The Irish Writers Centre has commissioned six poems, one for each day of the Rising. These poems will be written and performed by our most influential contemporary poets who will reflect on a significant figure, location or event around the Rising. The poems will be filmed and released during the week of the anniversary. The poets include Jessica Traynor, Thomas McCarthy, Paul Muldoon, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Theo Dorgan. An original score will be composed by Colm Mac Con Iomaire. The films will be made available as an app for download which will take the user to each location where they can watch the video of the poem performed by the Poet. It is confirmed that the poems will also be broadcast on terrestrial TV.
Download A Poet's Rising programme here (2.25 KB)
Irish Writers Centre
The Irish Writers Centre is a flagship resource organisation for writers. It offers professional supports to meet the needs of writers at all stages of their development through training, information, networking opportunities and programmed events. A key part of their role is to offer a comprehensive and innovative toolkit/service to support the professional development of writers. The centre is also committed to fostering connections between writers across Ireland as well as celebrating their writing by creating audiences for their work at home and abroad. These goals are achieved through their physical hub in Parnell Square, their national and international outreach programmes and specialised online presence.
Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is one of Ireland's leading contemporary poets. He was born in Portadown, County Armagh and raised near The Moy, in Northern Ireland. Muldoon’s work is full of paradox: playful but serious, elusive but direct, innovative but traditional. Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet and professor of poetry, as well as an editor, critic, and translator. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, he has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature, the 1994 T. S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Excellence in Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2005 Aspen Prize for Poetry, and the 2006 European Prize for Poetry. He has taught at Princeton University since 1987 and currently occupies the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 chair in the Humanities.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Born 1942 in Cork, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, where she has taught since 1966; with her husband Macdara Woods, Leland Bardwell and the late Pearse Hutchinson, she is a founder and (since 1975) co-editor of the Irish poetry journal Cyphers. Her seventh collection of poetry, The Sun-Fish, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Griffin International Prize for poetry in 2010; The Boys of Bluehill is published this year by Gallery Press, and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize.
Jessica Traynor
Jessica Traynor is a poet from Dublin. Her debut collection Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press) was shortlisted for the 2015 Strong/Shine Award and the title poem has been turned into a limited edition series of prints by artist James Earley and designer Jamie Murphy. Her poems have appeared in If Ever You Go (Dedalus Press) Hallelujah for Fifty Foot Women (Bloodaxe) and Poetry Ireland Review among others, and have been broadcast on RTÉ's Arena and Sunday Miscellany. Her work has been translated into Irish, Polish, Italian and Czech. She was awarded the 2014 Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and was named New Irish Writer of the Year at the 2013 Hennessy Awards. She works as Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre.
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill is one of the most prominent poets writing in the Irish Gaelic language today. Her poetry has been translated into English by a number of well-known Irish poets, including Seamus Heaney, Medbh McGuckian, and Paul Muldoon. Irish themes, including language, are central to her poetry and range from ancient myths to small details of contemporary life. Her first collection was published in 1981, and the translation Selected Poems: Rogha Danta appeared in 1986. Her works have since been translated into Italian, Japanese, and Turkish.
Theo Dorgan
Theo Dorgan is a poet, novelist, prose writer, editor, essayist and translator. He has written libretti and documentary film scripts, and is a broadcaster on radio and television. Among his recent publications are: Jason And The Argonauts (Wave Train Press, 2014), a libretto, Foundation Stone: Towards a Constitution for a 21st Century Republic (New Island, 2013, editor) and the novel Making Way (New Island, 2013) His most recent collection of poems, Nine Bright Shiners (Dedalus Press, 2014), was awarded the Irish Times Poetry Now Prize 2015. Barefoot Souls, translated from the French of Maram al-Masri, will appear in October. He is a member of Aosdána.
Thomas McCarthy
Born and raised at Cappoquin Co. Waterford in 1954. He studied at UCC under the influence of Sean Lucy and John Montague; Sean Dunne and Theo Dorgan were fellow students. McCarthy has published a substantial body of poems as well as a collection of autobiographical essays and two novels. He lives in Cork. He received the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1977 for his first book and the American-Irish Foundation's Literary Award in 1984. His more recent books include his selected poems, Mr Dineen's Careful Parade, and Merchant Prince, a combination of poems and a novella recounting the story of a Cork merchant. Considered by Dennis O'Driscoll to be, along with Muldoon, the most important Irish poet of his generation, McCarthy is a poet primarily concerned with politics and family.
Score
Colm Mac Con Iomaire
In a crowded field of outstanding Irish fiddle players and interpreters of traditional music, Colm Mac Con Iomaire is unique. After starting the band Kíla with school friends, Colm went on to found and play with The Frames, who celebrate 25 years together in 2015. Colm’s compositions have featured in both film and theatre. “These are tunes that are effortlessly cinematic, conjuring images of weather-beaten coastlines and vast green expanses… a consistently beautiful and frequently incandescent collection” – Irish Times (Album of the Week)
Irish Language
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s poem will be in the Irish language.
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