Wednesday, April 01, 2009

If you're sitting comfortably... Readings by Dedalus poets, April-May 2009


There are reading venues, and there are Reading Venues. Poets have long learned to make do with the former, but every now and then the door that creaks open at the end of the corridor proves to lead, not into a damp cellar or the box bedroom-sized upstairs room of the pub (where, judging by the mattress and sleeping bag in one corner, the owner / manager is himself planning to spend the night), but into a room like this one here.

The Boston Athenaeum, as it happens, where Dedalus poet Mary O'Donoghue will be choosing from the high stools at 12 Noon on May 6th (2009), should you happen to be in the vicinity and want to hear one of the finest younger talents on the Dedalus list.

Establishing something of a Dedalus tradition (or statement of intent) is Fred Marchant the following week, who reads in the same venue and same slot on June 3rd, to launch his latest from Graywolf, The Looking House. We send him our best through the transatlantic ether. (Further details on The Looking House here.)

Trying not to be too envious, meanwhile, will be the other Dedalus poets out and about over the Spring period (April being perhaps not always the cruelest month):

25 April, 11 a.m. Patrick Deeley reads (with Leontia Flynn) at Cúirt in Galway. (Download festival programme in pdf format here)

21 MAY
Enda Wyley reads from her new collection of poems, To Wake to This, at Galway Library, together with Cristina Galvin and Eamonn Bonner. Organised by Over the Edge. 6.30 to 8.30 pm.

3 book covers

26 MAY
Dublin launch of 3 new collections by Dedalus poets: Tolstoy in Love by Ray Givans, Frog Spotting by Peggy O'Brien and To Wake to This by Enda Wyley. 7.00 pm. Irish Writers' Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1 (see map).


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26 MAY
Michael Augustin reads at the Setmana de Poesia de Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain.

01 JUNE
Ray Givans reads from his debut collection of poems, Tolstoy in Love, at The Black Box, 18-22 Hill Street, Belfast BT1 2LA, 7.00 pm.

The most welcome sight for the poet, of course -- even more than that of an elegant stanza, as it were -- is one in which at least some of the upholstery is blocked from view by members of an audience. In short, all are welcome, and bring a friend.