Weekend 2013
Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend
Achill Island, Ireland.
May 3rd – May 6th 2013.
Robert Henri Achill reproduction portraits.
Preview exhibition, Áras Forbairt Acla, Crumpaun, Keel.
Official Opening Guest Speaker; Professor Enda McDonagh.
Reverend Professor Enda McDonagh was born and reared in the rural village of Bekan, Co. Mayo. Educated at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Rome and Munich, ordained in 1955, he held the post of Professor of Moral Theology and Canon Law in Maynooth from 1958 to 1995. He has written many books on religious topics, among them Challenges to Theology, The Making of Disciples, Between Chaos and the New Creation, and a moving collection of meditations, The Small Hours of Belief. He has lectured widely in Europe and the USA and Africa. He was official chaplain to Mary Robinson during her term as President and he has served as president of the National Conference of Priests in Ireland. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the National University of Ireland (NUI) in 1999. A member of the NUI senate for 25 years he was appointed chairperson of University College Cork’s (UCC) governing body in January 1999. He also spent time abroad as Visiting Professor/Research fellow at various universities.
8.15pm
Illustrated talk by Valerie Ann Leeds. Robert Henri. From New York to Corrymore.
Valerie Ann Leeds is an independent curator and scholar specializing in the work of Robert Henri and the American Ashcan painters. Her current projects include Spanish Sojourns: Robert Henri and the Spirit of Spain, a travelling exhibition and accompanying publication being organized by the Telfair Museum, Savannah. Recent projects include Road to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland, a travelling exhibition and catalogue produced with the Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina. She was the curator for the first museum exhibition to explore the work of Robert Henri’s portraits, organized with the Orlando Museum of Art in 1994, “My People”: The Portraits of Robert Henri, as well as other publications on Henri: Robert Henri in Santa Fe: His Work and Influence (1998); and Robert Henri: The Painted Spirit (2005) among others. She has organized exhibitions and produced studies on a number of other American artists including on Leon Kroll (1998), Ernest Lawson (2000), William Glackens (2003), Charles Davis (2007), Marguerite Zorach (2007), John Sloan (2009), Georgia O’Keeffe (2010), Edmund Lewandowski (2010), and on the Ashcan painters in Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artist’s Brush with Leisure for the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2007. She received her PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and completed her MA at Syracuse University, and her BA at the University of Rochester. She has held curatorial positions at the Flint Institute of Arts, Orlando Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Saturday May 4th 10.00am
Guided Walk with Eoin Halpin; Corrymore House / Lake. Meet at Waterworks.
Lunch Gielty’s Pub Dooagh .
The walk will explore the area of Croaghaun mountain at Lough Accorrymore. Overlooking Corrymore house where Robert Henri stayed in Achill in 1913 and in the 1920’s.
Eoin Halpin is a professional archaeologist with some 30 years of experience, gained in both Ireland and abroad. In 1989 he co-founded Archaeological Development Services Ltd, one of the first archaeological companies established in Ireland. The company currently has offices in Dublin, Belfast and Kells. Eoin is a full member and ex-chairman of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland and a full member of the Institute for Field Archaeologists, the professional representative body in the UK.
2.00 – 5.00pm Heinrich Böll Cottage open to members of the public.
2.00pm Poetry Reading; Padraig J. Daly / Fiona Sampson / James Harpur/ Harry Clifton. Cyril Gray Hall. Dugort .
Pádraig J. Daly: Born, Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, 1943. Augustinian friar. Working in a Dublin parish. His tenth collection, AfterLife, was published by Dedalus in 2010. His previous collection Clinging to the Myth came in 2007. He has also published several volumes of translations from Irish and from Italian. Translations of his poetry have been made into several European languages and collections have appeared in Italian and Romanian. A book of his translations of Jacopone Da Todi came out in 2008 from Dedalus, together with a re-issue of The Last Dreamers: New and Selected Poems.
