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European Poetry Festival (Ireland) 2022

I'm very pleased to be curating the closing event of the European Poetry Festival 2022 in partnership with festival director SJ Fowler. 'The European Camarade: Ireland' takes place at Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, on Saturday 9 July 2022.

My involvement with the festival - in a co-producing and programming role - began with the closing event of the 2019 edition, which I was able to produce in the context of my spell as Writer in Residence at Maynooth University & Kildare County Council Library and Arts Service (2018-19). Plans for follow-up events were undermined by the pandemic, but we are now in a position to resume this multi-body partnership with an event offering a unique approach to multi-genre, cross-border and collaborative poetics, and representing a significant legacy of my writing residency in Co Kildare.

The European Poetry Festival is a predominantly UK-based festival celebrating the resurgence of avant-garde and literary poetry across Europe in the 21st century, and focusing on the possibilities of what a live poetry experience can be. This year's event in Ireland is made possible through generous funding from Kildare County Council Arts Service and The Arts Council, with support by Riverbank Arts Centre, and is additionally sponsored by selected European state agencies including Latvian Literature and Dutch Foundation for Literature.

In line with the festival's primary focus on innovative poetry in collaboration and engagement between poets from across the continent, 'The European Camarade: Ireland' will see the pairing of five poets/artists in Ireland with five visiting poets/artists from the rest of Europe and/or the UK, to produce a brand new, specially commissioned collaborative piece per pair to premiere on the night of the event.

See full event lineup and participant profiles below - and please join us on Saturday 9 July at Riverbank Arts Centre. Start time is 7pm. Free entry, but booking is essential.

Travel note: Newbridge is served by regular train services, and journey time from Dublin Heuston is only 25 minutes. The station is approximately a 10 minute walk from Riverbank Arts Centre. Further information on location and travel is available on the Riverbank Arts Centre website.


Featuring:

Máighréad Medbh & Samuel Vriezen
Róisín Power Hackett & Anna Belkovska
Nick Roth & SJ Fowler
Ella de Burca & Michael O'Mahony
Christodoulos Makris & Serena Braida


About the performers:

Máighréad Medbh is a poet and performer, with nine published books. Her focus is on the rhythms of experience - attempting them in poetry in flesh. Poetic Essay is the focus of her PhD thesis, her current experiment. Recent books: Imbolg (in change) (2020); Parvit of Agelast: a Verse Fantasy (in cage) (2016).

Samuel Vriezen is an Amsterdam-based composer, poet and pianist. He has written many text compositions (or polyphonic poems) and his writing, including poetry, translations and essays, has been published in many literary journals including the Dutch Parmentier, the Flemish yang and the French Action Poétique.

Róisín Power Hackett is a visual artist, writer, and curator. She makes texts using cut-up writing that she incorporates into performances. Her poetry and essays have been published in various journals. She is currently the co-editor of SEED Journal.

Anna Belkovska (1992) – playwright, poet, prose writer. Studied at the Culture Academy of Latvia. Published since 2016 in printed press and various online magazines. In 2022, Belkovska's debut collection of poems Veranda was published and rewarded as the best debut by the The Annual Latvian Literature Award. 

Nick Roth is a saxophonist, composer, producer and educator. His work seeks the liberation of improvisation from composition, the poetic syntax of philosophical enquiry, and the function of music as translative epistemology. A curious predisposition and a steadfast refusal to accept the existence of boundaries between the real and the imaginary is to blame for this.

SJ Fowler is a poet, writer and avant-garde artist, and the founder of European Poetry Festival. He has produced a diverse body of work across poetry, performance, experimental theatre, visual poetry, concrete poetry and sound poetry, short stories and non-fiction. He is the poetry editor at 3:AM Magazine.

Ella de Burca works through performance, sculpture and poetry to focus on how humans construct meaning, particularly from a female perspective. She is especially interested in how we perform as 'viewer,' and the discourse surrounding active versus passive experiences.

Michael O’Mahony is a writer and artist living in London. He has performed at the European Poetry Festival, Poem BRUT, and the Bucharest International Poetry Festival. 

Christodoulos Makris is a poet and writer with a practice rooted in contemporary experimental, cross-disciplinary, hybrid, documentary and collaborative poetics. He has published several books, pamphlets, artists' books, digital projects and other poetry objects. He is the poetry editor at gorse journal and Gorse Editions.

Serena Braida is a writer, poet and performer. She is the author of a poetry pamphlet, Blue Sheila (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Selected publications include Hotel, A Glimpse Of and Orlando and the anthologies Wretched Strangers (Boiler House Press) and Quello che hai amato (UTET). She has performed from her work extensively, both in the UK and internationally.

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