Recipients of International Residency Scheme Announced
I bhFad i gCéin – Far Afield
Poetry Ireland Announces Recipients of International Residency Scheme
Funded by the Arts Council’s International Residency Scheme 2022
Poetry Ireland is delighted to announce the five recipients of I bhFad i gCéin, a programme of international residencies based in five cities across the globe funded by the Arts Council. The recipients are Liz Houchin, Nithy Kasa, Roisin Kelly, James Conor Paterson and Molly Twomey. Taking place in Edinburgh, New York, Montana, Berlin and Manchester respectively, the programme will provide these five Irish poets with a two-to-three-week residency in one of the international locations plus a bursary of €2,000.
I bhFad i gCéin, which means “far-afield” is inspired by the poetic spirit of adventure and aims to directly invest in the careers and development of Irish poets by enhancing their networks and experiences.
The Residencies will be hosted by Cave Canem in New York, Haus fur Poesie/poesiefestival in Berlin, Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, Quarantine in Manchester and Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana. Each residency will allow poets to immerse themselves in their surroundings and each location was chosen to reflect the growing and diverse community of poets living and working in Ireland.
Liz Kelly, Director of Poetry Ireland said “The selection of recipients for our International Residencies Programme in 2023 reflects the richness of Irish poetry. We were hugely impressed by the range and quality of applications and selecting five was hugely challenging. Each is exciting and innovative and we look forward to seeing the outcomes of each poet’s experience in New York, Montana, Manchester, Edinburgh and Berlin. From groundbreaking opportunities for presenting poetry on a new platform in Manchester to connections with indigenous communities in Montana, our hope is that the impact of these residencies will be felt in the poets’ work throughout their future careers”
The Department of Foreign Affairs will also support the programme and work closely with Poetry Ireland and the five recipients to ensure that a support network is in place at each of the five residency locations.
The first of the residencies will begin in March with Liz Houchin from Dublin travelling to Edinburgh to take up her residency with the Scottish Poetry Library to facilitate workshops with young people at the Royal Mile. Primary School - a diverse, inner-city school in Edinburgh. Nithy Kasa, whose debut collection Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho (Doire Press) was listed amongst the top poetry books of 2022 by the Irish Times, will join the Cave Canem poets in New York City for two weeks in April of 2023. Writing space will be provided by New York Public Libraries and the residency in New York will culminate in a special event celebrating Poetry Day Ireland with a reading at the Irish Arts Center in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC on the 27th April.
Róisín Kelly, hailing from Leitrim, will be taking up her residency at Tippet Rise Art Center in south-central Montana. Roisin, a self-proclaimed “seeker of remoteness”, will be on-site on the 12,500-acre sheep and cattle ranch in October of this year. She will read at Montana State University at Bozeman on 9th October and at LitQuake in San Francisco. James Conor Patterson from Newry in Co. Down will take up the three-week residency at Haus für Poesie in Berlin, Germany’s premier literature organisation, in June. Linked to the famed poesifestival Berlin, James will be in the city for the lead up to this international festival and invited to take part in pop-up street performances, facilitate writing workshops for younger people. James will also have his work translated into German during the course of his residency.
Molly Twomey from Lismore in Co. Waterford and a graduate of Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series, will travel to Manchester in early summer. Molly, who comes to the residency at a pivotal point in her career, will work with artists Lisa Mattocks and Lowri Evans and will take part in an interactive live writing experiment which will be projected in real-time onto public buildings in the City.
Upon completion of the programme, all participants will be invited to take part in a gathering organised by Poetry Ireland in November 2023 to read from and reflect on their experiences during the residencies.
For further information please contact – Poetry Ireland Communications, comms@poetryireland.ie
International Residencies Programme
Presented by Poetry Ireland. Funded by the Arts Council’s International Residency Scheme 2022. In association with Department of Foreign Affairs.
NOTES
BIOS
Nithy Kasa was born in Kimpese, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was raised in its capital, Kinshasa and in Galway, West of Ireland. Joining the Dublin Writers’ Forum in 2011, she went on to read for Poetry Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, Bray literary festival, the Dublin book festival, Fingal Poetry Festival, the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Cork World Book Festival, The RTE Poetry Programme and others. She has contributed to anthologies like Vital Signs Poems of Illness and Healing, Dedalus Press’s Writing Home: The New Irish Poets, Embers of Words: An Irish Anthology of Migrant Poetry, Hold Open the Door: A Commemorative Anthology from the Ireland Chair of Poetry. And to poetry magazines such as the Poetry Ireland Review, Flare, A New Ulster. She features on the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation website, and her work can also be found on the Dublin Business School’s archive, the University of Galway’s Archive, as well as the special collections of the University College Dublin. She was a guest poet for the 2019 Carlow University’s (USA) MFA Residency at Trinity College Dublin. Her poem ‘Gathering’ was shortlisted for the Red Line Book Festival the same year. She received the Poetry Ireland Commission 2020, with the support of an Arts Council of Ireland Commissions Award, and was shortlisted for The Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho, published by Doire Press in 2022, was amongst the selected collections by the Arts Councils of Ireland for the read mór book gifts for Culture Night. Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho was listed amongst the top poetry books of 2022 by the Irish Times. Nithy divides her time between Ireland and The Congo.
