Wednesday, 13th May

No booking needed for library events. No physical tickets will be issued for theatre events; your name will be checked off a list at the door. Bookstall sales will be by card only (we cannot accept cash).

Access to all festival events:

Colm Scully (Ireland) & Csilla Toldy (Hungary/Northern Ireland)

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free

As well as reading from their collections, these poets will also be presenting a selection of their poetry films.

Colm Scully is a poet and poetry film maker from Cork. His second collection, Neanderthal Boy, was published by Wordsonthestreet Press in 2025. He has previously won the Cúirt New Writing Prize, and his poems have recently appeared in Southword, Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, Orbis and The Friday Poem. His award-winning poetry films have been screened internationally, including at Cork International Film Festival, Fastnet Film Festival and Bloomsday Film Festival. He teaches poetry film in the community and is a curator at Drumshanbo Written Word Festival and Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Festival.

Buy Neanderthal Boy from Wordsonthestreet Press and visit the poet's website.

“Neanderthal Boy offers a space for voices to rise and ‘find soft footfall at last’. Rich in imagery and insight, this collection invites readers to explore the margins of history and the simple beauty in fleeting, everyday moments.” — Matthew Geden

Csilla Toldy published three volumes of poetry with Lapwing Belfast (2013, 2015, 2018), a first full collection, Firebird, with Arlen House (2025); Angel Fur and other stories with Stupor Mundi (2019), and the novel Bed Table Door (Wrecking Ball, 2023) which won the Desmond Elliott. Recent poetry appeared in Southword, Cyphers, PN Review and Abridged. Her poems were shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and nominated for the Forward Prize. Csilla creates poetry films. Some were commissioned as public artworks, the latest, Imbolc, by Down Arts Centre, where she was artist in residence until April 2026.

Buy Firebird on the poet's website.

“The poems move easily from real to surreal and from voice to voice, exhibiting mastery of craft and respect for both form and experiment. A vivid, engaging reflection of life.” — Moyra Donaldson

Tim MacGabhann (Ireland) & Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan (India/Ireland)

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free

Tim MacGabhann is the author of the novels Call Him Mine (2019) and How to Be Nowhere (2020), published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. His chapbook Rory Gallagher—Live!—from the Hotel of the Dead (2023) was published by Rough Trade Books. 2025 saw the publication of a memoir of addiction and recovery, The Black Pool (Sceptre), a collection of short stories, Saints (Scratch Books), and the poetry collection Found in a Context of Destruction (Banshee Press). He lives in Paris.

Buy Found in a Context of Destruction from Banshee Press.

“Tim MacGabhann’s poems feel both brittle and lush, mournful and life-lurching. Found in a Context of Destruction is an intimate exploration of place, migration, addiction, and the dented, red-hot forging of a self.” — Robin Myers

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is Indian-Irish writer, performer, and cultural consultant. Her work has been published by Dedalus Press, New Island, Banshee, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland, and others. She often works with poetry as a method of science communication, and was the 2023 Writer in Residence for the Institute of Physics and a 2024 Goethe-Institut Studio Quantum Artist in Residence. She is a Skein Press Play it Forward Fellow, and her debut poetry collection will be published with Dedalus Press in 2026.

Visit the poet's website.

"Throughout there is a remarkable lightness of touch, a precision that reminds us of the poet’s abiding interest in science and ecology, the fruits of which further extend the range of this confident and memorable debut." — Dedalus Press

(Moderator) Afric McGlinchey’s first two poetry collections were translated into Italian. Tied to the Wind (Broken Sleep Books, 2021), a hybrid memoir, was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary, translated into Macedonian and broadcast over five nights on RTÉ’s The Book on One. A multi-award-winning poet, Afric’s most recent collection, À la belle étoile – the odyssey of Jeanne Baré (Salmon Poetry), has been nominated for the Forward and Piggott Prizes.

Stephen de Búrca (Ireland) & Gerard Smyth (Ireland)

7.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Stephen de Búrca is a writer from Galway. He completed a doctorate, funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast (2025) and an MFA at the University of Florida (2020). He was selected for the inaugural Poetry Ireland Gerald Dawe Poetry Bursary (2026), for Poetry Ireland Introductions (2023), and received an Arts Council Agility Award (2023 and 2022). Stephen’s work has featured in Poetry Ireland Review, PN Review, Banshee, Propel Magazine, Skylight 47, Abridged, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, Atlantic Fret, is forthcoming with The Gallery Press in 2026.

Atlantic Fret will be available from The Gallery Press soon.

