remembered. The old reason. He had not come home…\n\nSo begins Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls. With the support of the Dublin: One City\, One Book festival we are bringing together a fascinating panel to discuss The Country Girls trilogy as it is being celebrated in Dublin as the chosen festival book. Quite clearly we are not in Dublin but we’re delighted to extend the consideration of O’Brien’s work to London\, a city pivotal to her writing career and the setting for the last part of the trilogy. The special edition of the trilogy produced for this celebration is published by Faber & Faber and is introduced by Eimear McBride. The trilogy changed the temperature of Irish literature in the 1960s and inspired generations of readers and writers. O’Brien’s invocation of female characters who dared desire more from life than domestic and sexual servitude\, emotional disaffection and intellectual abnegation\, was nothing short of revolutionary. Not only was O’Brien giving voice to the voiceless\, she was washing the nation’s dirty laundry in public\, laundry which has proved so dirty that\, more than 50 years later\, it is still proving in need of a rinse.Eimear McBride The passion\, artistry and courage of Edna O’Brien’s vision in these novels continue to resonate into the 21st century. In addition to readings and discussion our panel will consider the role of the city in the books\, how the romantic aspects of O’Brien’s work have coloured her reception and O’Brien’s influence on younger writers. Dublin One City One Book is a Dublin City Council initiative\, led by Dublin City Public Libraries\, \n  \n\nPresented in association with the Dublin: One City One Book:  \n  \n\n \n \nChair: Dr Anne Goudsmit\n\n\n \nDr Anne Goudsmit left Ireland to study at Sussex University and at the Sorbonne before moving to London. Her early career was in Finance\, when she worked at Citibank and subsequently at ITV. Anne wrote her PhD thesis on Northern Irish fiction at St Mary’s University\, Twickenham\, where she was a visiting lecturer. She is a member of the Irish Literary Society. She recently became a member of the board at the Irish Cultural Centre where she convenes a monthly Book Club. \n  \n  \n\nSpeaker: Helen Cullen\n\n\n\nHelen Cullen is an Irish writer living in London. She worked at RTÉ for seven years before moving to London in 2010. Her debut novel\, The Lost Letters of William Woolf was published by Penguin in July 2018. Helen is now writing full-time and working on her second novel. She is also a contributor to the Irish Times newspaper and Sunday Times Magazine. Helen holds an M.A. Theatre Studies from UCD and is currently completing an M.A. English Literature at Brunel University. She was nominated as Best Newcomer in the An Post Irish Book Awards 2018. \n  \n  \n\nSpeaker: Dr Sinéad Mooney\n\n\n \nDr Sinéad Mooney is a graduate of University College Cork and the University of Oxford. She is currently a senior lecturer in English at De Montfort University\, Leicester\, where she teaches Irish literature and creative writing. Her monograph\, A Tongue Not Mine: Beckett and Translation (Oxford University Press) won the 2012 American Conference for Irish Studies Robert Rhodes Prize\, and her chapter on Edna O’Brien appeared in the recent in A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature\, edited by Clíona O’Gallchóir and Heather Ingman. She is currently working on a study of Irish women’s modernism.  \n  \n  \n\nSpeaker: Paula McGrath\n\n\n \nPaula McGrath lives in Dublin. A History of Running Away is her second novel. Her first\, Generation\, was published in 2015. She has a background in English Literature and is currently an Irish Research Council (Government of Ireland) PhD scholar at the University of Limerick. She received an Arts Council literary bursary in 2016\, and was recently Irish Writers Centre Writer-in-Residence in St Mark’s English Church\, Florence. In another life she was a yoga teacher.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/the-country-girls-a-celebration-18-april/
LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:biography,feminism,history,interview,politics,Reading,religion,social history,women
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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:20190225T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190225T210000
DTSTAMP:20190219T071945Z
CREATED:20181231T142618Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190219T071945Z
UID:11162-1551123000-1551128400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:25 Feb - The North\, Irish poetry special
DESCRIPTION:The ILS is working with The North poetry journal for this event to launch their special Irish issue. Editors and poets Jane Clarke and Nessa O’Mahony lead a rich evening of readings and discussion of contemporary Irish poetry. From an issue bursting with ideas and innovation (120 poems by 107 poets) we are gathering some fascinating poets to illustrate the variety and quality of contemporary Irish writing: Siobhán Campbell\, Derek Coyle\, Nora Hughes\, Judy O’Kane (fresh from winning the Charles Causley International Poetry Prize) and Mary Noonan join our hosts. Apart from readings on the night we will be considering recent trends in form and subject\, ideas of Irishness\, poetry and the 20 years of fragile peace in Northern Ireland and\, inevitably\, Brexit. \nThe event is also our farewell to the poet Matthew Sweeney who died last August. Sweeney was a much loved figure on the London literary scene for many years. Ever prolific\, Sweeney published two new collections in his last year\, My Life As a Painter (Bloodaxe) and King of a Rainy Country (Arc) inspired by Baudelaire’s Petits Poèmes en Prose. More work has appeared posthumously in the latest edition of Southword and three poems of Sweeney’s feature in this issue of The North\, we will include a reading.  \nThe widespread dismay amongst Irish writers in response to the gender imbalance of both poets and critics represented in The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets (2017)\, has led to a flowering of interest in the many overlooked Irish women poets from the seventeenth century to the present day. At this opportune moment we have asked Siobhán Campbell\, to contribute a reflection on the largely forgotten Irish poet Lola Ridge (1873-1941). \nA signing will follow the event.  \n\nChair: Jane Clarke\n\n\n \nJane Clarke grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon and now lives with her partner in Glenmalure in Co. Wicklow. Her first collection\, The River (Bloodaxe Books\, 2015). She was awarded a literary bursary by the Arts Council / An Comhairle Ealaíon in September 2017 for the completion of her second collection and her work on a sequence in response to a soldier’s letters from the Front during World War 1\, in collaboration with the Mary Evans Picture Library\, London. She now combines writing with her work as an independent consultant providing facilitation\, team building and leadership development to public service and not-for-profit organisations. \n\nChair: Nessa O’Mahony\n\n\n\nNessa O’Mahony is a Dublin-born poet and novelist. She has published four books of poetry – Bar Talk (1999)\, Trapping a Ghost (2005)\, In Sight of Home (2009) and Her Father’s Daughter (2014). She isand co-editor with Siobhán Campbell of Eavan Boland: Inside History (Arlen House\, 2016). Her first novel\, The Branchman (Arlen House\, 2018) was recently published. O’Mahony won the National Women’s Poetry Competition in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Prize and Hennessy Literature Awards.. