Search Results for 'Irish literature'

St Patrick’s drama group are busy rehearsing Lennox Robinson's gem of a comedy Drama at Inish, which was first staged by the Abbey Theatre in 1933.

ONE OF the highlights of the Town Hall Theatre’s current season takes place next week with Performance Corporation’s uproarious staging of Flann O’Brien’s unfinished comic novel Slattery’s Sago Saga, adapted by Arthur Riordain.

MARTIN DYAR, the Co Mayo poet and actor, will be among the readers at the next Over The Edge: Open Reading in the Galway City Library on Thursday October 28 at 6.30pm.

TAKING US from the harsh realities of Baile Crua to the cautious serenity of the Spiddal bogs, Rita Ann Higgins’ new book Hurting God - part essay, part rhyme (Salmon) is a short but intense spiritual autobiography.

ELAINE FEENEY, one of the most promising new voices in Irish poetry will read at the North Beach Poetry Nights on Monday at 9pm in The Crane Bar.

I find it hard to imagine that not everyone liked Lady Augusta Gregory of Coole Park. What few readers there are of the Diary, I am told, sigh with exasperation when they see her name appear. They know that I will eulogise endlessly about how her home at Coole became a ‘workshop’ for writers, poets and artists during those exciting days at the beginning of the last century, leading to such remarkable talents as WB Yeats, John M Synge, Sean O’Casey and others to stand as giants on the European literary stage. She was the co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, its director and organiser during its shaky early days. She was a substantial playwright, journal keeper, folklorist, scholar, etc, etc, and, in my opinion, this amazing Galway woman never got the recognition she deserved.

What would have happened to James Joyce had he come to the relative comforts of Coole, instead of opting for hardship and exile and the life of a wandering artist in Europe?

RITA ANN Higgins has been one of the most individual and outspoken voices in Irish poetry for the last 25 years and her poetic journey continues with the publication of the ‘part essay, part rhyme’, Hurting God, a fascinating refection on family, religion, memory, and community.

Nine hundred copies of Hurting God, a new collection of essays and poems by Galway’s Rita Ann Higgins, may have to be pulped following controversy over some of its passages.

A huge crowd turned up in the Bailey Allen Hall last week for a poetry reading by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. The programme began with some exquisite music by Mozart and Debussy played by Galway’s musical quartet, Contempo, and it was followed by music of a different kind that will resonate in the memories of those who were present as Heaney read from his new book Human Chain.