Fiona Sampson born in London and was first a concert violinist, then studied at the Universities of Oxford, where she won the Newdigate Prize, and Nijmegen, where she received a PhD in the Philosophy of Language. Her collections of poetry include: Folding the Real (2001); The Distance Between Us (2005); and Common Prayer (2007), short-listed for the 2007 T. S. Eliot Prize. She was short-listed for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) in 2006. Sampson’s translations and edited works have focused on poets from central and south eastern Europe. She co-edited the anthology A Fine Line: New Poetry from Eastern & Central Europe (2004) and in 2002 founded the journal Orient Express, featuring European poets. She has translated work by Estonian poet Jaan Kaplinski: Evening Brings Everything Back (2004, with Jaan Kaplinski) and Israeli poet Amir Or: Day (2006, with Amir Or). She contributes regularly to radio and to a number of publications, including the Guardian, the Irish Times and The Liberal. From 2005 to 2012, she was editor of Britain’s Poetry Review.
James Harpur has had five poetry collections published by Anvil Press. His latest book, Angels and Harvesters (2012), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; The Dark Age (2007) won the Michael Hartnett Award; Oracle Bones (2001) was a Tablet Book of the Year; and The Monk’s Dream (1996) includes the sonnet sequence that won the British National Poetry Competition. Anvil have also published his Fortune’s Prisoner (2007), a translation of the poems of the Roman philosopher Boethius. He is poetry editor of the Temenos Academy Review. www.jamesharpur.com
Harry Clifton was born in Dublin in 1952 and educated at University College Dublin He left Ireland in the nineteen seventies to lecture at a teacher training college in post Civil War Nigeria, and later worked in the Far East administering aid programmes for Indo-Chinese refugees in Thailand. He returned to Ireland in 1982. In 1987 he married the Irish novelist Deirdre Madden and moved to Italy, a time documented in his prose memoir On the Spine of Italy. Subsequently they lived in Switzerland, England and Germany, before settling in Paris for ten years. In 2004, he returned to Ireland, and has been teaching at University College Dublin until last year. His collections of poems include The Desert Route; Selected Poems 1973-1988 and Secular Eden; Paris Notebooks 1994-2004. His work, which has won numerous awards and distinctions, has been translated into several European languages. He believes the true home of the poet is ‘not in a place, but in the language itself.’ He currently holds The Ireland Chair of Poetry. His latest collection The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass, was published by Bloodaxe in 2012.
3.15 pm Illustrated talk by Rene Böll – research work on Cillíní on Achill Island. At Cyril Gray Hall Dugort.
René Böll 1948 Born 31st of July in Cologne, Germany, son of Annemarie and Heinrich Böll. Married with Carmen Alicia Egas ( Ecuadorian), 2 children, 2 grandchildren 1963 – 1970 intensively study of drawing and painting. 1985 Editor of six volumes of Complete letters of Vincent van Gogh since 1988 freelance painter. Since October 2002 Professor h.c. of the Chinese Art Academy Beijing Nationality University. Study trips to Ecuador, Ireland, Russia, Kenya, China, Chile seminars: use of colours, pigment history, European painting techniques, ink painting. Since 1972 many One Person Exhibitions in Galleries, Museums and other institutions in: Chile, China, Czechia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA among others: 1996 Art Hall of China, Beijing, China ; Art Hall of Shandong, Jinan, China ; Dragon Museum, Weifang China; Art Hall Xian, China 1998, Posada des Artes Kingman, Quito, Ecuador. 2000 ” East meets West” Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, Carlisle. P.A. USA together with Sozan Matsuba ( Japan)
2002 University of Limerick, Ireland, 2002 German Embassy, Beijing, China together with Gu Gan 2007. Custom House, Westport, Ireland. 2011 The Landtag (Parliament) of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. 2012 Maison de Heidelberg, Montpellier, Goethe-Institut Toulouse. Work in Progress: On the cilliní on Achill Island, Oilpaintinginstallation and publication. In the present working mainly with East Asian ink, oil, watercolour and silverpoint. Publications: (selection) Die Leere erreichen, The expositions in China, 1996, Doch uns ist gegeben, auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn, Köln, 2008, O Ende meiner Zeit, Redfoxpress, Dugort Achill Island, Ireland, 2009 rene@rene-boell.de www.rene-boell.de www. boll.meinatelier.de
3.50 pm Writing Seminar with Eva Bourke / Gerard Smyth. at Cyril Gray Hall Dugort.
