Thursday, May 15th

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).

Maurice Devitt (Ireland) & Thomas Dillon Redshaw (USA)

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free

Born in Dublin, Maurice Devitt completed an MA in Poetry Studies at Mater Dei following a 30-year career in insurance and banking. His debut collection Growing Up in Colour was published by Doire Press in 2018, and his second collection Some of These Stories are True came out in May 2023. Maurice is the chairperson of The Hibernian Writers’ Group, and his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology of the group’s work published by Alba Publishing in 2015. He is curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies Facebook page where he posts featured poems, news and poetry articles daily.

Buy Some of These Stories are True from Doire Press.

“Some of These Stories are True contains many worlds, including a rich inner world, the world of work, the world of innocence, childhood and the past … often philosophical, sometimes playful – the narrative voice offers us a view of the familiar and everday in a new light.” — Jean O’Brien

Thomas Dillon Redshaw is the founding editor of New Hibernia Review (1996—2006) and the former editor of Eire-Ireland (1974—1995). He is the author of numerous essays on the poetry of John Montague, and on the poetry of Brian Coffey, John F. Deane, James Liddy, Thomas McCarthy, and George Reavey. He has published extensively on Liam Miller’s Dolmen Press, as well as on The Gallery Press. His most recent collections are Ago: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2024) and Heart Walk (Brighthorse Books, 2024).

Buy Ago: New and Selected Poems from Salmon Poetry.

“Ago pays homage to those in life who have been ‘caught’ in mortality’s net. With the luster and simplicity of a fine glaze on a porcelain bowl, these poems capture luminous moments from an ongoing darkness that ‘we will travel into but not return from.” — Leslie Miller

(Moderator) David McLoghlin is the author of three collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry, most recently Crash Centre, described by Thomas McCarthy as “unquestionably triumphant with poetic victories.” He received a Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship in 2023, won the Open category of The Voices of War International Poetry Competition in 2018, and teaches creative writing widely online and across Ireland.

Alvy Carragher (Ireland) & Keith Payne (Ireland/Spain)

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free

Alvy Carragher grew up by the River Shannon in Galway and Tipperary and has since lived in Louisiana, Dublin, South Korea, and Canada. She is currently based in Dublin. Her previous collections, Falling in love with broken things (2016) and The men I keep under my bed (2021), were published by Salmon Poetry. What Remains the Same was published by The Gallery Press in 2024. She is a recipient of an Arts Council Literary Bursary and has an MA in Writing from the University of Galway.

Buy What Remains the Same from The Gallery Press and visit the poet's website.

“A skilful and sensitive poet who possesses a high degree of psychological insight and tact, and her portrayal of the emotional undercurrents between people is at the same time forceful and subtle.” — Eva Bourke

Keith Payne is the author of ten collections of poetry in translation and original poetry, most recently Savage Acres (Dedalus Press, April 2025). Building the Boat (Badly Made Books), was featured on BBC Radio 3’s The Essay and Whales and Whales, from the Galician of Luisa Castro, was published by Skein Press in April 2024. He is curator of the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange Ireland/Galicia and shares his time between Ireland and Galicia.

Buy Savage Acres from Dedalus Press.

“Savage Acres is a terrain, a place of flow, where everyday things lead to unexpected moments of the sublime. Every page contains brilliance and life.” — Adrian Duncan

(Moderator) Afric McGlinchey is a multi-award-winning poet and author of Tied to the Wind (Broken Sleep Books, 2021), a prose poetry childhood memoir, for which she was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary. A Macedonian translation is forthcoming in 2025. Two poetry collections were translated into Italian. Her new collection, À la belle étoile (Salmon Poetry) appears in April 2025.

Susannah Dickey (Northern Ireland) & Jaki McCarrick (Ireland)

7.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Susannah Dickey is a writer from Derry. She is the author of two novels, Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022), both published by Doubleday UK and Penguin Ireland. Her debut poetry collection, ISDAL, was published in 2023 by Picador and was the winner of the PEN Heaney Prize, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the John Pollard Prize, and was an Irish Times and Guardian Book of the Year. Her third novel, To Pieces, will be published by Bloomsbury in spring 2026.

Buy ISDAL from Pan Macmillan and find her Novels at Penguin.

“A body of work that raises important questions and makes you question yourself and everything you have been told. Surreal, thoughtful, and surprisingly playful.” — Belfast Telegraph

Winner of the Papatango Prize for New Writing for her play Leopoldville, Jaki McCarrick’s play Belfast Girls was developed at the National Theatre Studio, London and has been staged many times internationally, premiering in New York in 2022 at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Jaki’s short story collection The Scattering was shortlisted for the 2014 Edge Hill Prize and includes the Wasafiri Prize-winning story, ‘The Visit’. She was Writer in Residence at the Centre Cultural Irlandais in Paris (2013), and at the University of Leuven, Belgium (2022). Her debut poetry collection, Sweeney as a Girl (April 2025) is from Dedalus Press. She is currently writing a new play.

