Saturday, May 18th

Only €70 when you book tickets to all four days of theatre events (22% discount) — €70 Festival Pass here:

Bookstall sales will be by card only (we cannot accept cash)

Fool for Poetry & Gregory O’Donoghue Prize Readings

3.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | Tickets €5

At this event the winning chapbooks of the most recent Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition, Levis Corner House by Partridge Boswell and Ghost Sojourn by Gwen Sayers, will be launched with readings by Partridge Boswell and Rosie O’Regan (reading the poems of Gwen Sayers). Both poets will receive a cash prize and 25 copies of their books.

Author of the Grolier Poetry Prize-winning collection Some Far Country, Partridge Boswell is co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival and teaches at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal. His poems have recently found homes in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword and The Moth. He lives with his family in Vermont and troubadours widely with the poetry/music group Los Lorcas, whose debut release Last Night in America is available on Thunder Ridge Records. His Saguaro Prize-winning chapbook Not Yet a Jedi is also now a thing.

Gwen Sayers worked as a doctor in South Africa, Seattle, and London where she lives. Her poetry has been published widely in magazines and anthologies, most recently, Propel Magazine Issue 9 (Ed. Fran Lock), Acumen, DMQ Review, Unbroken Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and Tears in the Fence. She won First Prize in the Magma Poetry Competition in 2022, and has been a Forward Prize nominee for best single poem.

The Munster Literature Centre established the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition in 2005. It was established as an annual prize in 2015. The competition offers writers the opportunity to have their poems published in a high-quality production from the Munster Literature Centre's publishing branch, Southword Editions. The winners receive cash prizes as well as a reading and three nights' accommodation at the festival. You can see previous winners and buy their chapbooks at the bottom the page here.

Katie Griffiths grew up in Ottawa, Canada, in a family originally from Ulster. Her debut collection, The Attitudes, was published by Nine Arches Press in 2021 and the prize-winning pamphlet, My Shrink is Pregnant, by Live Canon in 2019. She came second in 2018’s National Poetry Competition and was in the first of the Primers series, also from Nine Arches Press. A member of the London-based Red Door Poets, she has read her poetry at festivals in England, Ireland and Spain.

The winner of the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition will receive €2,000 and read from a selection of her poems. Her winning poem, Before I stillbirthed the birch, will be published in issue 46 of Southword.

(Moderator) Patrick Cotter is an Irish poet, born in Cork City where he still lives. His poems have been published in journals such as the Financial Times, The London Review of Books, Poetry and Poetry Review. He is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. His poems have been translated into over a dozen languages and he has given readings of his work across the Northern Hemisphere. Sonic White Poise, his third full-length collection, was published by Dedalus Press in 2021.

Simon Ó Faoláin (Ireland) & Gabriel Rosenstock (Ireland)

4.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | Tickets €5

Tá ceithre leabhar filíochta foilsithe ag Simon Ó Faoláin, ina measc Anam Mhadra (2008), a bhuaigh Duais Glen Dimplex agus Duais Strong araon, agus a chnuasach is déanaí, Iasachtaigh (2022). Tá a thriú leabhar d’aistriúcháin liteartha, an chéad leagan Gaeilge de ‘Meidéa’ Eoiripidéas, á ullmhú don gcló faoi láthair.

Simon Ó Faoláin has published four poetry collections to date, amongst them Anam Mhadra (2008), which won both the Glen Dimplex and Strong Prizes, and his latest, Iasachtaigh (2022). His third book of literary translation, the first Irish version of Euripides ‘Medea’, is in preparation for the press at present.

Buy Iasachtaigh from An Siopa Leabhar.

““Irish poetry is fortunate that it has, in Ó Faoláin, a practitioner with the rigorous intellectual honesty necessary to both probe its past and point the way to its future” — Gréagóir Ó Dúill

Gabriel Rosenstock was born in post-colonial Ireland and is a poet, translator, haikuist, tankaist, short story writer, novelist, children’s author, playwright, essayist and in the words of Hugh MacDiarmid, ‘a champion of forlorn causes.’ Recent bilingual titles include Glengower (The Onslaught Press), Garsún/ Boy (Arlen House), Boatman! take these songs from me (Manipal Universal Press, India), and Love Letter to Kashmir (Cross-Cultural Communications, New York).

Visit the poet's website.

