Strokestown International Poetry Festival 2008/Féile Filíochta Bhéal Átha na mBuillí 2008

 The May 2008 festival was another magnificent weekend of poetry and fun. We welcomed many new faces to Strokestown, and were delighted to see so many old friends returning, particularly from overseas. Strokestown has its own unique atmosphere and ethos: all the poetry readings are free, and our generous local sponsors provide stunning venues and convivial receptions. Our programme of events is below. Have a look at the photo gallery, too, to get a glimpse of Ireland's most poetic poetry festival.

Timetable of events  ~  2nd - 5th May 2008
Friday 2 May 2008  
7.30 pm Percy French Hotel Schools Poetry Competition
8.00pm Percy French Hotel Official Opening
Introduction by Pat Compton, Chairman of the Strokestown Poetry Festival
8.15pm Percy French Hotel

Announcement and presentation of The Political Satire  Awards with Margaret Hickey
9.30 pm
 		Percy French Hotel

Official Opening Reception, sponsored by Hanly’s Spar Supermarket and The Percy French Hotel
  

Night Various pubs Heats of the pub poetry competition
Saturday 3 May 2008  
10.15am Strokestown Park House

Readings by shortlisted poets: Peggy Gallagher, Hugh O’Donnell, Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird
11.30 am Strokestown Park House Readings by shortlisted poets: Orlagh O’Farrell, Simon O’Faoláin, Iggy McGovern
1.00pm Strokestown Park House

Garden tour with John O'Driscoll

2.30pm Strokestown Park House Readings: James Harpur, Ciaran Carson

4.30pm Strokestown Park House

Announcement and Presentation of The Strokestown Irish/Scottish Gaelic Poetry Awards.
7.30pm Strokestown Park House

Reading: Christopher Whyte, Mary O’Donnell, Harry Clifton

Night Various pubs

Heats of the pub poetry competition  

Sunday 4 May 2008  
10.15am Strokestown Park House Readings by shortlisted poets:  Tony Barnstone, David Grubb, Jane Routh
11.30am Strokestown Park House Readings by shortlisted poets::Ian McEwen, William Palmer, K.V. Skene and guest poet Kieran Furey
1.15 Percy French Hotel Reading: Tommy Murray reads a selection of  favourite popular poems
2.15pm Strokestown Park House Readings: Fred Johnston, Gréagóir Ó Dúill
3.30pm
 		Strokestown Park House Readings: George Szirtes, Vona Groarke, Peter Fallon
7.00pm Strokestown Park House Strokestown Choral Group
7.30pm Strokestown Park House

Strokestown International Poetry Prizes, with judges George Szirtes, Vona Groarke, Peter Fallon
Followed by the official prize giving reception, sponsored by Westward Scania
Night Pub, to be announced Final of Pub Poetry Competition
Monday 5 May 2008  
11.00 am
Guided walk on Sliabh  Bán with Pat Compton

READERS' BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Ciaran Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast, where he lives. In October 2003 he was appointed Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of ten collections of poems, including The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti, The Twelfth of Never, First Language, Opera Et Cetera and Breaking News, which was awarded the 2003 Forward Prize. The Midnight Court, his translation of Brian Merriman's poem, appeared in April 2005. His prose books include Last Night's Fun, a book about traditional music; The Star Factory; Fishing for Amber and Shamrock Tea, a novel. He has won several literary awards, including the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His translation of Dante's Inferno (2002) was awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize.His translation of The Táin was published in 2007. His most recent collection is For All We Know.

Harry Clifton was born in Dublin, but has lived in Africa and Asia, as well as more recently in Europe. He has published five collections of poems including The Liberal Cage (1988) and The Desert Route: Selected Poems 1973–1988 (1992)and Night Train Through the Brenner. Among many awards, he has received the Kavanagh Award and was an International Fellow at Iowa University. His poems have been translated into several European languages, and Le Canto d'Ulysse, his selected poems in French, was published in 1996. He returned to Ireland in 2004, and now teaches at University College Dublin.Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994-2004 was published by Wake Forest University Press in 2007.
 
