Wednesday, May 15th

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)

Daragh Breen (Ireland) & Lani O’Hanlon (Ireland)

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free

Daragh Breen has three collections from Shearsman Books in the UK; What the Wolf Heard in 2016, Nostoc in 2020, and most recently, Birds in November in January of 2023. His work has appeared in Irish and UK literary journals such as The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Blackbox Manifold, Tears in the Fence, Long Poem Magazine and The Fortnightly Review. He was also included in Poetry Ireland’s 2015 anthology Everything to Play For: 99 Poems About Sport. He lives in Cork.

Buy Birds in November from Shearsman Books.

“… the more one reads these strange poems the more profound their vision appears. Peter Riley has described him as an ‘Irish super-Ted Hughes’, but there is also something of Samuel Beckett’s deep compassion.” — Tim Dooley

Lani O’Hanlon is a dance artist, somatic movement therapist and writer living in a renovated cottage beside the sea in County Waterford. Her poetry collection Landscape of the Body was published in 2023 by the Dedalus Press. Her poetry is widely published and broadcast on RTÉ’s Sunday Miscellany. She was the winner of the Poetry Ireland Trocaire Award in 2022 and other prizes include The Bridport Prize, Poetry on the Lake and the Hennessey New Irish Writing.

Buy Landscape of the Body from Dedalus Press.

“Out of the body in movement and straight into her empowering dance of community, Lani O’Hanlon’s poems are ciphers and signs made by a great and important soul at work in the world of Irish poetry.” — Thomas McCarthy

(Moderator) Afric McGlinchey’s collections are The lucky star of hidden things and Ghost of the Fisher Cat (Salmon Poetry), both translated into Italian. Tied to the Wind, a hybrid memoir, appeared in 2021 (Broken Sleep Books). The winner of a Hennessy Award among other awards, she was also a recipient of two Literature Bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship (2023). She lives in West Cork.

Mícheál McCann (Ireland) & Mark Ward (Ireland)

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free

Mícheál McCann is from Derry City and lives in Belfast. His poems have been published in Banshee, Fourteen Poems, The Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Queering the Green (Lifeboat Press, 2021), The Stinging Fly and have been broadcast on BBC and RTÉ. His essays have appeared in The Irish Times and Tolka and on BBC Radio 3. He was selected by Kei Miller for the International Literature Showcase 2021. He has a PhD from the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry where he is now a Publishing Fellow.

Visit the poet's website.

“Each poem sparkles on the flood of time, blissing in sudden spiritual moments, worked with a playful vision of beauty. Mícheál McCann is a poet of wise, exalting attention.” — Seán Hewitt

Mark Ward is the author of the collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2023). His chapbooks include Faultlines (voidspace, March 2024), Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) and Circumference (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). His poems have been published widely at home and abroad. He was Highly Commended in the 2019 and 2022 Patrick Kavanagh Awards and selected for the 2020 Poetry Ireland Introductions series. He has recorded poems for Arena, The Poetry Programme, Poetry File & Words Lightly Spoken. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry.

Buy Nightlight from Salmon Poetry and visit the poet's website.

“In this powerful, energetic collection, the reader is asked to witness the performances, loving, erotic, fearful, which the body must endure.” — Andrew McMillan

(Moderator) Patrick Holloway’s fiction and poetry has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, The Moth, Southword, Carve, Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, among others. He is the winner of the Bath Short Story Prize, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Flash 500 Prize and the Allingham Fiction Contest. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies including, Masculinity: an anthology of modern voices, and We Will be Shelter.

Majella Kelly (Ireland) & David McLoghlin (Ireland)

7.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | Tickets €5

Majella Kelly is from Tuam, Co. Galway. In 2019 she won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition. Her debut pamphlet Hush was published in 2020 by Ignition Press & her debut collection The Speculations of Country People was published by Penguin in 2023. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford.

Buy The Speculations of Country People from Penguin and visit the poet's website.

“Majella Kelly’s debut poetry collection, The Speculations of Country People, is a moving examination of injustice and grief, while also celebrating resilience, love and the awe that accompanies finding hope in unexpected places.” — Aisling Cronin

David McLoghlin’s books are Waiting For Saint Brendan and Other Poems, Santiago Sketches and Crash Centre (May 2024). He was recently awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, has won the Open Category of UCD’s Voices of War International Poetry Competition and received grants and fellowships from The Arts Council, Kerry County Council, The Sewanee Writers Conference and New York University, where he was a Writing Fellow and received an MFA in poetry in 2012. He has taught creative writing with Poetry as Commemoration and at the American College, Dublin, and currently teaches via Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools.