Eva Bourke is originally from Germany but has lived in Ireland most of her life. She has published six collections of poetry, most recently piano (May 2011, Dedalus Press, Dublin), two comprehensive anthologies of contemporary Irish poets in German translation, as well as a collection by the German poet Elisabeth Borchers (Poetry Europe Series, Dedalus Press). Together with Bórbala Fárago she edited an anthology of immigrant poets to Ireland, entitled Landing Places (2010, Dedalus Press). Her work has been translated into many languages, her collections The Latitude of Naples and Piano appeared in Italian translation in 2010 and 2011. She has lectured on poetry and taught creative writing at universities in the United States and Ireland. She teaches in the MFA program at NUI Galway, has received numerous awards and bursaries from the Arts Council and is a member of Aosdána.
Gerard Smyth was born in Dublin in 1951 and began publishing poetry in the late 1960s when his first poems were published by David Marcus in the New Irish Writing Page of The Irish Press and by James Simmons in The Honest Ulsterman. New Writers’ Press published a limited edition small collection, The Flags Are Quiet, in 1969 and another limited, hand-printed edition, Twenty Poems in 1971, followed by Orchestra of Silence, a Tara Telephone publication, also in 1971. Smyth was born and grew up in the old Liberties area of the city which has influenced, and features in, much of the poetry he has written. Another significant, landscape which appears in his poems is the rural area of County Meath where he spent the summers of his childhood and teen years on the small farm on which his mother was born. Smyth has worked all his professional life as a journalist , poetry critic for several years and currently poetry editor at The Irish Times. A member of Aosdana. In 2011 he received the O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award from University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota.
Talk by Tom Mac Namara. Identifying the sitters; Robert Henri’s portraits of children from Dooagh. Áras Forbairt Acla, Crumpaun Keel.
Illustrated Lecture by Deirdre Walsh ”The Art Spirit” Robert Henri focusing on the influence of Robert Henri as teacher. Áras Forbairt Acla, Crumpaun Keel.
Tom Mac Namara has been involved in community initiatives for many years on Achill Island. He has been responsible for reawakening an awareness of the portraits of children from Dooagh village painted by Robert Henri. He has build up knowledge, documentation interviewed surviving sitters of Robert Henri’s portraits. He established and maintained contacts with collectors of Henri’s Achill portraits, and with family members of Robert Henri.
Deirdre Walsh studied painting at The Art Students League of New York from 1988-1991. Her training was greatly influenced by Robert Henri who taught at the League in the 1920’s. She says “His spirit could be felt at the League, and especially in studio 14 where I spent endless hours listening to my instructor Richard Goetz speak of him”. Deirdre works from her studio in Partry. Her landscapes are en plein air with a particular interest in her local Lough Carra. She has exhibited her work in the US and Ireland at the Blue Leaf Gallery Dublin, The Royal Hibernian Academy, and locally at The Linenhall and Customs House Studios. As Artist in Residence with Mayo County Council from 2000-2005 she developed an art programme for older people in care and went on to mentor artists working in that area. She also manages an art programme within the Mayo Mental Health Services.
Deirdre will look at the essential beliefs and theories of the great American painter and teacher Robert Henri. The Art Spirit embodies the entire system of his teaching. His words still continue to influence Deirdre’s work and many artists throughout the world. His book is a jolt of wisdom and inspiration. “There are moments in our lives moments in our day when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this way the arts were invented. Signposts on the way to what may be. Signposts towards greater knowledge.” Robert Henri The Art Spirit.
5.45pm
Opening Portrait exhibition Portraits and Landscapes of Achill Island by Claire Siobhan Walsh. Guest Speaker John F. Deane. Western Light Art Gallery The Sandybanks, Keel.