“…Stephen de Búrca embraces the idea of the Atlantic Ocean as the source of chaos from which the Cosmos grew. Against the backdrop of climate change the ocean shares the burden of grief.” — The Gallery Press

Gerard Smyth is a poet and journalist. The Turn for Ithaca (Dedalus Press) is his eleventh collection. His poetry has been published widely since the late 1960s. Other books from Dedalus include The Sundays of Eternity (2020) and The Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems (2010). He was the 2012 recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota and is co-editor, with Pat Boran, of If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (Dedalus Press) which was Dublin’s One City One Book in 2014. He is a member of Aosdána.

Buy The Turn for Ithaca from Dedalus Press and visit the poet's website.

“Gerard Smyth has achieved a hard-won grace and fluency over many years and now writes with controlled passion and lyrical intensity, the result of a dedication to the truth of poetry that has involved a steady pilgrimage.” — John F. Deane

(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 latest collection is Plenitude (Carcanet Press, 2025).

Cian Ferriter (Ireland) & Enda Wyley (Ireland)

8.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Cian Ferriter's debut chapbook, Earth's Black Chute, won the 2021 Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition and was published by Southword Editions in 2022. His first full collection, Brink, was published by Dedalus in November 2025. He is a High Court Judge.

Buy Brink from Dedalus Press.

“…precarious as the brink is, the unyieldingly sympathetic foundation of these poems in the reality of family and immediate perception is wholly redemptive.” — Bernard O’Donoghuee

Enda Wyley has published six collections of poetry, most recently Sudden Light (Dedalus Press, 2025). She has also published Borrowed Space: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2024). She is the 2026 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Prize in Poetry, St Thomas University Minnesota, U.S.A, now in its 30th year. Other awards include the Vincent Buckley Prize in Poetry, Melbourne University and a Reading Association of Ireland Award. Enda lives in Dublin, teaches poetry and co-hosts the popular podcast Books for Breakfast. She is a member of Aosdána.

Buy Sudden Light from Dedalus Press.

“Wyley’s poems are perpetually fresh, utterly scrutinized, marked by vigor and virtuosity, arriving on the page as accomplished things, like settled law, fit for the long-haul language calls us to.” — Thomas Lynch

(Moderator) Patrick Holloway is a prize-winning author of fiction and poetry. His debut novel, The Language of Remembering, was published to critical acclaim. His second novel, Interlude, is forthcoming with Eriu. He has won the Bath Short Story Prize, Flash 500, and the Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize. His work appears in The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, The Moth, and Southword. He edits the literary journal The Four Faced Liar.

Shangyang Fang (China/USA) & Jennifer Lee Tsai (UK)

10.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Shangyang Fang grew up in Chengdu, China. His works appears in The Nation, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Best American Poetry, The Best of Net, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Forward Book of Poetry Anthology (UK), etc. He is the author of the two poetry collections, Burying the Mountain (Copper Canyon Press, 2021) and Bastard of Elsewhere (Copper Canyon Press, 2027) and a translation book, Study of Sorrow (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). He is an Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Buy Study of Sorrow: Translations from Copper Canyon Press.

“We owe Fang a debt for bringing the delicacy, obliqueness, and sheer tremulous beauty of these Chinese poems to English-speaking readers … an important talent whose searching “study” enriches our sense of Chinese poetry immeasurably.” — Laura Sheahen

Jennifer Lee Tsai is an award-winning poet, writer and artist. She was born in Bebington and grew up in Liverpool. She is a fellow of The Complete Works, a Ledbury Poetry Critic and a former Contributing Editor to Ambit. Her poetry and literary criticism are widely featured in publications including The Guardian, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Telegraph, The TLS & The White Review as well as on BBC Radio 4. She is the author of two poetry pamphlets, Kismet (ignition press, 2019) and La Mystérique (Guillemot Press, 2022). Her first full-length poetry collection, Melete, is forthcoming with Bloodaxe in May 2026.

Buy Melete from Bloodaxe Books.

“Every poem is part doorway, part mirror. In Melete, we are led into a world of prejudice and determination, hardship and resilience, but this is also a world of beginnings, becomings and the search for belonging and in it we can't help but discover ourselves.” — John Glenday

(Moderator) Patrick Cotter was 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. Quality Control at the Miracle Factory, his fourth full-length collection, was published by Dedalus Press in 2025.

Image credits: Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan photographed by Barry McCall, Stephen de Búrca photographed by Neil Hainsworth, Enda Wyley photographed by Matt Kavanagh, Jennifer Lee Tsai photographed by Caleb Femi