Workshop and reading at Boyle Arts Festival

There's lots happening in Boyle this summer. Their Arts Festival is growing more ambitious every year. Not to miss if you possibly can.

I'm involved in two events both on Saturday 23rd July

A workshop - register now! And a reading. A poetry-packed afternoon.

2pm Poetry workshop with Kate Dempsey ; Memory, €10

Boyle Enterprise Centre

Poetry’s oldest duty is preservation. The life we live eludes us as we live it, and when we are old we cannot credit what we have lost — measured by the fragments that we keep – Donald Hall

Memories are increasing disposable in our throwaway society of soundbites and changeable fashion, process, ideas and images. Too many things are about speed up, speed up, newer, better, shinier. But these very memories we have are potentially a rich source of inspiration for writing. We can preserve the moments, places, people, thoughts and relationships, be they beautiful, mundane or uncomfortable, by capturing them in poems, to hold and to keep.

This workshop is for anyone who would like to begin to write poetry or for those who already have some memories captured on paper. It will be a safe, supporting environment so you can leave with the draft of at least one piece of writing with energy and confidence.

Link here

Then a quick trot over to Druminilra Farm Kitchen

4pm Reading with Gerry Boland, Elaine Gaston and Kate Dempsey

Gerry Boland will read from his recently-published second collection, In the Space Between.

Elaine Gaston's debut collection ‘The Lie of the Land’ was published with Doire Press in July 2015 and she currently has work in The Yellow Nib, Poetry Ireland Review: the rising generation, The Stinging Fly and The Ogham Stone.

Kate Dempsey’s poetry is published in many journals in Ireland and the UK. She runs the Poetry Divas, a glittery collective of women poets who blur the wobbly boundary between page and stage. Her debut collection, The Space Between, was published by Doire Press in 2016.

Link here