Festival in a Van is coming to the Fingal Poetry Festival! This mobile festival stage offers safe outdoor entertainment in various locations around the town.
- Festival in a Van at the Martello Tower: Readings by Máighéad Medbh and John O’Donnell. Music by Sarah May Rogers. Sun 19 Sep 2021, Red Island: Martello Tower, from 4.30 pm (note the change of venue: At the Martello Tower, NOT at the Sea Pole)
About our artists
Máighréad Medbh
Máighréad Medbh has published eight books of poetry. The latest is Imbolg (Arlen House, 2020), a double collection of work from 2009 to 2016 and a Lockdown Diary written between March and May 2020. Máighréad is widely known as a performance poet, concerned with body rhythms and the dramatic.
Other concerns are thematic structures and modes of understanding. A prose work, Savage Solitude, was published in 2013 by Dedalus. Narrative verse includes Tenant (1999), set during the famine years, and Parvit of Agelast (2016), a verse allegory of social control and ecological collapse, informed by the art of Pauline Bewick. Parvit of Agelast was shortlisted for the Pigott Prize in 2016, judged by Lavinia Greenlaw and Deryn Rees Jones.
Her latest book, Imbolg, has to do with change—its how, wherefore and aftermaths—and includes “Easter 2016,” winner of the Listowel Single Poem Prize. Other work includes writing for children, fiction (online as ebooks), a multitude of workshops, curation of events for Fingal Libraries, and an online essay-blog monthly from 2012 -2020. Máighréad has an MA in Poetry Studies from DCU and is currently working on a creative-critical PhD. www.maighreadmedbh.ie
John O’Donnell
John O’Donnell’s work has been published and broadcast widely in Ireland and abroad. He has published four poetry collections, the latest of which is Sunlight: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2018).
Prizes for poetry include the Irish National Poetry Prize, the Ireland Funds Prize and the Hennessy Award for Poetry.
Fiction publications include Counterparts (The Stinging Fly), Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction, the Sunday Tribune, the Sunday Independent, The Stinging Fly, Books Ireland and the Irish Times (online), and RTE’s The Book On One.
Awards include the Hennessy Award for Emerging Fiction and Cuirt Festival of Literature New Writing Prize for Fiction. Back To The Rock, his radio documentary about the 1979 Fastnet Yacht Race disaster featured on RTE’s Doc On One. His first collection of short stories Almost the Same Blue (Doire Press) was nominated in the Irish Times as one of the Best Fiction Debuts of 2020, and one of the Books of the Year in the Sunday Independent. His play Rainbow Baby was recently broadcast on RTE Radio’s Drama On One. He lives and work in Dublin.
Sarah May Rogers
Sarah May Rogers
Sarah May Rogers is a Dublin based Violin & Music Theory Teacher with over 18 years experience in the music business. She started playing Violin at age 6, performing on stage since 14, and graduated from NUI Maynooth with a B.Mus in Classical Performance & Composition, in 2011. She has played & toured with various groups in many different genres, both as a soloist & group performer at live gigs, weddings, corporate events and as a composer/arranger for studio recordings.
Sarah has been a Wedding Violinist since 1999. She provides Wedding Music for ceremonies, drinks receptions and wedding groups in Ireland and beyond. She loves arranging couples’ favourite songs in their preferred style; Traditional Irish, Contemporary, Folk or Classical, working with their suggestions to produce a duet, trio or quartet tailor-made by picking the best musicians for the job!
Raven illustrations and brochure design: Matthew Kelly.
Fingal Poetry Festival 