All-Ireland Poetry Day | 6 October 2011

 

This year’s All Ireland Poetry Day was a resounding success with Poetry events sweeping across the whole island of Ireland including hospitals, schools, work place, libraries, exhibitions, radio broadcasts, open-mic and in the gaeltacht.No shortage of imagination for both poets and organisers alike as just some of the highlights included; hospitals all over the country presenting a ‘menu of poems’ (administered by the Waterford Healing Arts Trust) edited by Mark Roper to their patients and staff.

South Tipperary Arts Service presented a reading by Alice Lyons and the launch of the Irish Women Artists of the 20th Century exhibition. Further north in County Fermanagh All Ireland Poetry Day saw yet again new terrain where Verbal Arts Centre presented a poetry reading on the water (in canoes) by Portora Castle coupled with an open mic competition with music in Bloom’s Café, Co Derry.

In Co Armagh, The John Hewitt Society co-presented with Armagh City Chapter Paul Maddern and Maria McManus who read to a packed house. Paula Meehan and Tony Curtis managed to bi-locate reading in both Mayo and Sligo on the day while Michael Coady read in both Wexford and Offaly. Michael O’Loughlin gave a send-off to punters by reading in Terminal 1, Dublin Airport.

In The Coombe hospital as broadcast by RTE Six One News, a three way partnership merged between Poetry Ireland, Dublin UNESCO and the Coombe by celebrating All Ireland Poetry Day with a lunchtime poetry reading by Enda Wyley at the hospital.