This exhibition is about Claire Siobhan Walsh’s interpretation of her thoughts and emotions resulting from her first visits to Achill Island. Claire’s work in collage is arresting and rich with interpretation and meaning. Her collages are made with recycled media, she likes to include items that relate to the sitter or the place. She has completed many commissions and this exhibition based on Achill Island represents a new development in her artistic practice. The background to Claire Walsh’s artistic work was in fashion design. She opened her own boutique in south East London in 2005 launching her own fashion label shortly afterwards. She left London and moved to Louisburgh in County Mayo with her family, where she worked as a freelance fashion illustrator. In retrospect she now knows that her engagement with the wonderful Irish countryside and the west in particular was inevitable. A special feature of the Exhibition will be a portrait of John F. Deane, poet and Irish fiction writer produced by Claire Siobhan Walsh. All proceeds from the sale of this portrait will be donated to an Achill Island charity. 098 43325 – e-mail: info@achill-island.com
8.00pm. Lecture and Poetry Reading; Introductions Jack Harte. St. Thomas’s Church. Dugort
Jack Harte was born in Co Sligo, grew up in the midlands, and has lived in Dublin for many years. He pursued many occupations over the years, including Principal of Lucan Community College in Dublin. From schooldays he has been a writer, and has written a wide variety of books. His short story collections, Murphy in the Underworld, Birds and other Tails, and From Under Gogol’s Nose, have been widely acclaimed and translated into Russian, Bulgarian, Hindi, and German. His novel, In the Wake of the Bagger, was the first literary work to have been commissioned under the Irish Government’s Per Cent for Art scheme, and was nominated by a popular handbook as one of the 101 Irish Books you Must Read. His second novel, Reflections in a Tar-Barrel, was published in Bulgaria before it appeared in English and was a major success in that country. His most recent book was a memoir/biography of his cousin and friend, Fred Conlon, the acclaimed Irish sculptor who died in 2005. Jack Harte founded the Irish Writers’ Union and the Irish Writers’ Centre, and was instrumental in engineering the survival of the latter when state support was withdrawn in 2009. His most recent project is Arcana, a book designed for the Internet, to be published in a number of languages around the world simultaneously on 23 April, 2013, UNESCO World Book Night. Further info: www.jackharte.com
Lecture by Maurice Harmon. ‘Lonesome, between times’. The Poetry of John F. Deane. St. Thomas’s Church, Dugort.
‘Lonesome, between times’. The Poetry of John F. Deane. In John F. Deane’s imagination the individual is lonesome, feels isolated, seeks redemption. We may be aware of the promise of redemption, of the return of the soul to God, but at the same time have to endure the pains of existence. In a letter to him his grandmother wrote, ‘I am lonesome, between times’ and this sense of the individual has stayed with him, the awareness of the complexity of existence, joy and love but also pain, disappointment and death. He presents stark evidence of human suffering, in the portrait of the girl who has to endure a terrifying flight, in the desperation of the father on a motorcycle with his two children tied to him as he tries to escape from Israeli missiles, in paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Edouard Munch. Like many others he asks the question, if God is the God of Love why does he allow suffering and why has he made man so ‘contrary’, so capable of sin and cruelty? Deane finds great beauty in the natural world, particularly in Achill with its landscape, stillness and sense of tradition. In the natural world also he finds memorable illustrations of God’s presence.
Maurice Harmon was born in 1930 in Co Dublin. Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature at University College Dublin, he is a distinguished critic, biographer, editor, literary historian, and poet. His published academic work includes Seán Ó Faoláin: A Critical Study; (Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 1966); The Poetry of Thomas Kinsella (Dublin, Wolfhound, 1974/Thomas Kinsella: Designing for the Exact Needs, Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2008); Select Bibliography for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature and Its Backgrounds: An Irish Studies Handbook (Portland, PD Meany, 1977); An Irish Studies Handbook for Anglo-Irish Literature and Its Backgrounds : A Select Bibliography (Wolfhound Press, 1977); Austin Clarke 1896-1974; a Critical Introduction (Merlin Press, 1998); No Author Better Served: The Correspondence between Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Harvard University Press, 1998); and The Colloquy of the Old Men, his translation of Acallam na Senorach, the medieval compendium of stories and poems (Academica Press, 2001). His poetry collections include The Last Regatta, Selected Poems 1988-2000 (Cliffs of Moher, Salmon. 2000). The Doll with Two Backs (Salmon, 2004); The Mischievous Boy (Salmon, 2008); and When Love is Not Enough; New & Selected Poems (Salmon, 2010). Most recent collection is Loose Connections, (Salmon 2012).
Sunday May 5th .
9.00am. 11.00. am
Guided Walk. Inishbiggle Island: Guided walk Sheila Mc Hugh History, Religious, Social Traditions of Inishbiggle island. Meet BullsMouth pier. ( Advance booking Essential Boat supplement €20).
Talk by Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford – history of Church of Ireland Inishbiggle.
Poetry Reading by John F Deane. Snow falling on Chestnut Hill: New & Selected Poems.
