6.30pm Tuesday 24 March
The Farmgate Café National Poetry Prize
Farmgate Café, English Market
Free event—Tickets at Eventbrite
The Farmgate Café National Poetry Award, now in its second year, is sponsored by one of Cork’s most loved restaurants—The Farmgate Café. The award presentation for best collection published in English by a poet resident in Ireland during the previous calendar year opens this year’s festival and will include a reading from the winning poet.
The shortlist in alphabetical order is:
When the Tree Falls by Jane Clarke (Bloodaxe Books)
The End of the World by Patrick Deeley (The Dedalus Press)
May Day 1974 by Rachael Hegarty (Salmon Poetry)
The Gravity Wave by Peter Sirr (The Gallery Press)
Threading the Light by Ross Thompson published (The Dedalus Press)
8.30pm Wednesday 25 March
Tony Curtis & Peter Sirr
Cork Arts Theatre
Tickets: €5.00
Peter Sirr‘s most recent collections are The Gravity Wave (2019), a Poetry Book Society recommendation and Sway (2016), versions of poems from the troubadour tradition. The Rooms (2014) was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Pigott Poetry Prize. The Thing Is (2009), was awarded the Michael Hartnett Prize in 2011. He is a member of Aosdána.
Tony Curtis is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently New & Selected Poems: From the Fortunate Isles (Seren, 2016). He has won the Eric Gregory Award, the National Poetry Prize, the Dylan Thomas Award and a Cholmondeley Award. He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of South Wales where he founded and directed the M. Phil Writing course.
8.30pm Thursday 26 March
Adam Crothers & John McAuliffe
Cork Arts Theatre
Tickets: €5.00
John McAuliffe has published five collections with The Gallery Press, including Of All Places (2011, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and an Irish Times Book of the Year) and The Way In (2015, winner of The Michael Hartnett Award for Best Collection). The Kabul Olympics is his fifth book.
Adam Crothers was born in Belfast in 1984, and lives in Cambridge. His first collection, Several Deer (Carcanet, 2016), won the 2017 Shine/Strong Poetry Award and the 2017 Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. A second book of poems, The Culture of My Stuff, will be published by Carcanet in May 2020.
10.00pm, Friday 27th March
Mireia Callafel & Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Cork Arts Theatre
Tickets: €5.00
Mireia Callafel (Barcelona, 1980) is the author of Poètiques del cos (2006), Costures (2009) and Tantes mudes(2014), awarded the Lletra d’Or for the best book published in Catalan. Her poetry has been included in anthologies published in Argentina, Brazil, Holland, UK, the United Arab Emirates and Spain. She is the co-director of the Barcelona Poetry festival.