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Siobhán Campbell\n\n\n\nSiobhán is a poet\, critic and lecturer. She is the author of six works of poetry and co-editor with Nessa O’Mahony of Eavan Boland: Inside History (Arlen House\, 2016). Her poetry has received awards in the National Poetry Competition and the Troubadour International Competition and is the recipient of an Arts Council award and the Templar Poetry Prize. Much of Campbell’s work is expressive of her interest in the place of the political poem in contemporary poetics – her most recent volume Heat Signature (March\, 2017) reflects on commemoration and the centenary of the Dublin Rising while her Cross Talk (2010) explored boundaries and the interwoven nature of family\, local and historical conflicts. \n\n\n\n\n. \n \n\nSpeaker: Derek Coyle\n\n\nDerek Coyle has published poems in Irish Pages\, The Texas Literary Review\, The Honest Ulsterman\, Orbis\, Cuadrivio\, Skylight 47\, Assaracus\, and The Stony Thursday Book. He has been shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Award (2010\, 2014\, 2015)\, and in 2012 he was a chosen poet for the Poetry Ireland ‘Introductions Series.’ In 2013 he was runner up in the Bradshaw Prize. He is a founding member of the Carlow Writers’ Co-Operative. He lectures in Carlow College/St Patrick’s.. \n \n\nSpeaker: Nora Hughes\n\n\nNora grew up in Belfast. She has lived in London since 1972 and worked in education for many years\, specialising in adult literacy. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies\, including Envoi\, Second Light\, The Interpreter’s House and The Book of Love and Loss (Belgrave Press\, 2014). She is working towards a pamphlet collection.  \n\n \n. \n\nSpeaker: Mary Noonan\n\n\n\nMary Noonan was born in London\, but grew up in Cork. Her debut collection of poems was The Fado House (Dublin\, Dedalus Press\, 2012). In 2007\, she was selected to take part in the Poetry Ireland Introductions series in Dublin and was invited to read at the Poetry Hearings festival in Berlin in 2009. The manuscript of The Fado House was awarded the Listowel Poetry Collection Prize in June 2010. She works as a lecturer in French literature at University College Cork. \n \n\n \n\n \n\nSpeaker: Judy O’Kane\n\n\n\nJudy is a prose writer and poet. She worked the wine harvest in St Estèphe\, Bordeaux on sabbatical from legal partnership in Dublin and her work explores terroir\, wine’s sense of place.  She has just been announced as the winner of the 2018 Charles Causley International Poetry Competition. In 2017 she won the National Memory Day Prize and the Irish Post Prize\, and was prize winner at Wells Festival of Literature and Guernsey Literary Festival. In 2015 she won the Listowel Writers Week Original Poem Prize. Her poetry is published in The World of Fine Wine\, Landfall\, and The North: The Irish Issue. Thirst\, her non-fiction work-in-progress\, was shortlisted for the Biographers’ Club Tony Lothian Award for best un-commissioned first biography. An extract\, The Drawing Room\, was published by the Manchester Review in December 2017.  Judy holds an LL.B from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Life Writing from UEA\, where she is completing a PhD in Creative and Critical writing. She teaches advocacy at the Law Society of Dublin.\nTwitter @judeokane \n.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/25-feb-the-north-irish-poetry-special/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Collaboration,feminism,folklore,history,interview,poetry,politics,Reading,women
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20190128T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20190128T210000
DTSTAMP:20190115T110127Z
CREATED:20181229T162041Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190115T110127Z
UID:11117-1548703800-1548709200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:28 Jan - AI\, Sci-Fi and the future of humanity
DESCRIPTION:The second half of our season kicks off with a timely look at how the rapid advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shaping our conceptions of the future of humanity. Three sparkling thinkers – Professor Rachel Armstrong\, Julian Gough\, and Mark O’Connell – join us to reflect on the mutual influence of science fiction and scientific development. At a moment when light is being shined on a formerly hidden tradition of Irish Sci-Fi (see Jack Fennell’s anthology of Irish Sc-Fi\, A Brilliant Void) we consider the recent work of our guests and the literary\, technical and moral challenges that are posed by rapidly advancing technology and its potential to take control of\, well\, everything. At a time when technological warfare has taken new turns (Cambridge Analytica\, drones\, Huawei…) it is salutary to consider how the discipline of futurology emerged from science fiction and became a respectable part of university culture in the 60s and 70s. Futurists have since reacted to and engaged with military developments and corporations such as RAND and DARPA (responsible for stealth warplanes\, the internet…). Major military forces commission projections of future dystopian scenarios and then fund solutions to those scenarios – our guests reflect in their books on that entanglement and on how AI is central to some bleak and very plausible dystopian projections. Elon Musk has warned of the incautious development of AI that we are “summoning the demon” and that it is our “greatest existential threat.”   \nA tour de force.Joseph O'Connor on Gough's Connect\nGough’s novel\, Connect\, is set in the near future and explores how human relationships and conceptions of mortality are changed as implants make fuzzy the line between human and AI. The story follows Colt\, an autistic 16-year-old who spends most of his time in virtual reality and his biologist mother\, Naomi\, whose work is guarded jealously by the US military. Connect is a thrillingly smart novel of ideas that explores what connection – both human and otherwise – might be in a digital age. It is a story of mothers and sons\, but also about you\, your phone\, and the future. \nExtraordinary\, utterly vital… A brilliant illumination of the techno-future\, To Be a Machine is also\, and more importantly\, a joyful summation of what it is to be human.Paul Murray on O'Connell's To Be a Machine\nMark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs\, Utopians\, Hackers\, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death reports on the growing movement to attempt to live indefinitely via technology. The aim of this ‘transhumanism’ movement is to use technology to fundamentally change the human condition\, to improve our bodies and minds to the point where we become something other\, and better\, than the animals we are. It is a work full of astonishing encounters with the key players in this movement (Ray Kurzweil\, the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute\, Google\, DARPA…)\, is an exposition of its philosophical and scientific roots and considers what it might mean for our possible futures.   \n  \n\nChair: Professor Rachel Armstrong  is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture\, Planning and Landscape\, Newcastle University. She is Director and founder of the Experimental Architecture Group (EAG) whose work has been published widely as well as exhibited and performed. Rachel investigates a new approach to building materials called ‘living architecture\,’ which suggests it is possible for our buildings to share some of the properties of living systems. Current titles include a sci-fi novel Origamy\, (NewCon Press) and Soft Living Architecture: An Alternative View of Bio-informed Practice\, (Bloomsbury Academic)  She is the author of Vibrant Architecture: Matter as Co-Designer of Living Structures (DeGruyter Open)\, Star Ark: A Living Self-Sustaining Spaceship (Springer Praxis books)\, Soft Living Architecture: An Alternative View of Bio-design (Bloomsbury Academic\, In Press)\, Liquid Life: On Non-linear Materiality (Punctum\, In Press)  She is co-author of Handbook of the Unknowable\, with Rolf Hughes. Follow Rachel on twitter \n. \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Julian Gough \n\n\n\nJulian Gough is the author of three comic novels and was formerly the lead singer of the underground literary band Toasted Heretic. He was born in London\, raised in Tipperary\, and educated in Galway. He won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize in 2008 and 2012. In 2011 he wrote the ending to Minecraft\, Time magazine’s computer game of the year. His funniest\, and oddest (and most prize-winning) novel is Jude in Ireland. It concerns a young Irish orphan’s search for true love. Neil Gaiman called Rabbit’s Bad Habits (2016)\, “a laugh-out-loud story”\, and Eoin Colfer called “an instant modern classic”. He draws on his knowledge of computer games in his novel Connect. Follow Julian on twitter. \n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Mark O’Connell \nMark O’Connell is a journalist\, essayist and literary critic from Dublin. He is a books columnist for Slate\, a staff writer at The Millions\, and a regular contributor to the New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog and the Dublin Review; his work has been published in the New York Times Magazine\, the New York Times Book Review and the Observer. He has a PhD in English Literature from Trinity College Dublin\, and in 2013 his academic monograph on the work of the novelist John Banville\, John Banville’s Narcissistic Fictions\, was published by Palgrave Macmillan. He was an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow from 2011 to 2012 at Trinity College\, where he taught contemporary literature. His book\, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs\, Utopians\, Hackers\, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death\, won the 2018 Wellcome book prize. Read Mark’s prescription for writing here. Follow Mark on twitter.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/28-jan-ai-sci-fi-and-the-future-of-humanity/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:America,sci-fi,science,technology,transhumanism
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20181126T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20181126T210000
DTSTAMP:20220909T193200Z
CREATED:20180724T122036Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220909T193200Z
UID:10528-1543260600-1543266000@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Astral Weeks at 50\, a Van Morrison celebration - 26 Nov
DESCRIPTION:  \n\n“Had Astral Weeks\, Ryan H. Walsh’s book on the creation of Van Morrison’s beloved album\, focused on that process alone\, it would have been compelling enough in and of itself. But instead\, Walsh uses the fact that Morrison was living near Boston in 1968 to turn his book into a sprawling account of the city’s interconnected countercultural sects.”Pitchfork\nVan Morrison’s great album turns 50 this November: to celebrate the Irish Literary Society is bringing together three writers (Lucy Caldwell\, Gerald Dawe\, Ryan H. Walsh)  to reflect on its social and cultural influences and the profound musical impact of the album. \nDawe’s book In Another World reflects on how post-war Belfast\, where Morrison grew up and formed Them\, shaped his music. Walsh’s Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 considers the impact of Boston\, where Morrison lived at the time\, on the making of the album\, the book is also a sprawling account of the city’s interconnected countercultural sects. Walsh reflects on the origins of a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. Caldwell\, also from Belfast\, has written of her own work\, ‘…the music of Van Morrison in general and of Astral Weeks in particular is something of a guiding spirit to my stories.’ Belfast musician\, Donal Scullion\, will play a special set from the album. \n‘[Dawe’s] lovely and lively little book … is all about lost moments\, fleeting possibilities and half-forgotten histories. In a city that was\, as Dawe puts it\, “defined by work”\, Morrison represented a different\, more liberated\, kind of labour. Another world indeed\, a past captured in these bittersweet essays that might also stand for a possible future.’ Fintan O'Toole in The Irish Times\nA signing will follow the event.  \nChair: Lucy Caldwell\n\n\n \nCaldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three novels and several stage plays and radio dramas. Awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature\, the Dylan Thomas Prize\, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright\, the BBC Stewart Parker Award\, a Fiction Uncovered Award and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her debut collection of short stories\, Multitudes\, was published by Faber in 2016\, of it she has written ‘…the music of Van Morrison in general and of Astral Weeks in particular is something of a guiding spirit to my stories.’ Lucy is the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories which will be published by Faber 2nd May 2019. \n\nSpeaker: Gerald Dawe\n\n\n\nGerald Dawe is a retired Professor of English and Fellow of Trinity College\, Dublin. He has published eight collections of poetry and several volumes of essays\, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and honours\, including the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. His latest poetry collection Mickey Finn’s Air\, was published in 2014; Of War and War’s Alarms: Reflections on Modern Irish Writing appeared in 2015. In Another World is available from online retailers and the Irish Academic Press. \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Ryan H. Walsh\n\n\n\nRyan H. Walsh is a musician and journalist. His culture writing has appeared in the Boston Globe\, Vice\, and Boston Magazine. He was a finalist for the Missouri School of Journalism’s City and Regional Magazine Award for his feature on Van Morrison’s year in Boston\, from which this book developed. His rock band Hallelujah the Hills has won praise from Spin magazine and Pitchfork; collaborated on a song with author Jonathan Lethem; and toured the U.S. extensively over their 10-year existence. The band won a Boston Music Award for Best Rock Artist\, and Walsh has twice won the award for Best Video Direction. He lives in Boston with his wife\, the acclaimed singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler. Astral Weeks\, a Secret History of 1968 is available from online retailers. \nMusic: Donal Scullion\n\n\n \nFeaturing a set in tribute to the album that blessed us with such tracks as Madam George\, Cyprus Avenue and Sweet Thing\, Donal Scullion makes a solo appearance celebrating East Belfast’s most famous troubadour and one of the finest rock albums ever recorded. For more about Donal and his work on Astral Weeks with his 9-piece band see his site.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/astral-weeks-celebration/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell St\, London\, WC1B 3NN\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:music,social history
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20181119T060000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20181119T200000
DTSTAMP:20181003T201353Z
CREATED:20180912T131231Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20181003T201353Z
UID:10798-1542607200-1542657600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:On the Pavement Grey: WB Yeats in Utopian Bedford Park - 19 Nov