John F. Deane is a vital and generous presence in Irish poetry. New and Selected Poems gathers work from Deane’s five previous Carcanet collections, alongside a new sequence, Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill. Written with an inquiring intelligence, these poems of a dozen years meditate on the relevance of Christian spirituality to our troubled times. Each of the twelve poems in the title sequence presents a movement of the spirit, from the author’s childhood in the west of Ireland, through the death of a wife, to the birth of a grandchild. Arranged in the manner of an orchestral symphony, each section takes its cue from a different piece of music, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to Mozart’s ‘Laudate Dominum’. The sequence traces, phase by phase, the development of a Christian life. Faith, in its broadest sense, is inflected by imagination.
Born Achill Island 1943; founded Poetry Ireland and The Poetry Ireland Review, 1979; Published several collections of poetry and some fiction; Won the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry, the Marten Toonder Award for Literature, Golden Key award from Serbia, Laudomia Bonanni Prize from L’Aquila, Italy. Shortlisted for both the T.S.Eliot prize and The Irish Times Poetry Now Award, won residencies in Bavaria, Monaco and Paris. He is a member of Aosdána . His recent poetry collections: Eye of the Hare came from Carcanet 2011. Snow falling on Chestnut Hill: New & Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in October 2012. His latest fiction is a novel, Where No Storms Come, published by Blackstaff in 2010. He is current editor of Poetry Ireland Review. His selected poems have been published in Slovak translation, in Bratislava, Slovakia, 2013.
Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Religion, Theology and Ecumenics in Trinity College Dublin, teaching on the MTh course in theology. He studied theology at the Irish School of Ecumenics, TCD, Kimmage Manor, Maynooth and Cambridge. He received the Oulton Prize for Patristic Studies in 2008. He worked for 30 years as a journalist and is a former Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times. He is the author and co-author of many books, and has written for many Church History and Theology journals. He has been a regular visitor to Achill since 1980. His paper at Scoil Acla in 1996 on Edward Nangle and the Achill Mission was published as “Edward Nangle (1799-1883), The Achill Missionary in a New Light in two parts in Cathair na Mairt”, the journal of the Westport Historical Society (No. 18 1998 and No 19 1999). Another version was published as ‘Edward Nangle (1799–1883): the Achill Missionary in a New Light’ in Search 22/2 (1999). His study of the Church of Ireland clergy of Co Mayo in 1798, “Bishop Joseph Stock (ca 1740–1813) and the Clergy of the Diocese of Killala and Achonry during the 1798 Rising”, was published in Victory or Glorious Defeat (ed Sheila Mulloy, 2010).He is a director of the Anglican mission agency Us (previously USPG), has a monthly column in two diocesan magazines, is a regular contributor to television and radio programmes, and is a daily blogger:
www.revpatrickcomerford.blogspot.com
12.00 pm
Poetry Readings. Paddy Bushe / Eva Bourke / Jan Wagner/.
Introductions Mechtild Manus Director Goethe-Institut Irland. Island Church Inishbiggle.
Mechtild Manus is the director of the Goethe-Institut in Dublin. Her previous assignments with the Goethe-Institut include posts in Alexandria (Egypt), Jakarta (Indonesia), Lisbon (Portugal), Munich (Germany) and Montreal (Canada). Mechtild Manus developed and realised the exhibition “Picturing Landscape Architecture.” which toured ten cities in Canada, Germany and Switzerland from 2006 to 2012. Together with seven cultural organisations in Canada she conceived of the interdisciplinary series “Noise and Silence” which ran from 2007 to 2009. In partnership with the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen/Germany she organised an exchange about Climate Culture with participants from Germany, Canada, the United States and Mexico in 2010 and 2011. In November 2012 the Goethe-Institut in Ireland received the Multicultural Award “for promoting discussion on the challenges and opportunities connected with migration. (providing) a multi-faceted perspective” (MAMA Award of Dublin City, An Post and Metro Éireann).
