Galway hospitals to take part in international literature festival

Patient project: Hospitals and surgeries are places often requiring a good dose of patience. For tense waiting patients in Galway hospitals, there will soon be some calming influence of poetry.

Máirtín Ó Direáin's epic Árainn 1947, Joan McBreen's Knockma in Spring and Gerard Smyth's Achill are among the poems which they and relatives will be able to read in Galway city's public hospitals next week as part of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature.

Some 20 published pieces of verse on the theme of "place" will be displayed in hospital waiting rooms, as part of the initiative undertaken by the Galway Arts Centre in co-operation with Health Service Executive (HSE), West.

Also selected for this first display are Ciaran Carson's Belfast, and work by Paul Muldoon and Celia de Fréine - participants in this year's festival. Ó Direáin's work has been translated into English by Tomás Mac Siomoin, who has his own reading during next week's programme.

Galway Arts Centre has been collaborating for some time with the Galway Regional Hospitals Arts Committee on a series of exhibitions and creative writing and artistic workshops.

Co-ordinator Margaret Flannery's post is jointly funded by the HSE and the arts centre, and she works with both staff and patients.

It is anticipated that work by these groups will be selected for further exhibitions in the hospitals during the year, according to Maura Kennedy, Cúirt's programme director.

"The idea was to do something quiet and contemplative for the hospital setting, and it was felt that published poems would be appropriate for the first display," Ms Kennedy said.

Other themes, such as recovery, will be reflected in exhibitions planned for University College Hospital, Galway (UCHG), Merlin Park Hospital and Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway.

The format of the work in the Poetry for Patience project will be A1 size posters in waiting rooms, while a permanent lightbox has been prepared for the ground floor lift area.

The exhibition opens formally on Thursday, April 21st, at UCHG's foyer, and will move to Merlin Park. International writers will join Irish counterparts for this year's Cúirt festival, which runs from April 19th to 24th at various venues.

Further details from www.galwayartscentre.ie/cuirt or tel: 091 565886.