Family Poetry Fest including Festival in a Van: Poetry Downtown at the Fingal Poetry Festival 2021

Saturday 18 September 2021, 2 pm – 4 pm. Floraville. Free.

Lots of creative fun for all in and around Floraville, including: Poetry Treasure Hunt, Stone Painting, Music, Readings and much more. Getting the party started with Festival in a Van featuring Katherine Duffy and Colm Breathnach at Floraville.
– Music: Colin Gunning

_{Raven illustrations and brochure design: Matthew Kelly.}

Come along to Floraville in the heart of Skerries for lots of creative fun, including poetry treasure hunt, stone painting, music, and much more.

The party will be started off by Poetry Downtown, one of our fabulous Festival In a Van readings. This is a bi-lingual event (English and Irish) featuring readings by Katherine Duffy and Colm Breathnach, with music by Colin Gunning.

Sign Language Interpretation will be available

About our artists

Katherine Duffy

Katherine Duffy was born in Dundalk, in 1962. She has lived in Dublin for most of her life, working first as a librarian and later as a parliamentary translator in the Houses of the Oireachtas.

Her poetry publications include Sorrow’s Egg (The Dedalus Press, 2011) and Talking the Owl Away (Templar Poetry, 2018), which won Templar’s Iota Shot award.

Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and have been included in various anthologies, the most recent being The Word Ark (The Dedalus Press, 2020) and Places of Poetry (Oneworld, 2020).

Katherine writes short fiction in both English and Irish. Her stories have won Oireachtas awards, the Hennessy Writer of the Year Award, and third prize in the 2020 RTÉ Short Story Competition. She is also an accomplished literary translator and has translated the work of leading Irish language writers into English. Rambling Jack, her rendering of Micheál Ó Conghaile’s Seachrán Jeaic Sheáin Johnny, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2014, and a number of her translations are included in The Quick and the Dead, a volume of translations of Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s short stories, due to be published later this year by Yale University Press.

Colm Breathnach

Colm Breathnach: File agus úrscéalaí go bhfuil seacht gcinn de chnuasaigh filíochta móide dhá rogha dánta foilsithe aige chomh maith leis an úrscéal Con Trick “An Bhalla Bháin” (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2009). Ghnóthaigh sé an phríomhdhuais do chnuasach filíochta i gComórtais Liteartha an Oireachtais ceithre huaire agus sa bhliain 1999 bhronn an Foras Cultúrtha Gael-Mheiriceánach ‘Duais an Bhuitléirigh’ air. Chaith sé tréimhsí ina scríbhneoir cónaithe sa tSín agus sa tSlóivéin agus bhí sé ina scríbhneoir cónaithe i gColáiste Phádraig, Droim Conrach in 2015. Aistríodh dánta leis go hocht gcinn de theangacha. Is é Tírdhreacha (LeabhairCOMHAR, 2015), rogha théamúil dánta agus dánta nua, an cnuasach is déanaí uaidh.

Colm Breathnach: A poet and novelist, he has published seven collections of poetry along with two selected editions and the novel Con Trick “An Bhalla Bháin (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2009). He has been awarded the principal poetry prize at Conradh na Gaeilge’s annual Oireachtas literary competitions four times and in 1999 the Irish American Cultural Institute presented him with the Butler Literary Award. He has had literary residencies in China and in Slovenia and in 2015 he was writer in residence in Saint Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. He has had poems translated into eight languages. His latest collection Tírdhreacha (LeabhairCOMHAR, 2015), contains new and selected poems.