The Poetry Line Live At Bealtaine

Join us for a live reading and open mic in celebration of The Poetry Line as part of the Bealtaine Festival.

Featured readers will include Anne Tannam, current Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland, Nandi Jola, Lani O Hanlon with musical guests ,singers and songwriters Leslie Dowdall of In Tua Nua and Mark Caplis.

More about our guests;

Anne Tannam is the current Poet in Residence with Poetry Ireland. She is author of three poetry collections: Take This Life (Wordonthestreet 2011), Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor (Salmon Poetry 2017) and Twenty-six Letters of a New Alphabet (Salmon Poetry 2021), With the support of a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland, Anne's fourth collection dismantle is forthcoming with Salmon Poetry in April 2024. Also a spoken word poet, Anne has performed her work at festivals such as Lingo and Electric Picnic in Ireland, Bhopal International Poetry Festival in India, The International Poetry Festival in Kosovo, and The Craw Festival in Berlin.

NANDI JOLA is a South African born poet, storyteller and playwright, as well as a Smock Alley Theatre Rachel Baptiste 2022 Programme recipient. She was a creative writing facilitator for Ulster University Books Beyond Boundaries NI in 2021. Her one woman play ‘The Journey’ opened the International Literature Festival Dublin in October, 2020. She represented Northern Ireland at the Transpoesie Poetry Festival in 2021 and is a commissioned poet for Poetry Jukebox, Ambiguities, a James Joyce programme of the Centre Culturel Irlandais and Impermanence Way Archive Project 2022. She is graduated with an MA in Poetry from Queen’s University Belfast.

Lani O’Hanlon is a dance/ movement artist and writer living in a renovated cottage beside the sea. She teaches meditative, somatic movement and creative writing with The Arts Office, Waterford City and County and Waterford Healing Arts. Winner of the Poetry Ireland Trocaire Award in 2022 and selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions in 2020, her poetry is widely published and broadcast on RTÉ’s Sunday Miscellany. She performs her poetry with Wildsong and with director Fiona Aryan on award-winning poetry films. Other prizes include the Hennessey New Irish Writing, the Dromineer Literary Festival and Poetry on the Lake. Lani received an Agility Award from The Arts Council in 2022 and a Participatory Project Award in 2023.

Leslie Dowdall was the lead singer of the trad/rock group In Tua Nua during the 1980s. She released several successful solo albums in the late 1990s including Wonderful Thing and No Guilt No Guile. The band members celebrated their 40th anniversary as a group during a tour in 2023. She is also involved in teaching young people through Music Generation Wicklow and Songcraft. Her contributions to Irish music have left a lasting impact, and her journey as a singer-songwriter continues to inspire others.

Mark Caplice is a multi-award-winning artist/songwriter/producer from the foothills of the Wicklow mountains, Ireland. Mark's work has been heard by over 200,000,000 people worldwide and places his love of words and stories at the forefront of his writing. Along with producing and featuring tracks for Netflix and major tv shows, Mark's work has received wide radio and tv coverage in numerous different countries.