DESCRIPTION:Lecture by Cahal Dallat with guests Ciarán Hinds and Anne-Marie Fyfe & launch of the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project\n \nNobel-prizewinning poet\, WB Yeats\, though much inspired by Irish legend\, landscape and longing\, spent two-thirds of his youth in London\, the majority of that time in Chiswick’s Bedford Park\, the Utopian/aesthetic garden-suburb/artists’-colony whose diverse inhabitants fostered his literary talent and endeavours. Irish poet and literary critic\, Cahal Dallat\, has lived within a few blocks of the Yeats family’s two Bedford Park homes for all of his adult life and\, fascinated by the way Willie\, his father\, and his artistic siblings\, negotiated the metropolis’s social networks\, while dreaming of Sleuth Wood or Ben Bulben\, has lectured on the importance to Victorian London of Irish artists (poets\, painters\, playwrights\, composers\, and politicians\, for politics\, too\, is an art in Ireland) … and on the usefulness of London’s complex intersections and patronage to often-penniless\, in a genteel way\, exiled geniuses. In Bedford Park’s heady progressive atmosphere (and its winding if artificially villagey avenues) lay the seeds of Yeats’s genius\, not to mention contemporary theatre\, Modernist poetry and political and cultural changes that would invert the social and imperial order in the 20th century. With contributions and readings from Yeats’s letters and poems by actor Ciarán Hinds and poet Anne-Marie Fyfe.\n \nThe 2018 Irish Literary Society WB Yeats Lecture at the Embassy of Ireland launches the WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project founded to mark Yeats’s role in Bedford Park and Bedford Park’s role in Yeats’s artistic development and life\, by placing a permanent artwork at the heart of this progressive\, 19c\, and beautifully preserved\, garden suburb. \nTo apply for an ILS members ticket contact the Hon. Secretary: irishlitsoc@gmail.com Image credit: Camille Pissarro\, Fete de Jubilee a Bedford Park\, 1897. \nSpeakers:  Cahal DallatCahal Dallat is a poet\, musician\, critic (b. Ballycastle\, Co. Antrim)\, regular BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review contributor since 1998\, reviewer for TLS and Guardian among others\, founder/organiser of WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project\, and Charles Causley Trust Centenary musician/poet-in-residence. Former winner of Ireland’s leading poetry prize\, the Strokestown International\, his recent awards include the 2017 Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize\, and a 2018 Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship at University of Texas in Austin (supported by CP Snow Memorial Fund). Latest collection The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff); www.cahaldallat.com \n Ciarán Hinds \nCiarán Hinds was born in Belfast: his television roles include Gaius Julius Caesar in the series Rome and Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones while film has included the lead role in John Banville’s The Sea\, and playing opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Upton Sinclair’s There Will Be Blood.  As a stage actor his recent appearances include Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive\, Hamlet with Bendict Cumberbatch at the Barbican\, McPherson’s ‘Bob Dylan musical’ The Girl from the North Country at the Old Vic\,  and the role of Hugh O’Donnell in Brian Friel’s Translations at the National.   \n Anne-Marie Fyfe \nAfter five poetry collections including House of Small Absences (Seren\, 2015)\, poet\, arts organiser\, creative-writing teacher & former Poetry Society chair\,  Anne-Marie Fyfe\, is currently embarked on a unique Arts-Council-funded 18-month teaching/writing/performing tour\, The Voyage Out\, exploring coastal regions & lives in Britain\, Ireland\, US & Canada\, leading to a new hybrid poetry/prose/travel-writing memoir (due\, Seren\, Spring 2019). Born in Cushendall\, Co. Antrim\, Anne-Marie lives in London where she has run Coffee-House Poetry’s readings & classes at London’s leading live literature venue\, the Troubadour\, since 1997. www.annemariefyfe.com
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/on-the-pavement-grey-wb-yeats-in-utopian-bedford-park-19-nov/
LOCATION:The Embassy of Ireland\, 17 Grosvenor Pl\, London \, London\, SW1X 7HR
CATEGORIES:architecture,biography,Collaboration,exile,history,poetry,social history,special event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/pavement-gray.jpg
END:VEVENT
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
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:20181004T071700Z
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:20180924T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180924T210000
DTSTAMP:20220909T192904Z
CREATED:20180826T123843Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220909T192904Z
UID:10552-1537817400-1537822800@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:The Irish Way of Death - 24 Sept
DESCRIPTION:The Irish Literary Society opens its 2018-19 season with a meditation on death\, dying and our attitudes to mortality. In his book\, The Way We Die Now\, Dr. O’Mahony gives us a rare glimpse into the world of death and dying from the vantage point of a medical doctor. In My Father’s Wake Toolis writes of his coming-to-terms with the death of his father and brother and reflects on the denial of space for grief in the modern world. Of Toolis’ book Hugo Hamilton has written: “Toolis has written a profound book on the culture of grief and death\, placing the personal alongside the political in a vivid exploration of our ancient ways of coming together around the dead.” \n\n\n‘O’Mahony explores the idea of a good death in literature and philosophy\, and shows that reality is far more chaotic and unpleasant…A searingly honest and humane book that is challenging yet profoundly important.’P D Smith in The Guardian\n\n\n\nWhat have we lost in moving from the funeral rites of Achill to the medicalised procedure that most of us now experience of death? These rich accounts of care for the dying and dead offer a critique of the idea of a ‘good death’\, a reflection on the literary history of death and the role of the hospital as antechamber to the tomb. Henry James called death ‘the distinguished thing’\, but O’Mahony reminds us\, ‘death\, for most people\, is banal\, anticlimactic. The End is robbed of its significance by our new hospital rituals. Most people who die in hospitals do so after several days of syringe-driver induced oblivion.’ Book signing to follow discussion. \n\n  \n\nSpeaker: Kevin Toolis\n\n\n\nKevin Toolis is a writer and filmmaker. He has written for The Guardian\, the New York Times Magazine and The Observer and reported on conflicts in Africa\, Ireland and the Middle East. He is the author of an acclaimed chronicle of Ireland’s Troubles\, Rebel Hearts. As a filmmaker Toolis was nominated for an Emmy for his documentaries on suicide bombing in the Middle East and won a BAFTA for Best Single Drama for Complicit in 2014. His family have lived in the same oceanside village on Achill island for the last 250 years. \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Dr Seamus O’Mahony\n\n\n\nDr Seamus O’Mahony is a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Cork University Hospital and graduate of UCC. He has been a consultant physician since 1996\, and is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh. His has published extensively in the fields of endoscopy\, coeliac disease and inflammatory bowel disease\, and was awarded the MD in 1991. His current main academic interest is medical humanities\, and has written extensively in this field. He is associate editor for medical humanities of the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh\, and is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review of Books. \n\n\n\nChair: Prof Anthea Tinker\n\n\n\nAnthea Tinker has been Professor of Social Gerontology at King’s College London since 1988. She has been on the staff of three Universities and three Government Departments and has been a Consultant to the WHO\, EU and OECD. She has undertaken a wide range of research in the field of social policy specialising since 1974 in gerontology. She is the author or co-author of 32 books and over 300 articles and book chapters.  \n\n\n\n 