“… arrest the attention and speak alternatively to the reason, the imagination, the heart and sometimes seem to touch the very soul.” — Thomas Goggin

(Moderator) Paul Casey’s poems have most recently appeared in The Irish Times and Flare, and he is working on his third collection. Virtual Tides was published by Salmon in 2016, which followed home more or less (Salmon, 2012) and a chapbook, It’s Not All Bad (Heaventree, 2009). He edits the Unfinished Book of Poetry and promotes poetry in his role as director of Ó Bhéal.

Fatimah Asghar (USA) & Sally Wen Mao (USA)

7.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | Tickets €5

Fatimah Asghar has been featured in various outlets such as TIME, NPR, Teen Vogue and the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. They are the author of If They Come For Us and When We Were Sister, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Carol Shield’s Prize. Along with Safia Elhillo they co-edited an anthology for Muslim people who are also women, trans, gender non-conforming, and/or queer, Halal If You Hear Me. They are the writer and co-producer on Ms. Marvel on Disney+, and wrote Episode 5, Time and Again, which was listed as one of the best TV episodes of 2022 in the New York Times and Hollywood Reporter.

Buy If They Come For Us from Dubray Books and visit the poet's website.

“These poems bend time, encircle kin, invent new forms of saying … There is such fierce, resilient awe everywhere here. Such poems embolden me into love and dreaming and action.” — Aracelis Girmay

Sally Wen Mao is the author of the fiction collection Ninetails: Nine Tales (Penguin Books, May 2024). She is also the author of three books of poetry: The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf Press, 2023), a finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Award, Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry, and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). The recipient of an NEA grant, a Cullman fellowship, a Shearing fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes, Mao lives and teaches in New York City.

Buy The Kingdom of Surfaces from Graywolf Press and visit the poet's website.

“I simply trust no other poet to confront and fracture notions of Empire more deftly – and with such élan – than Sally Wen Mao.” — Aimee Nezhukumatathil

(Moderator) Patrick Cotter is an Irish poet, born in Cork City where he still lives. His poems have been published in journals such as the Financial Times, The London Review of Books, Poetry and Poetry Review. He is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. His poems have been translated into over a dozen languages and he has given readings of his work across the Northern Hemisphere. Sonic White Poise, his third full-length collection, was published by Dedalus Press in 2021.

Paul Muldoon (Ireland / USA)

8.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €15

Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for thirty-five years. He is the author of fifteen collections of poetry including Joy in Service on Rue Tagore, published by FSG and Faber and Faber in 2024. Among his awards are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and the 2020 Michael Marks Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Visit the poet's website.

“To describe Paul Muldoon’s influence on contemporary poetry is like trying to assess the influence of The Beatles on post-war music: it’s to be seen and heard in the work of almost every British and Irish poet since the 1970’s.” — Irish Post

(Moderator) Thomas McCarthy was born in Co. Waterford and educated at UCC. His many collections of poetry include Pandemonium (2016) and Prophecy (2019). A former Editor of Poetry Ireland Review, he is a member of Aosdána. His diaries, Poetry, Memory and the Party, were published in 2022 by The Gallery Press. His essays will be published by The Gallery later this year and his new collection, Plenitude, will be published by Carcanet Press UK in Spring 2025.

Simon Armitage (UK)

10.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | Tickets €15

UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage was born and grew up in West Yorkshire, England. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and PEN Prize for Translation. He has published over a dozen poetry collections, including Magnetic Field: the Marsden Poems, and acclaimed medieval translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Owl and the Nightingale. He also writes, records and performs with the band LYR and has received an Ivor Novello Award for his song writing. His recent book Never Good with Horses assembles his song lyrics for the first time. His new book Blossomise came out this Spring. A regular broadcaster, Armitage presents the popular UK BBC Radio 4 series The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed. Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. A Vertical Art brings together the vibrant and engaging lectures from his tenure as Oxford Professor of Poetry (2015-2019).

Visit the poet's website.

“The Yorkshire-born poet’s quotidian observations, witty tone and accessible style belie some searing analysis of 21st-century life in the UK … Essential reading.” — Financial Times

(Moderator) Matthew Geden was born and brought up in the English Midlands, moving to Kinsale in 1990. His publications include Fruit (SurVision Books, 2020) and The Cloud Architect (Doire Press, 2022). In 2019 he was Writer in Residence at Nanjing Literature Centre in China and from 2020 to 2023 was Writer in Residence for Cork County Library and Arts Office. He was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2022.

Image credits: Fatimah Asghar photographed by Mercedes Zapata, Sally Wen Mao photographed by Jess X. Snow, Simon Armitage photographed by Peter James Millson