Cúirt Festival line-up; Pollard prize shortlist; Irish poets in St Andrews; NI Berlin showcase

In The Irish Times this Saturday, Lucy Caldwell discusses These Days, her new novel about the Belfast Blitz, with Freya McClements. Reviews are Angela Graham on Brittle with Relics: A History of Wales, 1962–97 by Richard King; Houman Barekat on Pankaj Mishra’s Run and Hide; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Paschal Donohoe on Helen Thompson’s Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century; Una Mannion on The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka; Rachel Andrews on The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground; Emma Flynn on Middle Passage by Charles Johnson; Wendy Erskine on Ten Thousand Apologies by Adelle Stripe and Lias Saoudi; Brian Maye on Barbed Wire University by Dave Hannigan and The Island of Extraordinary Captives by Simon Parkin; and Sarah Gilmartin on The Instant by Amy Liptrot.

Saturday’s Irish Times Eason book offer is The Magician by Colm Tóibín. You can buy it with your newspaper for €4.99, a saving of €6.

Olivia Laing, Louise Kennedy, Sara Baume, Colin Barrett, Roger Robinson, Edel Coffey, Ruman Alam and Raymond Antrobus are highlights of this year’s Cúirt International Literature Festival 2022.

Running from April 4th to 10th, this year’s festival promises an illuminating, interactive and innovative presentation of the very best in contemporary literature. This year’s theme is At The Intersections, looking at life and writing as we intersect between the last two years and continuing world events.

New poetry: Evoking sacred spaces and an embattled world

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The Books Quiz: Which Irish author created UK crime drama Top Boy?

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Thinking my way back to how I saw the world as a five-year-old boy

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This year, Cúirt is committed to making sure as many people as possible are able to enjoy the festival, and will be introducing a pay what you can model for all in-person events.

Cúirt director Sasha de Buyl said: “We are extremely excited to welcome audiences back to Cúirt and to the venues, bookshops, pubs and streets of Galway in 2022. For the past two years, books and words have been a source of connection, comfort and escape for many of us. Though we may all come to a book from vastly different starting points, the shared experience of reading brings us closer together.

“This year’s programme draws on the rich seam of stories and talent to be found at the intersections of our contemporary world. We are hopeful to be entering a time when people can come together more easily, to celebrate and enjoy the power of words in person. A huge part of what makes a book festival special is the connections we make; the snatched conversations as you head into a reading, the debrief in the bar about the best event of the day, the unexpected meeting of a favourite writer. We hope that Cúirt in 2022 can bring some of this much needed joy and conversation back to Galway. It’s an excellent reason to (finally) leave the house.”

The early part of the week’s events will showcase events dealing with the more practical side of being a writer. The hugely popular Conversations on Craft online event series returns, this time pairing together the international writing talents Olivia Laing and Claudia Rankine with Irish writers. Laing will discuss her craft with essayist Brian Dillon, and Claudia Rankine will delve into poetic expression with Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi.

Two award-winning poets who have changed the shape of poetry in Britain feature. Roger Robinson was the first Black British poet to win the TS Eliot Prize in 2019 for his collection A Portable Paradise. Raymond Antrobus was the first poet to win the Rathbone Folio Prize, and his stunning combination of skills as a performer and literary craftsman have seen his two most recent collections, The Perseverance and All The Names Given, win a host of awards.

Launches include the new novel by Sara Baume, Seven Steeples, Danny Denton’s All Along the Echo and this year’s Poems for Patience introduced by Moya Cannon in University College Hospital, Galway.

International bestseller and author of The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley, returns to her Connemara roots and makes her Cúirt debut to discuss her new novel The Paris Apartment.

Events as Gaeilge include An Chartlann Bheo: Animating the Archive of Tomás Ó Máille and readings with Réaltán Ní Leannáin agus Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin, as well as the first event for the landmark new anthology of Irish language poetry Cnámh agus Smíor, featuring readings from Alan Titley, Ola Majekodunmi and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.

A strand of events will be livestreamed online for those who may not feel able to be in crowded spaces. cuirt.ie

The shortlist for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2022 has been announced by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre. This is the fourth year of the prize, awarded annually for an outstanding debut collection of poetry in the English language.

The shortlisted publications are: The Wild Fox of Yemen (Picador) by Threa Almontaser; The Sun Is Open (Penned in the Margins) by Gail McConnell; Auguries of a Minor God (Faber) by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe; Bird of Winter (Liverpool University Press) by Alice Hiller; Rotten Days in Late Summer (Penguin) by Ralf Webb; and Life Without Air (Granta) by Daisy Lafarge.