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/the-irish-way-of-death/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell St\, London\, WC1B 3NN\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:folklore,lecture,medical,Reading,social history
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/irish-way-of-death-slider.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180611T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180611T203000
DTSTAMP:20180515T095632Z
CREATED:20180511T175103Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180515T095632Z
UID:10463-1528745400-1528749000@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:AGM - 11 June
DESCRIPTION:ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING\, 11 June 2018\, 7.30pm\nLocation: Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith  \nAll current members of the Society are invited to attend and participate at the ILS AGM. The meeting is an opportunity for the Committee to report and be questioned on the performance of the Society\, its plans and its financial situation. It is also an opportunity for members to offer their thoughts on the state of the Society\, to seek election and to vote on resolutions. We hope to attract greater member attendance this year as the Committee will put to the membership a proposal to allow a significant change in the Society’s rules i.e. that we apply to the Charities Commission to form the Society into a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). Further information on how we have reached the decision to make this proposal will be given in a report by the Honorary Secretary\, a summary of that report can be read here. If you are interested in seeking election to the Committee please contact the Honorary Secretary (irishlitsoc@gmail.com) if you would like further information about the duties and responsibilities involved. A form for proposing a member for election to the Committee can be found below.  \nAGENDA \n1. Apologies\n3. Minutes from 2017 AGM\n4. Matters Arising\n5. Honorary Secretary’s Report\n6. Chairman’s Report\n7. Treasurer’s Report\n8. Membership Secretary’s Report\n9. Report on proposed constitutional changes\n10. Vote on constitutional changes\n11. Election of the Officers & Committee for the ILS Season 2017-18\, voting if\nnecessary.\n12. Appointment of Honorary Auditors\n13. Plans for 2018-19\n14. AOB \nMembers are invited to propose candidates for the election of Officers and Committee members for the ILS Season 2018-19. All candidates must be proposed and seconded by members of the ILS and the candidate must sign the proposal forms. Forms must be returned to the Honorary Secretary by 28 May (download the form here for more details). \nThe present Officers and Committee members are eligible for re-election. The Officers of the Society are the President\, one or two Vice-Presidents\, the Chairman\, Deputy Chairman\, one or two Honorary Secretaries\, the Honorary Treasurer and the Honorary Membership Secretary. As directed by our Rules the Committee shall consist of the Officers and up to 6 other members\, all of whom to be elected annually\, except in the cases of the President and Vice Presidents who shall be invited to serve by the Committee. Three further members may be co-opted by the Committee during the course of a year \n\n\nDownload the nomination form from here:Nomination Form
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/agm-11-june/
LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Members only-event,special event
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180521T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180521T203000
DTSTAMP:20180829T131846Z
CREATED:20171212T194151Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180829T131846Z
UID:9914-1526931000-1526934600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Border Walk: Garrett Carr and Iain Sinclair - 21 May
DESCRIPTION:First this three-hundred-mile line demarcated counties\, then countries and will next be the frontier of the European Union. As the uncertain agreements and ‘statements of intent’ are confirmed and disavowed by the UK and EU representatives over the Irish border we look at the topography of this line on the map and consider the human geography of borderlands. Cartographer\, artist and writer Garrett Carr has in his book The Rule of the Land told the story of Ireland’s border and a created a portrait of its landscape and people. Carr will join in conversation with the writer and filmmaker Iain Sinclair whose work is rooted in London and lately within the influences of psychogeography.“Garrett Carr engages a mapmaker’s eye and a writer’s sensibility to create a great book” The Irish Times.\n\nWe pass here into another allegiance\,\nexpect new postage stamps\, new prices\, manifestoes\,\nand brace ourselves for the change. But the landscape does not alter;\nwe had already entered these mountains an hour ago.\nFrom The Frontier\, by John Hewitt 1962\n\nBoth writers have explored borderlands and those neglected blanks on the map that hide so much of our past\, the disconnect between mapped boundaries and shared experience. Sinclair’s fascinating and haunting book London Orbital recounts the year he spent walking around the M25 – the motorway that encircles London. Carr’s The Rule of the Land explores a fragile borderland\, with an uncertain future. By foot or canoe he followed the border closely. At night he camped out on the land. He visited architecture on the border\, forts and dykes as well as defensive buildings of the Troubles. His engagements those living on the frontier\, bring us the lived experience of the line on the map.\n‘Here in this brilliant\, crackling series of final walks through the London landscape\, he finds the dissolving identity of the city increasingly disconcerting.’ Review of The Last London in The Observer.\n\n\nSpeaker: Garrett Carr\n\nGarrett Carr was born in Donegal in 1975. He has previously published three Young Adult novels. A lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen’s University\, he lives in Belfast with his family. His research interests include writing about place\, history and memoir. He is also a map-maker and publishs academically on the topic of cartography. He holds an MA in Art History\, an MPhil in Geography and a PhD in Creative Writing. In his exhibition Mapping Alternative Ulster he brought together diverse mapmakers: local historians\, activists\, artists\, geographers and urban planners for a show of maps. See his website here: http://www.garrettcarr.net/\n\n\nSpeaker: Iain Sinclair\n\nIain Sinclair is the award-winning writer of numerous critically acclaimed books on London\, including Lights Out for the Territory\, London Orbital and London Overground. The son of a Welsh GP\, Sinclair studied in Dublin before moving to London with his wife. His early work was self-published\, and he worked as a teacher and labourer while researching occult aspects of the city’s past. He won the Encore Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Downriver. Sinclair has been documenting the peculiar magic of the river-city that absorbs and obsesses him for most of his adult life. He lives in Hackney\, East London. In his most recent book\, The Last London (2017)\, he strikes out on a series of solitary walks and collaborative expeditions to make a final reckoning with a capital stretched beyond recognition. See his website here: http://www.iainsinclair.org.uk/\n\nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/border-walk-garrett-carr-and-iain-sinclair-21-may/
