About 15 years ago, I went to my local writing group as a sort of spy. Rozz sent me as she was interested in joining and she wanted me to go and check it wasn’t full of weirdos. Some of those weirdos are our closest friends and that writing group is responsible for my two books of poetry, including Jewtown, my debut collection. Today it is part of an exhibition of Irish Jewish identity in the Samuel Bak museum in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Jewtown was released in 2016 by my wonderful publishers, Doire Press, and they and the book have been good to me. It’s a book that charts Jewish people who fled Lithuania in the 1800s and ended up in Cork. In ways it charts my family’s journey, but I hope it speaks to anyone who comes from a migrant background.
I have found myself reading in San Francisco and London and in almost every county in Ireland at festivals such as Strokestown and the Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas. I have shared a stage with some amazing writers, artists and musicians.
The exhibition was launched last night (12th December) with a documentary by the hugely talented Hannah Bloom, a film- maker who followed ethnically Jewish artists living in Ireland trying to understand why or how their ethnicity comes into their work. Despite all of us being recorded separately, it was interesting that we all, more or less, said the same thing: we are lucky to be Irish.
If you happen to find yourself in Vilnius, you could do worse than to pop into the Samuel Bak museum and see how Irish Jews have been influenced by their respective art. It’s fascinating and funny and it’s been put together with genuine fondness. The exhibition will be on show until March 2025.
My exhibit examines Jewtown and my relationship with Cork City. Some of my poems have been translated into Lithuanian, which is a special feeling. There are photos of my family, of my notes and other little tidbits. It’s a strange, humbling and exciting feeling to be part of a story. I’m very lucky I met those weirdos.