Poetry as Commemoration - Creative Writing Workshops

Participants should attend both workshops on 12th and 19th July.

The first will examine and discuss the materials, the second will focus on forging creative responses. Participants who have family stories or materials relating to the revolutionary period are invited to share these, but no family connection is necessary and all are welcome.

Poetry as Commemoration aims to encourage a greater understanding of our shared past through creative engagement with archival materials. These include letters, accounts, diaries, manuscripts, photographs and newspapers held in libraries and archives across the island of Ireland. Such documents provide a tangible link with the past and can be emotive and inspiring.

Catherine Ann Cullen was the inaugural Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland 2019-21 and is an award-winning poet, songwriter and children’s writer. She is a recipient of the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship. Catherine Ann has written for and performed in the cabarets Eastrogen Rising, celebrating the women of 1916, and Revolting Women, marking 100 years of women’s suffrage, for the Five Lamps and the Dublin Gay Theatre Festivals. She is currently working on a project with artist Eoin Mac Lochlainn to remember the 1,400 people who died in the Irish Civil War. Her works include The Other Now: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus 2016). Her seventh book, The Song of Brigid’s Cloak, will be published by Beehive in October.

Poetry of Commemoration/Cuimhní Fileata is an initiative of the Irish Poetry Reading Archive at UCD in partnership with Poetry Ireland, supported by the Dept of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, under the Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 programme. for more information see https://www.poetryascommemoration.ie