Wednesday, May 14th

Tickets for all theatre events 14th – 17th | €70

No booking needed for library events. No physical tickets will be issued for theatre events, your name will be checked off a list at the door. Bookstall sales will be by card only (we cannot accept cash).

Fergal Gaynor (Ireland) & Kenneth Hickey (Ireland)

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free

Fergal Gaynor (b. 1969) is a poet, art and literary critic, and was co-editor of the contemporary art magazine Enclave Review from 2010 to 2024. His poetry has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Irish University Review, Masthead, among other magazines, and he has read his work at a variety of events and festivals, in Ireland, France, England, Wales, the US and the Czech Republic. His first collection appeared from Miami University Press in 2010, and his latest, Clio’s Ground, is being published by Shearsman (Bristol) in 2025. He lives in Cork with his wife, the violinist Marja Gaynor, and their three children.

Buy Clio’s Ground from Shearsman and visit the poet's webpage.

“… lyric flights and philosophical excursuses that have no evident precedent in Irish poetry. This is a poetry through which an Irish matter articulates with a rich European field of allusion and technique.” — David Lloyd

Kenneth Hickey was born in 1975 in Cobh, Co. Cork Ireland. His poetry and prose has been published in various literary journals in Ireland, the UK and the United States. He has been selected for the Poetry in the Park project and has been awarded a poetry mentorship by Munster Literature Centre. He was awarded a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre by Cork County Council in 2022. He is currently associate editor with The Belfast Review. His debut collection The Unicycle Paradox was published by Revival Press in November 2021. His second Poetry book Krieg was published in 2024, also by Revival Press.

Buy Krieg from Revival Press and visit the poet's website.

“In this remarkable Cantata for the Dead, Kenneth Hickey ranges deep into the terrain of warriors and war, of suffering and heroism, slaughter and salvation … A work for many voices, respectful, epic in its scope and in its ambition.” — Theo Dorgan

(Moderator) Patrick Holloway is an Irish writer of fiction and poetry and is an editor of the literary journal, The Four Faced Liar. He is the winner of the Bath Short Story Award, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Flash 500 Prize, the Allingham Fiction contest and he was the recipient of the Paul McVeigh Residency in 2023. His debut novel, The Language of Remembering, was published in February 2025.

Michael Dooley (Ireland) & Jennifer Horgan (Ireland)

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free

Michael Dooley’s poems have appeared in Banshee, the Irish Independent, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, and have been broadcast on RTÉ Radio One. His debut collection, In Spring We Turned to Water, is published by Doire Press.

Buy In Spring We Turned to Water from Doire Press.

“These poems are fiercely crafted, exquisitely lyrical, examinations from the charged landscape of historical aftermath, where faith is at once proximate and elusive, and the tribulations of the tribe echo in the ‘muck and wet’ of folk memory.” — Dean Browne

Jennifer Horgan is a Cork poet, teacher and columnist. Her work has appeared in HOWL New Irish Writing, Crannóg, and The Honest Ulsterman. In 2023 she was awarded a mentorship with Thomas McCarthy through the Munster Literature Centre. Her debut collection Care is released in April 2025 with Doire Press.

Care will be available from Doire Press.

“Horgan’s voice is raw, intricate, uncompromising. She sees life and the world through a broken lens that splits the false light from the true and leaves us basking in – or hiding from – the brilliance of the colours we never saw before” — William Wall

(Moderator) Dean Browne received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared in London Magazine, New York Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere. His first collection, After Party, will be published by Picador in September.

Pat Boran (Ireland) & Rosemary Jenkinson (Ireland)

7.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Pat Boran has published more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, among them Hedge School (2024), Then Again (2019) and A Man Is Only As Good: A Pocket Selected Poems (2017). Non-fiction includes the humorous memoir The Invisible Prison: Scenes from an Irish Childhood (2009) and the popular writers’ handbook, The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (various editions). He has edited a dozen anthologies, presented poetry and arts programmes on radio, and his short poetry films have been screened at festivals in many countries. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish affiliation of creative artists.

Buy Hedge School from Dedalus Press and visit the poet's website.

