Poetry and Document: Ways of Writing at Kildare Readers Festival 2022

A pleasure to be extending my partnership with Kildare Readers Festival and Riverbank Arts Centre: for the 2022 edition of the festival I am programming and hosting another event in my 'Ways of Writing' curatorial strand.

In light of my interest and practice in documentary poetics, which has taken the form of several projects and the release of books, objects, digital publications, short films etc - and with an upcoming book with title It Reeks of Radio, the result of my commissioned engagement with archival material at University College Dublin, set to be published by the University within the coming year - I have invited Bebe Ashley, Julie Morrissy, and Cherry Smyth, three poets who have also worked with archives or contemporary documentary material, to speak about aspects of their own practice.

Thursday 6 October 2022, Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare. 6pm start. Book your free tickets here. Full event details below:

Three contemporary poets whose work incorporates archival or contemporary documentary material give short talks on their writing process.

Bebe Ashley, Julie Morrissy and Cherry Smyth discuss their inspirations, raw material and references, drafts and rewrites, aspects of presentation and publishing, and other elements framing their recent work. Through a range of poetic techniques privileging the acts of assembling, interrogating, juxtaposing and performing documentary material, whether archival holdings or contemporary digital correspondence, and on a range of subjects - from the Irish Famine to Harry Styles via the Irish Revolution - these poets promise to provoke rich cross-commentary towards demystifying aspects of contemporary poetic practice.

Devised, programmed and hosted by Christodoulos Makris.

Bebe Ashley lives in County Down. Her work is most recently published in bath magg, Poetry Ireland Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her debut collection Gold Light Shining was published by Banshee Press. In 2021, Bebe was longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment and awarded a Chair of Ireland Poetry Trust Award. Most recently, Bebe was selected as one of nine artists to receive a Digital Evolution Award in support of a project Confetti that explores poetic potential of Braille and 3D printing.

Julie Morrissy is the first Poet-in-Residence at the National Library of Ireland in the Decade of Centenaries programme. Her project Radical!: Women and the Irish Revolution comprises a podcast series and poetry pamphlet. She is the 2021-22 National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Morrissy is a recipient of the MAKE Theatre Award, and the Arts Council ‘Next Generation’ Award.

Cherry Smyth has published four collections of poetry, most recently Famished (Pindrop Press, 2019), a book-length poem that explores the Irish Famine and the legacy of British colonialism. She also published Hold Still (Holland Park Press, 2013), a novel about the Irish muse of the painters, Whistler and Courbet.