Tuesday, September 26 at 4-5:30pm
in Pierce-Bishop Hall
Please RSVP to Colette Breen at colette_breen@yahoo.com.
In this collaborative reading three acclaimed Irish poets, Jane Clarke, Katie Donovan and Catherine Phil MacCarthy reflect on a changing Ireland. In the process, they explore how poetry may reveal and restore the past, giving memory and story legitimacy. They affirm Michael Longley's assertion that "A poet must look after words... And he must not use them as a mere tool, but rather make with them..."
Jane Clarke has published three collections with Bloodaxe Books, The River (2015), When the Tree Falls (2019) and A Change in the Air (2023). Jane received the Ireland Chair of Poetry Travel Award 2022, the Listowel Writers' Week Poem of the Year 2016. A Change in the Air is short-listed for the Forward Prize in Poetry 2023. She grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon and now lives with her wife in the uplands of Co. Wicklow. janeclarkepoetry.ie
Katie Donovan has published five collections, all with Bloodaxe Books (UK). Her most recent, Off Duty (2016) was short-listed for the Irish Times /Poetry Now Prize. Her work has appeared in the best-selling anthology Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times and The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women Poets. She edited Ireland's Women: Writings Past and Present. She grew up in a farm in Co. Wexford and now lives in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin. katiedonovan.com
Catherine Phil MacCarthy has published five collections of poetry including Daughters of the House (2019) and The Invisible Threshold (2012) - short-listed for the Irish Times/ Poetry Now Prize. She is a former editor of Poetry Island Review and was awarded a month-long residency at Varuna, the National Writers' House, NSW, Australia (2022) for work on her forthcoming collection, Catching Sight. A native of Limerick, she lives in Dublin. catherinephilmaccarthy.com