Peter Fallon is a poet and publisher of the leading Irish publisher, The Gallery Press. His own collections of poems include The Speaking Stones (1978), Winter Work (1983), The News and Weather (1987), Eye to Eye (1992), his selected poems, News of the World, (1993 and 1998)and The Company of Horses (2007).The Georgics of Virgil, a translation, was published in September 2004. In 1990 he edited, with Derek Mahon, the best-selling anthology The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry. Peter Fallon received the 1993 O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the Irish American Cultural Institute. In 2003 he was elected to Aosdána. He lives with his family in Loughcrew in County Meath.

Vona Groarke was born in 1964. Her poetry collections with The Gallery Press include Shale (1994), Other People's Houses (1999), Flight (2002), shortlisted for the Forward Prize (UK) in 2002 and winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2003, and Juniper Street (2005). In 2004 Flight and Earlier Poems was published by Wake Forest University Press in the US. Poetry Prizes include the Hennessy Award, the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize and the first  Strokestown International Poetry Award. She now lives with her family in Manchester where she teaches creative writing at Manchester University.

James Harpur has published four collections of poetry, including A Vision of Comets (Anvil Press, 1993), The Monk's Dream (Anvil Press, 1996), Oracle Bones (Anvil Press, 2001) and his most recent, The Dark Age (2007). He studied Classics and then English at Trinity College, Cambridge. Awards for his poetry include the 1995 British National Poetry prize and bursaries from Cork Arts, the Arts Council, the Eric Gregory Trust and the Society of Authors. His non-fiction books include Love Burning in the Soul, an introduction to Christian mystics and Boethius: Fortune's Prisoner. He lives in Co. Cork.

Fred Johnston was born in Belfast in 1951. He runs the Western Writers' Centre, Galway (www.twwc.ie) His most recent publications are the novel, set in Paris, The Neon Rose, published last year by Bluechrome, UK, and the collection of poems, his eighth, The Oracle Room, published in October 2007 from Cinnamon Poetry, UK. He occasionally reviews new poetry for a number of journals. Writing in French, he has published poems in a variety of magazines. Translations of prose from French have appeared in Translation Ireland, Crannóg magazine, and elsewhere.

Mary O'Donnell is a poet, short story writer and novelist. Her first novel The Light-Makers was named the Sunday Tribune's Best New Irish Novel in 1992. Since then she has published the novels Virgin and the Boy and The Elysium Testament (Trident Press UK, 1999). She has published five collections of poetry, most recently The Place of Miracles, (new and selected poems, New Island Books 2006). Her second short story collection, Storm Over Belfast is published in May. She is a poetry mentor on the faculty of Carlow University Pittsburgh's MFA in Creative Writing, served on the jury of the Dublin Impac International Book Award 2006 and is a member of Aosdana. For more information see www.maryodonnell.com

Gréagóir Ó Dúill was born in  Dublin, raised in County Antrim, educated in Belfast, Dublin and Maynooth where he took his Ph.D. in English. Long associated with the Poets' House in Donegal, he was recently lecturer in contemporary writing in Irish in Queen's University, Belfast and  currently lectures in creative writing in the Poets' House at Waterford Institute of Technololgy. He has published eight collections in Irish, a literary biography and a collection of short stories as well as two influential anthologies. He is more recently concentrating on work in English which has been widely published in journals in Ireland, Britain and the United States. He lives in Ranelagh in Dublin and in Gort a' Choirce in the Donegal Gaeltacht.

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, fleeing to England with his family after the Hungarian Uprising and his work has always been defined by this dual background. Beginning with the publication of The Slant Door in 1979, he has written 13 collections of poetry. His 2004 collection Reel won the TS Eliot Prize. His translations from the Hungarian led Stephen Humphreys to declare that since 1984, Szirtes has done more than any other individual to introduce an international audience to 'a broad spectrum of the Hungarian canon'.

Crìsdean MhicGhillebhàin/Christopher Whyte, born in Glasgow in 1952 of a Scottish father and an Irish mother, is well-known as a poet, novelist and wide-ranging and controversial critic. His first collection of original poems, Uirsgeul/Myth, appeared in 1991. Since then he has published one further collection, An Tràth Duilich/The Difficult Time (2002), in Gaelic only, in accordance with the positions outlined in his polemical essay 'Against Self-Translation'. His novels include Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin, The Warlock of Strathearn (1997), The Gay Decameron (1998) and The Cloud Machinery (2000). Dreuchd an Fhigheadair/The Weaver's Task: a Gaelic Sampler, which he edited and introduced, was published in 2007.
 
       
 
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