Buy Sweeney as a Girl from Dedalus Press and visit the poet's webpage.

Throughout, the various roles of daughter, writer, friend, lover and neighbour are interrogated, with more than once a voice (from mythology or history or the world of art) delivering a surprising new perspective on what we thought we knew or took for granted.

(Moderator) Róisín Leggett Bohan was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2024. Her work appears in PIR, Banshee, Magma, Aesthetica, and The Pomegranate London. She has several poems in Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland, a Dedalus Press anthology and poems forthcoming in The Stinging Fly. Róisín is grateful for a literature bursary from the Arts Council.

Ciaran Berry (Ireland/USA) & James Harpur (Ireland/UK)

8.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Ciaran Berry’s newest collection is States, which will be published by The Gallery Press in May, 2025. His earlier books are Liner Notes (2018), The Dead Zoo (2013), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and The Sphere of Birds (2008), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, a Whiting Award, the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. He grew up in Carna, Co. Galway and Falcarragh, Co. Donegal and currently lives in Hartford, Connecticut where he teaches in the English Department at Trinity College.

States will be available from The Gallery Press.

“He can enter imaginatively into the life of a hive of bees or the death of a rogue elephant, and he holds the door open for the reader. Memorable as these poems are, it is not enough to have read them – you want to be reading them, back in the world of this poet’s voice.” — Helen Dunmore

James Harpur’s latest book is The Gospel of Gargoyle (Eblana Press): a poet residing in Paris has a series of dreams in which he flies to the rooftop of Notre-Dame and meets a gargoyle. But not any old gargoyle: this one can speak, and Gargoyle and Poet become unlikely companions, bound by a pact: in return for the poet’s conversations and poems on the great questions of life, Gargoyle promises to reveal the answer to the question obsessing Poet: who or what caused the great fire of Notre-Dame in 2019. James Harpur has published nine books of poems and won a number of prizes, including the UK National Poetry Competition and the Michael Hartnett Prize. He is a member of Aosdána and lives in West Cork.

Buy The Gospel of Gargoyle from Eblana Press and visit the poet's website.

“The Gospel of Gargoyle is a mighty dialogue of self and soul, a drama, a small epic … The ending is a little electric shock.” — Penelope Buckley

(Moderator) David McLoghlin is the author of three collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry, most recently Crash Centre, described by Thomas McCarthy as “unquestionably triumphant with poetic victories.” He received a Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship in 2023, won the Open category of The Voices of War International Poetry Competition in 2018, and teaches creative writing widely online and across Ireland.

Jane Clarke (Ireland) & Pádraig Ó Tuama (Ireland)

10.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Jane Clarke is the author of three poetry collections, The River (2015), When the Tree Falls (2019) and A Change in the Air (2023) published by Bloodaxe Books. She edited the illustrated anthology Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect (Hachette Books Ireland, 2023). She received an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary Award in 2024 for the completion of her fourth collection. Her most recent collection, A Change in the Air, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023 and the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023.

Buy A Change in the Air from Bloodaxe Books and visit the poet's website.

“The poems that make up A Change in the Air manage to crystallise entire galaxies of feeling into short lyrices, even within singular lines, as if each word has been weighed by hand for value.” — Emily Driver

Pádraig Ó Tuama is an internationally recognised poet, podcaster, and the best-selling anthologist of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (Canongate, 2022). His most recent collection is Kitchen Hymns (CHEERIO Publishing) and previous collections include In the Shelter, Sorry for Your Troubles, and Feed the Beasts, whose meditations on identity, sexuality, religion, and Irishness have propelled him to widespread acclaim in circles of poetry, politics, religion, conflict resolution, and psychotherapy. Having worked in conflict resolution for many years, he now presents the podcast Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios, which has amassed over sixteen million downloads since its launch in 2020. He splits his time between Belfast and New York City.

Buy Kitchen Hymns from CHEERIO Publishing and visit the poet's website.

“There is an open-hearted, open-handed quality to these poems. An unembarrassed grappling with the big questions; with awe, with doubt, with religiosity in the truest and broadest sense of that word – a consideration of that which binds, of that which restores the part to the whole.” — Keiran Goddard

(Moderator) Liz Quirke is a poet and lecturer in creative writing. Salmon Poetry published The Road, Slowly in 2018 and How We Arrive in Winter in 2021. She is currently finishing her third collection of poetry and working on a creative-nonfiction project. She was awarded a PhD by University of Galway in 2022 and teaches creative writing (poetry) in UCC.