Cúirt puts the spotlight on home-grown talent
The Connacht Tribune
March 13, 2015
ocal and national writers are centre stage in this year’s Cúirt Festival of Literature, which will take place from April 21-27 in venues throughout Galway City and County.
Visitors from abroad will include former US Poet Laureates Naomi Shihab Nye and Kay Ryan as well as Cúirt regular Irvine Walsh, while Joseph O’Neill – whose best-known works include Netherland and The Dog – also returns.
O’Neill will be in conversation with journalist Edel Coffey on Saturday, April 25, at 6.30pm in the Town Hall Theatre. Earlier that day, at 4pm, poets Peter Fallon Nikola Madzirov will read at the Town Hall Studio.
Poetry will also be to the fore that Saturday night when Paul Muldoon and John Montague give a joint reading in the Town Hall at 8.30pm.
The opening reading at Cúirt will be given by the ever-popular Paul Durcan, whose most recent collection, The Days of Surprises, has just been published.
There’s a strong representation of Canadian writers at the Festival, courtesy of a partnership between Cúirt and the International Festival of Authors, Toronto. Fictions writers Majorie Celona, Vincent Lam, Miranda Hill, Lawrence Hill, D.W. Wilson and poet Dionne Brand are among the Canadian visitors.
The emphasis is on local talent on Friday, April 24, at 6.30pm when Galway poets Elaine Feeney and Doireann Ní Ghriofa will read at An Taibhdhearc.
The great Galway author Máirtín Ó Cadhain will be in the spotlight the previous day in An Taibhdhearc at an event marking the first ever translation of his novel Cré na Cille into English.
A dramatic reading from the novel in Irish at 3.30pm will be followed by an ‘in-conversation event’ with book’s translator Alan Titley, Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish at UCC and Visiting Professor at Ulster University.
The bitingly satiric and beautifully written Cré na Cille is regarded as the most important prose work in modern Irish and this translation is published by Yale University Press.
Alan Titley is a well-known author in his own right, having written seven novels, four short-story collections, drama and poetry on top of his academic works.
Earlier that day novelists Sara Baume and Catherine Lacey will give a reading at the same venue.
To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of WB Yeats, Cúirt will host a Yeats Day featuring a plaque-unveiling at the Salmon Weir Bridge and events in Coole Park and Thoor Ballylee as well as a lunch at Moran’s of the Weir. That will take place on Tuesday, April 21. 
© 2015 The Connacht Tribune