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Irish
literary spring blooms early
By Maureen McKew
In its continuing Irish Literary Spring series, the
Irish Studies Program will present some of Ireland’s brightest and most
honored contemporary writers. Admission is free and open to the public.
On Tuesday, March 15, poet Eilean NiChuilleanain will
read from her work at 7:30 p.m. in the first floor lounge of Falvey Memorial
Library. Like Adrian Rice, she is both a poet and an editor. She has
published six collections of verse. “Her poetry resonates with ancient rites
and presences from a spiritual otherworld,” according to the citation for
the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award of the University of St. Thomas Center for
Irish Studies, St. Paul, Minn., which she won in 1992. She is a member of
the prestigious Aosdana, an Irish affiliation of 200 living creative
artists, elected by their peers. Along with Leland Bardwell and Pearse
Hutchinson, she is a founding editor of the literary review, Cyphers.
On Tuesday, April 12, Michael Coady, who this
year holds the Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Endowed Chair in Irish Studies at
Villanova, will present a staged reading of his internationally praised
All Souls, which combines three literary genres – poetry, short stories
and a prose memoir – to tell the story of emigration to American, lost
family ties and the return to the native land. The reading will take place
in the President’s Lounge of the Connelly Center, beginning at 7:30 p.m.,
preceded by a reception.
Coady was born in Carrick-on-Suir in County
Tipperary, where he still lives. In addition to All Souls, he has
written, Two for a Woman, Three for a Man (1980); Oven Lane
(1987); and One Another (2003), published by Gallery Press, Dublin.
He is the winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry in 1979, and also
of the Listowel Writers’ Week and RTE Francis McManus short story awards. He
has directed workshops, broadcast on radio and television, and given reading
in Ireland and abroad. In 1998, he was elected a member of Aosdana.
In 2004, he also received Lawrence O’Shaughessy Award. |
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