LOCATION:Irish Cultural Centre\, Hammersmith\, 5 Black’s Road Hammersmith\, W6 9DT\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,cycling,history,interview,nature,Reading,social history,walking
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/border-walking.jpg
END:VEVENT
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
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Micheál-Ó-Conghaile-4.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180326T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180326T203000
DTSTAMP:20180118T000617Z
CREATED:20171207T225547Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180118T000617Z
UID:9879-1522092600-1522096200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Dervla Murphy - 26 March
DESCRIPTION:Dervla Murphy is Ireland’s most prolific travel writer who for five decades has travelled the world mostly alone\, and mostly by bicycle. A fiercely independent woman who turned her back on societal conventions at a time when few were as brave\, she observed and recorded the world with wonder and curiosity\, and an astute political sensibility. Few have ever explored the world on two wheels as has Dervla Murphy\, she joins us to reflect on her literary work and the great journeys she has undertaken.  \n‘An extraordinary book\, reflecting an extraordinary woman and one of the great travellers of our time.’William Trevor\, on Wheels Within Wheels in The Times \nMurphy’s extraordinary autobiography\, Wheels Within Wheels\, documents her travelling life since 1963\, tracing the her route from Ireland to India by bike\, via Afghanistan. Her last journey was to Palestine and is recounted in Between River and Sea: Encounters in Israel and Palestine. Before that there have been some 20 other books\, about journeys that have taken her all over the world\, from Peru to Pakistan\, from Africa\, India and Siberia to Cuba\, Romania and Laos. \nIn all her journeys\, she has biked\, walked or simply improvised her way through countries when bikes broke down or were stolen\, or her own limbs proved temporarily untrustworthy. Only weeks into her first journey in 1963\, she shot a wolf that threatened attack in rural Yugoslavia by using a gun she had acquired and learnt to use in Ireland\, with the support of helpful\, if astounded\, Lismore gardaí. Nothing thereafter\, including increasing age\, ever appears to have daunted her. Murphy will join Dorothy Allen in conversation.  \n\nSpeaker: Dervla Murphy\n\nDervla Murphy was born on 28 November 1931 of parents whose families were both settled in Dublin as far back as can be traced. Her grandfather and most of his family were involved in the Irish Republican movement. Her father was appointed Waterford County Librarian in 1930 after three years internment in Wormwood Scrubs prison and seven years at the Sorbonne. Her mother was invalided by arthritis when Dervla was one year old. She was educated at the Ursuline Convent in Waterford until she was fourteen\, when\, because of the wartime shortage of servants\, she left to keep house for her father and to nurse her mother. Dervla did this for sixteen years with occasional breaks bicycling on the Continent. Her mother’s death left her free to go farther afield and in 1963 she cycled to India. There she worked with Tibetan refugee children before returning home after a year to write her first two books. \nDervla Murphy’s first book\, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle\, was published in 1965. Over 20 other titles have followed. Dervla has won worldwide praise for her writing and has been described as a ‘travel legend’ and ‘the first lady of Irish cycling’. Now in her 80s\, she continues to travel around the world and remains passionate about politics\, conservation\, bicycling and beer. Dervla is now published by Eland. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/dervla-murphy-26-march/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,cycling,feminism,history,interview,social history,travel,women
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180219T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180219T210000
DTSTAMP:20180208T101132Z
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180129T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180129T210000
DTSTAMP:20180826T111002Z
CREATED:20170812T170028Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180826T111002Z
UID:9364-1517254200-1517259600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Roddy Doyle - 29 Jan
DESCRIPTION:One of Ireland’s best-loved writers makes his first appearance at the Irish Literary Society. Doyle joins us in conversation on his books\, films\, educational work and his forthcoming novel\, Smile. It tells the captivating story of Victor Forde\, for whom a chance meeting in a pub conjures up long-buried childhood memories – and it’s a book about how we all struggle to accommodate our past selves.\nThere is not a writer currently working in the English language who can match Doyle for the fluency with which he tacks back and forth between the hilarious and the heartbreaking.\nThe New York Times Book Review\nA chance meeting with an old school friend leads his protagonist on a journey back to being taught by Christian Brothers. Smile has all the features for which Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue\, the humour\, the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. Just moved in to a new apartment\, alone for the first time in years\, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s pub for a pint\, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick. Victor dislikes him on sight\, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories too – of Rachel\, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity\, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame\, as the man who says the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school\, and of one particular Brother\, that he cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity. Doyle will be in conversation with Gavin Clarke. \nSpeaker: Roddy Doyle\n\nRoddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958 and grew up in Kilbarrack. After graduating from University College Dublin he spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer. His novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the Booker Prize in 1993. Several of his novels\, including The Commitments and The Snapper have been successfully adapted into films. Doyle’s work is set primarily in Ireland\, especially working-class Dublin. Inspired by David Eggers’ 826 Valencia\, he co-founded the children’s writing charity Fighting Words. Doyle has also written many novels for children\, including the Rover Adventures series. He has also written many short stories\, several of which have been published in The New Yorker. In 2016\, he translated Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the Opera Theatre Company. The stage version of The Commitments\, adapted by Doyle\, opened in London’s Palace Theatre in 2013 and toured Britain and Ireland until May 2016. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/roddy-doyle-29-jan/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,history,interview,Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/doyle-slider.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20180116T140000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20180116T170000
DTSTAMP:20171212T214305Z
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20171127T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20171127T210000
DTSTAMP:20171123T220522Z
CREATED:20170812T121644Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171123T220522Z