Visit the poet's website.

“The poems are rhetorically baroque, inward-looking and taut with imagery, and his complex metaphors unfold, slow and origami-like, often across multiple stanzas.” — Eric Bliman

(Moderator) Lauren O’Donovan is a writer from Cork, Ireland. In 2023, she won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Cúirt New Writing Prize in Poetry. She is fortunate to have her work published often in journals and anthologies. Lauren is a graduate of UCC, co-founder of Lime Square Poets, and an editor at HOWL New Irish Writing.

Patrick Deeley (Ireland) & John Ennis (Ireland)

8.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer from Loughrea. Keepsake is his eighth collection of poems with Dedalus Press. His previous collections include The End of the World, Groundswell: New and Selected, and The Bones of Creation. His work has featured in leading literary journals worldwide and his awards include the 2019 Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award, the Dermot Healy International Poetry Prize and the Eilis Dillon Award for Children’s Literature. His best-selling, critically acclaimed memoir, The Hurley Maker’s Son, was published by Transworld in 2016. He worked formerly as Administrative Principal of De la Salle Primary School in Ballyfermot, Dublin.

Buy Keepsake from Dedalus Press and visit the poet's website.

“Fascinated by the empirical evidence, he displays a questing, questioning spirit before nature and the universe with a natural sense of awe before the mysteries.” — Patrick Kehoe

John Ennis’s work has been published recently in Poetry Ireland Review 137 (2022), The Waxed Lemon (2022), Drawn to the Light Press (2022), Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry edited by Jonas Zdanys, Lamar University Texas (2022), Winter Anthology edited by Sourav Sarkar (2022), Creative Ireland Anthology (2022), Fujitsu ‘National Dementia Hub’ (2022), Korean Expatriate Literature co-edited by Stanley H. Barkan (2022) and in Madness, An Anthology of World Poetry (RedPanda Books 2023). Ennis’s haiku feature in Rakuen (Paradise), Japan. Before retirement (2009), Ennis worked for forty years in Education establishing the Humanities at SETU (formerly WIT), Ireland.

Visit the poet's website.

“The best of Ennis … is a rich and rewarding experience. He leaves many other poets looking watery and confined to limited forms, like people who never stir out of the house.” — Seán Dunne

(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.

Katie Donovan (Ireland) & Kerry Hardie (Ireland)

10.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | Tickets €5

Change in lineup:
Unfortunately, Michelle O'Sullivan is unable to attend as previously advertised. However, we are happy to say that Kerry Hardie will now be reading alongside Katie Donovan.

Katie Donovan’s sixth collection of poetry, May Swim has just been published by Bloodaxe Books. It is 30 years since Bloodaxe published her first collection, Watermelon Man, praised by Eavan Boland for its “distinguished and open language” and “bold statements of identity.” Katie Donovan received the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry in 2017. She is a former journalist with The Irish Times and has taught Creative Writing at IADT Dún Laoghaire and NUI Maynooth. She lives in Dalkey, Co. Dublin.

Buy May Swim from Bloodaxe Books and visit the poet's website.

“Donovan has an exceptional descriptive gift. A highly idiosyncratic, individualistic writer who probes experience for hidden meanings, her seeming introversion is exposed through a poetry of great solidity and tactility.” — Bernard O’Donoghue

Kerry Hardie's ninth collection We Go On was published by Bloodaxe Books in February 2024, following two other Bloodaxe publications, Where Now Begins (2020) and The Zebra Stood in the Night. Six earlier collections have been published by the Gallery Press and a Selected Poems was co-published with Bloodaxe Books. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized and has won many prizes and awards. She has also written two novels [Harper Collins; Little, Brown], and a radio play (RTÉ). She has just completed another novel. She lives in Kilkenny with her husband Seán.

Buy We Go On from The Bloodaxe Books.

“Her poems are deeply personal yet have a mythic quality… The cycle of the seasons turns throughout the book. The poet is aware of that cycle beginning to close in on her too… to face that is to embrace life itself.” — Sue Leigh

(Moderator) Róisín Legget Bohan is a writer from Cork. In 2023 she was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her work appears in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Aesthetica, Magma, New Irish Writing, The Guthrie Gazette, Southword and elsewhere. Róisín is the grateful recipient of Arts Council funding, Cork City Arts funding, and a Munster Literature Centre Mentorship. She is a Poetry Ireland Introductions poet and co-founder and editor of HOWL New Irish Writing.

Image credits: Lani O'Hanlon photographed by Eileen Hyland