“A Pat Boran poem may feel like sharing a pint as he draws you in with his engaging tone … but don’t be fooled, for he flips in a trice into Joycean epiphanies and meditations on the human condition, poems resonating off one another in a complex web of associations.” — Belinda Cooke

Rosemary Jenkinson is a poet, playwright, short story writer and novelist from Belfast. Her debut poetry collection is Sandy Row Riots, published by Arlen House, and her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Acumen and the Washing Windows and Romance Options anthologies. Poet Damian Smyth recently wrote of Sandy Row Riots: ‘A lyric temperament and political wit to be reckoned with’. Rosemary's latest short story collection is Laganside Lights and her debut novel is The Memorisers. She is an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Major Artist and currently is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Queen’s University.

Buy Sandy Row Riots (Arlen House).

“What intimate energy Rosemary Jenkinson gusts out into these poems. Fabulous, essential poems, not just for today but for living with.” — Mary O'Donnell

(Moderator) Lauren O’Donovan has won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, the Cúirt New Writing Prize, and the Southword Subscriber’s Poetry Prize. She is co-founder of HOWL New Irish Writing and Lime Square Poets, and a grateful recipient of Cork County Council Arts and Arts Council funding. Lauren is this year’s winner of the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition.

John McAuliffe (Ireland/UK) & Thomas McCarthy (Ireland)

8.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

John McAuliffe has published seven books with The Gallery Press, most recently National Theatre (2024) and Selected Poems (2021), which was an Observer Book of the Year. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Manchester. Previously poetry critic at The Irish Times, he is now Associate Publisher and editor at Carcanet and the journal PN Review.

Buy National Theatre from The Gallery Press.

“For all the amiable good humour of the voice of these poems, they never stray far from the things that really matter in modern life. The domain of the imagined is always at the service of the world we know, to cast light on it.” — Bernard O’Donoghue

Thomas McCarthy was born in Co. Waterford in 1954 and educated at University College Cork. He worked for many years at Cork City Libraries. He has won many awards for his poetry, including The Patrick Kavanagh Award, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, the O’Shaughnessy Prize and the Ireland Funds Annual Literary Award. Prophecy was published by Carcanet Press in 2019 and they will publish Plenitude in 2025. A former Editor of Poetry Ireland Review and The Cork Review, his prose books, Memory, Poetry and the Party: Journals 1974-2014, and Questioning Ireland are published by The Gallery Press. He is a member of Aosdána.

Buy Plenitude from Carcanet Press.

“McCarthy is writing out of a sense of history and community and memory … There’s a strangely affirmative note throughout the work, and a strong cosmopolitan sense; although deeply rooted in his own history, he roams widely: he can be both personal and political.” — Terry Eagleton

(Moderator) Lani O'Hanlon is a dance artist, somatic movement therapist and writer living in a renovated cottage beside the sea in County Waterford. Her poetry collection Landscape of the Body was published in 2023 by the Dedalus Press. Her poetry is widely published and broadcast on RTÉ’s Sunday Miscellany. She is this year's winner of the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition.

Frank McGuinness (Ireland) & Maurice Riordan (Ireland/UK)

10.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

From Buncrana, Donegal, Frank McGuinness worked at the New University of Ulster, Maynooth College and University College Dublin. His plays and versions of European Classical Theatre, published by Faber, have been performed widely and received many awards. O’Brien Press/Bandon published his novels, Arimathea and The Woodcutter And His Family, and his collection of short stories, Paprika. He has published eight volumes of poetry with The Gallery Press, the most recent being May Twenty-Second and The River Crana. He is a member of Aosdána.

Buy May Twenty-Second from The Gallery Press.

“As a dramatist, he’s up there with Friel. As a poet, he fits with Montague and Hewitt, with perhaps a spicing of Longley. He can be lyrical and strident. He is steeped in his home place, its lore and memory.” — Books Ireland

Maurice Riordan was born in Lisgoold, County Cork. His Selected Poems, chosen by Jack Underwood, is published by Faber. He edited The Finest Music (Faber, 2014), an anthology of early Irish poetry in translation, and A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems about Science (Faber, 2000). He has received the Michael Hartnett Award, a Cholmondeley Award and the PEN Translation Prize. He is former editor of The Poetry Review. Riordan taught at Imperial College and Goldsmiths College and is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam University. He lives in London, where he teaches at the Faber Academy.

Buy Selected Poems from Faber.

“Riordan is an exceptionally accomplished herdsman of words, corralling the unexpected into a single field and stoically soaring above his own doubts.” — Kate Kellaway

(Moderator) Dean Browne received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared in London Magazine, New York Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere. His first collection, After Party, will be published by Picador in September.

Image credits: Frank McGuinness photographed by Dominic Martella, Maurice Riordan photographed by Ursula Soltys