Valued at €10,000, the prize is sponsored by the John Pollard Foundation and administered by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. The patron of the John Pollard Foundation is Stephen Vernon, who named the Foundation in memory of his grandfather, John Pollard.

Chair of the judging panel, Prof Eoin McNamee, director of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre, said: “This was an exceptional shortlist chosen from 52 entries. Each of the six books are vibrant, lit from within. Ranging across the wounded terrains of the heart, of the body, of broken lands, each of the six authors brings hard won beauty and insight to the surface. You come away from these books enriched and emboldened in the cause of poetry. It was a privilege for myself and fellow judges Phillip Coleman, Vona Groarke and Alice Lyons to read and debate this work.”

The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Trinity College on April 12th.

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The Irish Pages Press, Lilliput Press and Little Island Books are the Small Press of the Year finalists for the island of Ireland at this year’s British Book Awards. 50 independent publishers have been selected as regional and country finalists for the British Book Awards Small Press of the Year. The winners will compete for the overall prize, given out at the winner ceremony on May 23rd.

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Leading poets from Ireland will be among the big names from the literary world taking part in StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival in March. Paul Muldoon, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Colm Tóibín, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Louis de Paor, Martina Evans and Victoria Kennefick will perform at the hybrid festival which combines the very best of online performances as well as a live programme from its festival hub in the Scottish town of St Andrews in Fife.

The seven-day festival runs from March 7th to 13th, with a line-up including internationally acclaimed poets from all over the world. The festival, titled Stories Like Starting Points, is part of Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022, a year in which stories inspired by, created, or written in Scotland will be showcased and celebrated.

Festival Director Lucy Burnett said: “StAnza is as much an international festival as it is Scottish, with our programme exploring cutting edge questions about poetry and its relationship with the world. As part of this, we’re delighted to be bringing exciting and diverse voices from every corner of the globe, including exceptional talent from Ireland, to Fife’s doorstep to celebrate and explore poetry.”

Writers from Northern Ireland will be showcased at the 37th British Council Literature Seminar, taking place in Berlin from February 24th to 26th.

Entitled Now Neu NI: Contemporary writing from Northern Ireland, the event will showcase both new and established writers over three days, with Glenn Patterson, writer and director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, acting as chair.

He will be joined by six other writers including novelist Lucy Caldwell, who releases her latest novel around the Belfast Blitz on March 3rd; Nick Laird, an accomplished poet, screenwriter and curator from Co Tyrone; and Dublin-based writer Michelle Gallen. Also on the bill are emerging/newer writers, Abby Oliveria, a writer and performer; Belfast poet Padraig Regan; and Bebe Ashley, a poet and PhD student at the Seamus Heaney Centre.

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This year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, taking place from July 21st to 24th in Harrogate, will be chaired by award-winning Scottish crime author Denise Mina, who has curated a programme featuring some of the biggest and most exciting names in crime fiction and thriller writing.

Special guests include Lynda La Plante, Paula Hawkins, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Connelly, Lucy Foley, CL Taylor, Charlie Higson; John Connolly; and Kathy Reichs. Festival favourite Val McDermid will also be returning with her New Blood panel, showcasing four exciting debut crime writers to look out for.

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The Irish Writers Centre and Words of Colour Productions have announced the awardees of UpLift, an international leadership initiative for 18-30-year-olds.

UpLift, a new pilot programme which aims to foster the leadership ambitions of aspiring professionals of colour in the literature sector across Ireland and the UK, is a collaboration between the Irish Writers Centre and Words of Colour Productions. The programme seeks to help young literature professionals of colour to thrive within the sector, by encouraging connections among the awardees and facilitating development of their writing through guidance from seasoned industry professionals.

Three candidates based in Ireland have been selected to receive mentoring and workshops from established industry professionals. Gabrielle Fullam, Prin Okonkwo and Rafael Mendes will be mentored by award-winning writer and publisher Farhana Shaikh (The Asian Writer, Dahlia Publishing) and award-winning poet and director Nick Makoha (The Obsidian Foundation). The candidates will play a key role in encouraging writers and audiences of colour to participate in the Irish Writers Centre and contribute to the wider Irish literary scene. Three additional Irish candidates and six UK candidates have been selected to attend workshops with Farhana Shaikh and Nick Makoha.

Those based in Ireland are Sinatalahi Badmus, Jinan Ashraf and Kebeh Ofem.

The UK candidates are Abdullah Adekola, Aoife O’Connor, Lucia Schiaffino, Zoe Mebude-Steves, David Edgardo Martinez and Urussa Malik.