Poetry at the Mills 2023

Oíche Mhór Filíochta

Location: The Watermill Café Skerries Mills, Skerries
Date and Time: Sat 16 September 2023, 7 pm – 9 pm
Languages: Bilingual: Irish / English.
Tickets (on Eventbrite or on the day): €15 / €12 low income or unwaged (+ Eventbrite fee)

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💥 Go to our full programme here💥

We’re finishing in fine style back at the Festival’s home, the intimate settings of Skerries Mills, with featured poets Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Harry Clifton and Caitríona Ní Chléirchín.

Music by Sarah May Rogers. Early booking is advised to avoid disappointment.

Photo credit: Aurelio Stoppini

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Born 1942 in Cork. Fellow emeritus of Trinity College, Dublin. Ireland Professor of Poetry 2016-19.

Her Collected Poems appeared in 2020 and was awarded the Pigott Prize.

She has published translations of poetry from several languages, most recently Dánta Antonella Anedda, translated from Italian into Irish, published by Cois Life in 2019.

Lucina Schynning in Silence of the Nicht (poems translated into Chinese) appeared from Sichuan Ethnic Publishing Company, Chengdu, in 2020.

With Macdara Woods, Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson she founded the literary magazine Cyphers and remains its principal editor.

Harry Clifton

Harry Clifton was born in Dublin in 1952, and educated at University College Dublin. After graduating he began an extended period of life outside Ireland, lecturing at a Teacher Training College in West Africa in the 1970s and working as an aid administrator in Indochina in the 1980s. Experiences from this time had a major influence on his work, including his belief that ‘the true home of the poet is not in a place but in the language itself’. After spells in Italy, England and Germany, he settled with his wife the Irish novelist Deirdre Madden for ten years in Paris, a decade recorded in Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994-2004 (Wake Forest University Press 2008). Since 2004 he has lived in Ireland, and teaches at Trinity College Dublin.

He has published ten collections of poems, the most recent of which are The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass (2012), The Holding Centre: Selected Poems 1974-2004 (2014), Portobello Sonnets (2017), Herod’s Dispensations (2019) and Gone Self Storm (2023), all published by Bloodaxe Books in Britain and Ireland, and Wake Forest University Press in USA. His prose books include On the Spine of Italy, a travel memoir (Macmillan 1999), and Ireland and its Elsewheres, lectures on Irish poetry (University College Dublin Press 2015).

Harry Clifton has held many teaching positions at universities including Bremen in Germany and Bordeaux in France, as well as University College Dublin and Trinity College in Ireland. In 2008 he won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award for Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994-2004, and The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass was the Irish Times Book of the Year for 2012. He served as the fifth Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2010-2013, and is a member of Aosdána.

Caitríona Ní Chléirchín

Caitríona Ní Chléirchín is an Irish-language poet, critic, editor and lecturer originally from Gortmoney, Emyvale in Co. Monaghan. She has published four collections of poetry. Her début collection Crithloinnir won the Oireachtas Prize for New Writers in 2010 and her second collection An Bhrídeach Sí (2014) won the Michael Hartnett Prize 2015.

The judges of that award described her poetry as: ‘powerful, courageous, sassy and important…Her mastery of Irish and sense of being at home in tradition and modernity is evident in poems set in the 17th century, poems framed by Gaelic mythology… The poems are full of passion.’

The Gallery Press recently published her new collection The Talk of the Town in 2020 with translations by Peter Fallon. Her collection Safó (Coiscéim, 2020) was mentioned as one of the top 20 books in 2020 by Tuairisc.ie.

She is an Irish-language and literature lecturer at Dublin City University. Her doctorate was a psychoanalytical body-centred reading of the Irish-language contemorary poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Biddy Jenkinson. She was the Irish-language editor of Poetry Ireland Review 2019-20.

Is file, criticeoir agus léachtóir í Caitríona Ní Chléirchín. Is as Gort na Móna, Scairbh na gCaorach, Co. Mhuineacháin ó dhúchas í. Tá ceithre leabhar filíochta foilsithe aici. Bhuaigh a céad chnuasach Crithloinnir duais an Oireachtais don scríbhneoir úr i 2010 agus bhuaigh a dara cnuasach An Bhrídeach Sí (2014) duais Michael Hartnett i 2015. D’fhoilsigh The Gallery Press cnuasach nua léi The Talk of the Town (2020) le haistriúcháin ó Peter Falllon agus sa bhliain céanna tháinig a cnuasach Safó le Coiscéim ar an saol.

Tá moladh mór ag dul don bhfile seo agus bhí óna luathdhánta. Mar ‘liriceoir nua an ghrá’ sa Ghaeilge, a luaigh Mícheál Ó Ruairc í (Comhar Nollaig 2010). Deir Liam Carson, “..there are more than a few echoes .. of the spectral romanticism of the Russian Silver Age.. “ anseo, agus é ag cur shaothar Ní Chléirchín i gcomparáid le filíocht Marina Tsvetaeva (léirmheas ar Crithloinnir, PIR). Luadh a cnuasach Safó i measc na leabhar ab fhearr don mbliain 2020 (Tuairisc.ie).

Sarah May Rogers

Sarah May Rogers is a professional musician from Dublin, who performs regularly on the Irish Folk Scene, collaborates on projects for theatre, festivals and events, is an educator and workshop facilitator.

She holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from NUI Maynooth, and a Diploma in Instrumental Teaching from the ABRSM. She was Founder & Managing Director of the award-winning Cadence Music Academy, and co-founder of the Irish Institute of Music and Song, Balbriggan.

A Violin Teacher for over 15 years, she enjoys teaching in a positive way, to bring out the best in students and help them become confident performers.