Paddy Bushe was born in Dublin in 1948. His poetry collections include Poems With Amergin (Dublin, Beaver Row Press, 1989); Teanga (Baile Átha Cliath, Coiscéim, 1990); Counsellor (Kerry, Sceilg Press, 1991); Digging Towards The Light (Dublin, Dedalus Press, 1994); In Ainneoin na gCloch (Coiscéim, 2001); Hopkins on Skellig Michael (Dublin, Dedalus Press, 2001); The Nitpicking of Cranes (Dedalus, 2004); To Ring in Silence, new and selected poems (Dedalus, 2008); and My Lord Buddha of Carraig Eanna (Dedalus Press, 2012). The recipient of the Oireachtas prize for poetry in 2006, Paddy Bushe was also the recipient of the 2006 Michael Hartnett Poetry Award.A member of Aosdána, he lives in Kerry.
Jan Wagner was born 1971 in Hamburg and has been living in Berlin since 1995. Poet, essayist, translator of Anglo-American poetry and, until 2003, co-publisher of the international literature box Die Aussenseite des Elementes (The Outside of the Element). He has published the poetry collections Probebohrung im Himmel (A Trial Drill in the Sky“; Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2001), Guerickes Sperling (Guericke’s Sparrow, Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2004), Achtzehn Pasteten (”Eighteen Pies”, Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2007) and Australien (“Australia”, Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2010) and, as translator and editor, collections of selected poems by James Tate, Matthew Sweeney, Simon Armitage, and Robin Robertson. With the poet Björn Kuhligk he edited the comprehensive anthology of young German language poetry Lyrik von Jetzt. 74 Stimmen („Poetry of Now. 74 voices“, Dumont Verlag, Cologne 2003). A selection of his essays, Die Sandale des Propheten. Beiläufige Prosa (”The Prophet’s Sandal. Incidental Prose”), was published in 2011 by Berlin Verlag, the book Die Eulenhasser in den Hallenhäusern. Drei Verborgene (”The Owl-Haters in the Hallhouses. Three Concealed Poets”) in 2012 by Hanser Berlin Verlag. For his poetry he has received various scholarships (most recently 2011 in the German Academy in Rome/Villa Massimo, among others) and literary awards, among them the Anna-Seghers-Award (2004), the Ernst-Meister-Award for Poetry (2005), the Wilhelm- Lehmann-Award (2009), the Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis of the city of Tübingen (2011) and the Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis (2011).
Lunch at school building.
Return to Achill.
Talk by Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford .
‘The poet as theologian, the theologian as poet’ … a theologian’s engagement with John F. Deane.
Theology is often presented as philosophical narrative and discourse, or as liturgy and church history. But history recalls other ways of doing theology: Bach saw himself as a theologian working through music; modern writers in fiction such as Susan Howatch and Catherine Fox are having a major impact on Anglican theology; and the architect AWN Pugin is considered by some as a liturgist working in stone. But there has always been a deep interplay between poetry and theology. The poetry of the Old Testament includes not only the Psalms but many parts of Isaiah and other books. The poetry of the New Testament is often lost in translation. Professor Patrick Comerford, an Irish Anglican theologian, draws deeply on the writings of novelists like Catherine Fox and Susan Howatch and poets like George Herbert, John Donne and TS Eliot in his work. This evening, he engages with the poetry of John F Deane, and asks us to play in our minds and in our hearts with the ways poetry can be theology and theology can be poetry.
4.45 pm.
Poetry Reading; Maurice Harmon / Harry Clifton / Gerard Smyth / James Harpur / Padraig J. Daly/ Jacques Rancourt Bunnacurry School.
Jacques Rancourt was born in Quebec in 1946 and has lived in Paris since 1971. A PhD in French Literature from La Sorbonne, he has published some twenty books of poetry and artist books, essays and anthologies of contemporary poetry plus translations from English and Spanish. Since the beginning of the eighties, he has been director of the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie and of the magazine La Traductière. A wide choice of his poems 1974-2008 was published in 2010 under the title Veilleur sans sommeil (preface by Henri Meschonnic, co-edited by Le Noroît in Montreal and Le Temps des Cerises in Paris). He’s done extensive translations from English, including The Distribution of Bodies and Gravitations, by John F. Deane, Les Pièces du Paysage/The Landscape Pieces, by Susan Wicks an choice of poems by the Australian poet Alex Skovron, to be published by PEN Australia in the first months of 2013.
Monday May 6th 10.00am.
1.00pm
Guided Walk. Bunnacurry Monastery Site. Meet Bunnacurry School.
Poetry readings on site. Jacques Rancourt / John F Deane / Fiona Sampson / Jan Wagner / Paddy Bushe.
Lunch at Ted Lavelles.