The Cork International Poetry Festival will be taking place from the 10th to 14th February. This will be my second year attending the festival. Last year, I was only able to make it for one evening where I saw the amazing Liz Berry read with Don Share – what an introduction! After the reading everyone retired to the bar. If the roof collapsed in the place, it would have wiped out 90% of Ireland’s poets!
This year, I’ll be reading for about 8 minutes as part of the Gregory O’Donoghue Prizegiving readings. I was one of a few entrants selected to read at this event and I’m absolutely thrilled. I’ve decided to spend a bit more time at the festival this year and am taking a personal vacation day from work to get down to Cork on the Friday and I’ll be spending two nights.
The programme can be seen here and I’m going to try and catch as much of it as possible. I’ll be sorry to miss the early part of the festival, but work calls! Some of the readers at the festival have been very kind to me over the last few years so I’ll be making a special effort to see them in action. Here are a couple of the readings I’m going to go to see:
12th February: Patrick Kavanagh Award winners’ reading with John Fitzgerald & John Mee 4PM. Venue: Cork Central Library
I’ve met both Johns at different events (Fitzgerald at the Hennessy Awards and Mee at the Kavanagh) and it’s great to see that the two of them will be reading their work together.
12th February: IMRAM: Cork City in Music & Song with Liam Ó Muirthile, Louis de Paor, & Thomas McCarthy 10PM. Venue: Cork Arts Theatre
Thomas McCarthy has been very kind to me. He met me for a day and brought me all around the Jewish parts of Cork. He also lent me a number of books to read. I have been trying to get them back to him and can’t get in touch so I’ll have to doorstep him at this event!
I’m making sure to go and see as many poets as possible and am looking forward to meeting up with anyone I know along the way.