UID:9350-1511811000-1511816400@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Eimear McBride - 27 Nov
DESCRIPTION:Eimear McBride joins the Irish Literary Society to discuss and read from her work. Described by the Times Literary Supplement as ‘a writer of remarkable power and originality\,’ McBride’s debut A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize\, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Her short stories have appeared in Dubliners 100\, The Long Gaze Back and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She writes and reviews for the The Guardian\, New Statesman and the TLS.\n“Blazingly daring…[McBride’s] prose is a visceral throb\, and the sentences run meanings together to produce a kind of compression in which words\, freed from the tedious march of sequence\, seem to want to merge with one another\, as paint and musical notes can. The results are thrilling\, and also thrillingly efficient. The language plunges us into the centre of experiences that are often raw\, unpleasant\, frightening\, but also vital.”James Wood\, The New Yorker\nHer most recent novel\, The Lesser Bohemians\, follows a young Irish woman who arrives in London from Ireland in the 1990s\, to study drama and falls passionately\, dangerously in love with an older actor. The older man has a disturbing past for which the young girl is unprepared and her troubled past becomes apparent. A bold and subversive story about sexual passion\, The Lesser Bohemians is also a celebration of love\, and how it can both destroy and create. McBride will be in conversation with Shevaun Wilder.  \nSpeaker: Eimear McBride\n \nEimear McBride was born in 1976 in Liverpool to Northern Irish parents. Aged two she and her family returned to Ireland and her childhood was mostly spent in Tubbercurry\, Co. Sligo. At fourteen they moved again to Castlebar\, Co Mayo. In 1994\, at seventeen\, she went to London and spent the next three years studying acting at Drama Centre. Much of her twenties were spent temping and travelling. At twenty-seven she wrote A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. It won the 2013 Goldsmiths Prize\, was shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize and won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014. She moved to Cork in 2006\, and Norwich in 2011\, where she currently lives with her husband and daughter.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/eimear-mcbride-27-nov/
LOCATION:The Bloomsbury Hotel\, The Bloomsbury Hotel\, 16-22 Great Russell Street\, London\, WC1B 3NN \, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:exile,interview,Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Eimear-McBride-slider.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20171114T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20171114T200000
DTSTAMP:20171023T173343Z
CREATED:20171023T130146Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171023T173343Z
UID:9630-1510682400-1510689600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Tara Bergin - 14 Nov
DESCRIPTION:The Irish Literary Society is delighted to invite its members to the Embassy of Ireland for an evening with one of Ireland’s most fascinating poets. As there are only limited seats available for this event interested members should apply for tickets via the form below.  \nTara Bergin’s debut collection\, This is Yarrow\, won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and she was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014.\nBergin’s Gothic imagination – precise\, claustrophobic\, yet full of vertiginous perspectives – makes her a perfect guide to these frightened\, frightening times.Paul Batchelor\, The Spectator \nShe will be reading poems from her new collection The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx\, exploring themes of intense love and grief with a dark humour. Bergin’s engagement with the world of myth and folklore was vividly present in This is Yarrow and now in her latest dark fairytale-like images fill the collection as it reflects on the life and death of Eleanor – Karl Marx’s youngest daughter. Eleanor was a member of the Socialist Democratic Federation and translated Flaubert’s Madame Bovary\, before taking her own life in the same way as Emma Bovary. The event will be hosted by the Irish Ambassador Adrian O’Neill.\n\n\n  \n\n\n\nYour Name (required)\n \n\n \nYour Email (required)\n \n\n \nSubject\n \n\n \nYour Message\n \n\n \n\n Δ\n \n\n\n \n\nSpeaker: Tara Bergin\n\nTara Bergin was born in Dublin and moved to the UK in 2002 to undertake academic research. This culminated in a PhD on Ted Hughes’s translations of the post-war Hungarian poet János Pilinszky which she completed at Newcastle University\, where she is now a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry). She began publishing the poems that feature in her debut collection\, This is Yarrow (Carcanet\, 2013)\, in 2003. It won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and the 2014 Shine/Strong Award. Bergin was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/tara-bergin/
LOCATION:The Embassy of Ireland\, 17 Grosvenor Pl\, London \, London\, SW1X 7HR
CATEGORIES:book signing,folklore,history,interview,Members only-event,poetry,politics,Reading
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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
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/gay-lives_3.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170925T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170925T193000
DTSTAMP:20180117T005253Z
CREATED:20170901T131049Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180117T005253Z
UID:9428-1506367800-1506367800@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Caldwell and Hayden - 25 Sept
DESCRIPTION:June Caldwell and David Hayden visit the ILS to discuss their latest volumes of short stories and the short story form. \nFrom one of Ireland’s most grindingly authentic and radically original talents\, Caldwell’s Room Little Darker explores the clandestine aspects of modern life through jagged\, visceral tales of wanton sex\, broken relationships\, homelessness and futuristic nightmares. \nCaldwell’s modernist style and tendency to switch forms never let the reader rest. Each of her stories announces itself with a bang. The outrageous ideas for the most part have a realistic undertone\, grounding Room Little Darker in a world that is oddly\, awfully\, familiar.Sarah Gilmartin\, The Irish Times \nCaldwell’s modernist style and tendency to switch forms never let the reader rest. Each of her stories announces itself with a bang. The outrageous ideas for the most part have a realistic undertone\, grounding Room Little Darker in a world that is oddly\, awfully\, familiar. An abusive father haunts his daughter and wife from the confines of a nursing home; a couple with an appetite for kink discover their escapades have led them into something unimaginably grim; an addict makes his way around a city centre crackling with menace; an unborn child narrates her own tragic story; a paedophile acquires a sex therapy robot and wonders how they’ll get along. At once hilarious and profoundly moving\, June Caldwell’s stories probe raw sexuality and disturbing psychology\, the love (and hate) of family\, the darkness and light that lives inside us all. \n“It’s an open secret that David Hayden is one of the most interesting short story writers around. Why it’s taken this long for his first collection to be published is beyond me but I\, along with anyone with even the vaguest interest in looking at modernism anew\, will be queuing up for a copy.” Eimear McBride \nThe stories in David Hayden’s Darker With The Lights On are driven ceaselessly\, hypnotically forward by a powerful narrative force\, the stories in this debut collection pull off that rare trick of captivating the reader\, while twisting the form into truly new shapes. Comprising compelling stories made memorable by an imagist’s flair for photographic observation and unsettling\, often startling\, emotional landscapes\, Darker With the Lights On introduces a new and brilliant talent. \nSpeakers:\n\nJune Caldwell\nJune Caldwell worked for many years as a journalist before writing fiction. Her story ‘SOMAT’ was published in the award-winning anthology The Long Gaze Back\, edited by Sinéad Gleeson and was chosen as a ‘favourite’ by The Sunday Times. She is a prizewinner of the Moth International Short Story Prize and has been shortlisted for many others\, including the Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction\, the Colm Toíbín International Short Story Award\, the Lorian Hemingway Prize\, and the Sunday Business Post/Penguin Ireland Short Story Prize. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast\, and lives in Dublin.\n\nDavid Hayden\nDavid Hayden’s writing has appeared in gorse\, The Yellow Nib\, The Moth\, The Stinging Fly\, Spolia and The Warwick Review\, and poetry in PN Review. He was shortlisted for the 25th RTÉ Francis MacManus Short Story prize. Born in Dublin\, he has lived in the US and Australia and is now based in Norwich\, UK\, where he is currently working on a novel. \nSpread the word:
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/caldwell-and-hayden-25-sept/
LOCATION:Dr Williams’s Library\, 14 Gordon Square\, Bloomsbury\, London\, WC1H 0AR\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:book signing,interview,short story
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/short-story.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170921T190000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170921T220000
DTSTAMP:20170906T145739Z
CREATED:20170904T174323Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170906T145739Z
UID:9502-1506020400-1506031200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:The Ferryman - ILS member tickets lottery
DESCRIPTION:The ILS has 20 tickets for excellent seats for the acclaimed Royal Court production of Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman for a performance on the evening of 21 September to issue free to members. To apply for a ticket you must be a fully paid-up member\, you should complete the form below. The lottery will close on 8 September and the ILS Honorary Secretary will contact those successful on 9 September. Please note that the performance starts at 7pm\, 21 September\, the performance runs for 3 hours including a 15 minute interval. \nThe Ferryman: Northern Ireland\, 1981. The Carney farmhouse is a hive of activity with preparations for the annual harvest. A day of hard work on the land and a traditional night of feasting and celebrations lie ahead. But this year they will be interrupted by a visitor. \n“You can’t bury the past.” \nJez Butterworth‘s previous work at the Royal Court includes The River and the multi-award winning Jerusalem. Director Sam Mendes makes his Royal Court debut. \n\n\n  \n\n\n\nYour Name (required)\n \n\n \nYour Email (required)\n \n\n \nSubject\n \n\n \nYour Message\n \n\n \n\n Δ
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/the-ferryman-member-ticket-lottery/
LOCATION:Gielgud Theatre\, Shaftesbury Ave\, Soho\, London\, W1D 6AR\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Members only-event,non-ILS,theatre
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/TFMprod2017JP_05030-1024x683.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170921T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170921T200000
DTSTAMP:20180128T230003Z
CREATED:20170812T103942Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180128T230003Z
UID:9342-1506016800-1506024000@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:William Trevor - 21 Sept
DESCRIPTION:EMBASSY OF IRELAND event – The Embassy of Ireland has kindly reserved a number of tickets for Irish Literary Society members for its celebration of the life and work of William Trevor. Please contact the Hon. Secretary for further details. \nThe Ambassador of Ireland Mr. Adrian O’Neill\, the Trevor family and Viking Books host an evening to celebrate the life and work of William Trevor KBE at the Embassy of Ireland. The evening will feature the Chinese-American author Yiyun Li and the great cellist Steven Isserlis\, both friends and admirers of the late author.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/william-trevor-21-sept/
LOCATION:The Embassy of Ireland\, 17 Grosvenor Pl\, London \, London\, SW1X 7HR
CATEGORIES:biography,interview,Reading,short story,special event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/william-trevor-slider-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170917T193000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170927T203000
DTSTAMP:20170904T185225Z
CREATED:20170904T184608Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170904T185225Z
UID:9512-1505676600-1506544200@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:Constance and Eva\, 17-27 Sept
DESCRIPTION:ILS members will remember Dr Kimberly Campanello from her fascinating talk at the ILS last year on Sheela na gigs and the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam\, County Galway. Campanello has a new play on those radical sisters Constance Markievicz and Eva Gore-Booth. The play runs from 17-27 September at the Bread and Roses Theatre in Clapham. While we’re not arranging a formal ILS outing this time many members will be attending the final night of the run – 27 September\, you can find out more and book here. \nConstance Markievicz and Eva Gore-Booth battled imperialism\, fought for women’s rights\, and sought to redefine gender and sexuality. They were famous – even infamous – during their lifetimes\, but history has largely forgotten them.  \nCan their stories be told\, and what can we learn from them about how to be politically active today? \nConstance and Eva is a multimedia reimagining of the lives of these two sisters\, bringing together archive footage\, found text and performance to tell their story. It is a first time collaboration between the poet Kimberly Campanello (Strange Country\, Hymn to Kali) and director Luke Davies\, and is Urania’s first production.
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/constance-and-eva/
LOCATION:The Bread and Roses Theatre\, 68 Clapham Manor Street\, Clapham\, London\, SW4 6DZ\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:non-ILS,theatre
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ce-cut_3.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20170712T180000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20170712T200000
DTSTAMP:20170701T082240Z
CREATED:20170630T231726Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170701T082240Z
UID:9310-1499882400-1499889600@irishliterarysociety.org
SUMMARY:History of Modern Ireland - 12 July
DESCRIPTION:The Ambassador of Ireland Mr. Daniel Mulhall and Mrs. Greta Mulhall invite members of the ILS to the launch of ‘The Cambridge History of Modern Ireland’ Edited by Eugenio F. Biagini and Mary E. Daly at the Embassy of Ireland on 12th July 2017 from 18.00 – 20.00. This event is open to ILS members only and tickets will be allocated by lottery. \nRSVP essential by 5 July: irishlitsoc@gmail.com
URL:https://irishliterarysociety.org/event/history-of-modern-ireland-12-july/
LOCATION:The Embassy of Ireland\, 17 Grosvenor Pl\, London \, London\, SW1X 7HR
CATEGORIES:history,interview,Members only-event,special event
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://irishliterarysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/embassy-history.jpg
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END:VCALENDAR