Cork International Poetry Festival

Director's Welcome

It is true. Poetry can attract odd characters. Notorious genocidal maniacs such as Mao Tse Dong, Stalin and Radovan Karadžić all identified themselves as poets, although their literary achievements never matched those of the poets who were among the millions that suffered under them. The oddest characters now populate the executive government of the United States of America, though thankfully, thus far, none of them has attempted to inflict mediocre poetry on us. On the contrary, poetry appears to be one of the last redoubts which can effectively resist the lies, distortions of truth, denial of feeling that are the hallmarks of authoritarians and despots. Great poetry can do this because great poetry keeps language new, free of the staleness of sloganeering, the jeering (composed of set combinations of words) thoughtlessly trotted out like a preprogrammed macro. Rehearsed speech full of cliches, utterable without aforethought, is consequently hollowed-out of meaning and feeling, yet curiously capable of provoking kneejerk reactions in individuals who do not have the time or training to pause and analyse what they have just heard.
The opportunity to learn how to think deeply about what you say and what others say to you is afforded to anyone through engagement with poetry. And at the Cork International Poetry Festival you will have the opportunity to engage with some of the great contemporary geniuses now working in language, in English, Irish, Turkish and other tongues too. The poets here not only address the most essential human concerns of love, aging and grieving, but many too engage with the most crucial socio-political issues of today. Look inside this festival catalogue to discover someone essential, someone you could otherwise be missing.

— Patrick Cotter, poet, festival director

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