re:verb 2026: a festival of contemporary poetry & the verbal arts (5-6 June 2026)
I'm excited to announce that this summer I'm piloting a small festival of contemporary poetry and the verbal arts in Dublin:
re:verb is a platform showcasing poetry and verbal art that predominantly strays from the mainstream, and aims to expand the potential of live literature.
Its purpose is to offer an outlet and an encouragement for new forms and approaches to the making and presentation of contemporary poetry and literature that privilege liveness and vibrancy. And as a small poetry/verbal arts festival, re:verb aims to operate on a model that relies on a communal, artist- and audience-centred stake in its workings.
The dates of this year's edition are 5-6 June 2026. At-a-glance programme information above, with links to tickets, as well as artist details, below. The idea is that, if all goes well and there's demonstrable appetite for it from every direction, re:verb will potentially become an annual fixture.
re:verb is, in its current form at least, a zero-budget operation. Which means that all artists fees - including mine as sole director, curator and producer - will depend entirely on ticket sales. As such, support through attendance and word-of-mouth is crucial for the viability of the initiative.
Tickets are now available at €10 per session. There is also a festival pass option at €35 which grants access to all sessions.
Tickets are available through the links below and on the festival's permanent page on this website.
The festival venue is Kirkos in north inner city Dublin (1 Little Green Street, Dublin 7). Kirkos is a new music group in Dublin as well as the operator of a DIY venue with a radically open approach to programming. A large part of its work is devised collaboratively, with influences from other artforms, predominantly theatre, visual art and performance art. I have worked with Kirkos a number of times in my poetry practice (eg here, here, here) and I love what the group does artistically and curatorially - but also what they offer through their physical venue. The fact that they operate in the centre of Dublin within a broader experimental-fringe DIY arts culture is why I approached them for this, and I was delighted that they immediately agreed to host re:verb.
Kirkos will remain open throughout the hours of the festival as a communal hang out space, to be cleared shortly before each session for admission to those with tickets.
I'm also delighted to be partnering with Cailleach Books - an experimental, mobile bookshop concerned with the distribution of DIY publishing, zines, book objects and poetry pamphlets from Ireland. Cailleach Books will operate as our festival bookshop with a presence on site throughout, stocking books, journals and other publications and releases by or affiliated with the poets and artists featured in the festival.
Given the festival's purpose, scope, approach and essence, I don't particularly expect participating poets and writers to read from their already-published books. While they are at full liberty to use their slots as they wish, I view re:verb as a testing ground for forthcoming or ongoing work in progress, performative material, something site- or event-specific, improvisations, impromptu collaborations, or hybrid, cross-disciplinary work. I hope and fully expect to be surprised and delighted with the range of approaches to live poetry on show.
Please come to some, or preferably all events in this forum for vibrant contemporary poetry, literature and adjacent work by poets, writers and artists from or with links to a range of locations and cultures.
With huge thanks to all guest artists for agreeing to contribute to this pilot edition of re:verb. Big thanks also to Sebastian Adams, Paul Scully and Isabella Utria at Kirkos, and Rita Hynes at Cailleach Books.
FULL PROGRAMME AND TICKETS:
Friday 5 June 2026
5pm: Kit Fryatt & Máighréad Medbh - TICKETS
7.30pm: Mai Ishikawa & Suzanne Walsh - TICKETS
Saturday 6 June 2026
2.30pm: Jazmine Linklater & Joanna Walsh - TICKETS
5pm: Alice Lyons & Maija Makela - TICKETS
7.30pm: Ellen Dillon & Éireann Lorsung - TICKETS
About the artists:
Ellen Dillon is a poet from Limerick. Her latest book How complete + final the feeling… came out with Broken Sleep this year. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Prototype Prize for writers working at the intersections of different forms, and was Arts Council Writer in Residence (UCC) in 2025.
Kit Fryatt lectures in English at Dublin City University. His recent books of poetry are Book of Inversions (with Harry Gilonis, Veer2, 2025) and all things that are passing (with Ellen Dillon, Spite Press 2026).
Mai Ishikawa is a Japanese poet, theatre translator, theatre-maker, performer based in Dublin. Her poems appeared in The Stony Thursday Book, Banshee, Channel, The Future of Kyoto (Writers in Kyoto), Beginnings Over and Over (Dedalus Press) and elsewhere. Her poetic, audio-physical piece Constriction premiered at Dublin Fringe Festival 2025.
Jazmine Linklater is a poet and writer based in Manchester where she is a regional editor for the online art writing platform Corridor8. Her new poetry pamphlet is Snagged on red thread with Monitor Books. She is currently undertaking practice-based research in art writing and ekphrastic encounters at Sheffield University.
Éireann Lorsung works and teaches in a field of images, objects, movement, and texts. Born in the US, she has lived in France, the UK, Belgium, and Ireland. She now teaches at University of South Dakota and edits the South Dakota Review. Her publications include The Century (Milkweed Editions) and Pattern-book (Carcanet). Pink Theory! is forthcoming from Milkweed in 2027.
Alice Lyons's recent books are Oona (Lilliput) and The Breadbasket of Europe (Veer). She was the inaugural Heaney-Miłosz resident in Czesław Miłosz's former apartment in Kraków and recipient of a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship in Poetry & New Media. She lives in Sligo.
Maija Makela is from Galway. She writes across and between various forms, and her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Tolka and numerous other places. A recipient of the Next Generation Award, she has released two acclaimed albums, and is currently writing a PhD on Fanny Howe.
Máighréad Medbh is a poet with ten published books and a reputation for compelling performance. Among her several long-form sequences and conceptual explorations are a verse narrative of the Irish famine and an ecological fantasy-allegory. Dwelling (Macha, 2026) is a mixed-mode poetic essay conversing with ancestry and its limits.
Joanna Walsh is a multidisciplinary writer for print, digital and performance. Her publishers include Semiotext(e), Bloomsbury and Verso. She is a 2020 Markievicz awardee, a 2017 UK Arts Foundation fellow, an Anthony Burgess Centenary Writer Fellow at the University of Manchester, and a 2024 DAAD Artists in Berlin awardee (refused in solidarity with Palestine).
Suzanne Walsh/Zan Breathnach is a cross-disciplinary artist and writer working with performance, audio, and text. They publish essays, art-writing, poetry, and fiction in publications including Paper Visual Art Journal, Fallowmedia, and Winter Papers, as well as commissioned texts for art publications.
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