James Conor Patterson is a writer from Newry, Co. Down. He is the editor of the anthology 'The New Frontier: Reflections from the Irish Border' and his debut poetry collection 'bandit country' was published by Picador in September 2022. In 2019 he received an Eric Gregory Award and he has been nominated for the 2022 TS Eliot Prize."
Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and graduated in 2019 with an MA in Creative Writing from University College Cork. She has been published in Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The Irish Times, Mslexia, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She runs an online international poetry event, Just to Say, sponsored by Jacar Press. In 2021, she was chosen for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series and awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary. Her debut collection, Raised Among Vultures, was published in May 2022 with The Gallery Press.
Roisin Kelly was born in Belfast, raised in Leitrim and currently lives in Cork. Her first full collection of poetry, Mercy, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2020. She is currently writing a novel and a second poetry collection.
Liz Houchin lives in Dublin and holds an MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin. Her first chapbook, ‘Anatomy of a Honey girl—poems for tired women,’ was published by Southword in 2021 and she was awarded a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to support the completion of a full collection of poetry. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Journal.ie, RTE, iamb, Visual Verse and several anthologies.
INFORMATION ON RESIDENCES
Berlin
Dates: 1 – 22 June 2023
Every summer for one week, Berlin is transformed into a multitude of event spaces for poetry. More than 150 poets and artists from all over the world come together at poesiefestival berlin to present their work and the diversity of international contemporary poetry.
This three-week residency taking place in June 2023 will immerse the selected poet in the heart of one of Europe’s most vibrant and creative cities in the lead-up to the festival and will engage them in a number of professional development opportunities with Haus für Poesie, Germany’s premier literature organisation. The poet will be invited to take part in pop-up street performances, facilitate writing sessions for young writers (16 – 24 year-olds), and take the stage at poesiefestival on the same bill as some of the world’s biggest names in poetry. It is anticipated that there will be an opportunity for the Irish poet to record some of their work for Lyrikline and possibly have their work translated into German over the course of the residency.
The poet will have their flights to and accommodation in Berlin covered, and they will be provided with a writing space to work on a current project. The poet will also receive a bursary of €2,000 to enable them to fully engage with Haus für Poesie and the poesiefestival.
About poesiefestival berlin
Poetry has long sought out other forms of presentation besides the page or the conventional literary stage. At poesiefestival berlin, poets collaborate and experiment with artists from music, theatre, performance, dance, film and digital media. In 2023, our focus will be on collaborative works between poetry and music as well as forms of political poetry and Spoken Word.
poesiefestival berlin brings poetry to life in multiple forms and not least produces a yearly wealth of translations from dozens of languages. Our headliner event, Weltklang (world:sound), brings together renowned poets from around the world – in the past these have included Laurie Anderson, Derek Walcott, Serhij Zhadan, Eileen Myles, Friederike Mayröcker, Claudia Rankine and many others. In 2023, the annual Berliner Rede zur Poesie (Berlin Poetry Lecture) will be given by South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon and a night of political spoken word will include spoken word artists with a focus on societal change.
Manchester
Dates: Early summer 2023
This residency is an exciting opportunity for a poet interested in working collaboratively and in digital media to be given space and time to work on their own writing, as well as take part in an innovative project with Manchester’s leading arts organisation Quarantine.
This three-week residency taking place in early summer 2023 will immerse the selected poet in one of England’s busiest cultural hubs. During their time in Manchester, this poet will be invited to work with artists Lisa Mattocks and Lowri Evans. Lisa Mattocks (lead artist) is a digital artist and coder and has been making work with Quarantine since 2011. Lowri Evans is based in Manchester and São Paulo, Brazil. She makes intimate art projects in unusual places with complete strangers.
During the residency, the poet will take part in an interactive experiment with live writing featuring real-time observations of members of the public, combined with commentary/writing about current global news events. The poet will craft these into live writing – which will be projected in real-time – onto locally significant buildings, a wall in a small cafe or at a train station platform. All the content will be streamed via a custom-built website for an online audience but will also attract an in-situ 'live' audience. The aim is to develop a framework and content for the first version in Manchester, that could be repeatable in other locations. We have been in touch with Galway City Council Arts Office which has expressed an interest in becoming involved as a collaborator and presenter of the work.
About Quarantine
From a shared curry with a stranger to an epic 12-hour performance featuring 24 workers – each Quarantine work takes its own unique form. We’ve invited audiences to sing a karaoke duet with a serving soldier, staged dance marathons, compiled an online compendium of knowledge, made films with people who know they are dying, hosted family parties, taught Chinese cookery lessons and created a journey in the dark for one person at a time. As well as staging theatre on stage for audiences in seats…
Our work responds to the world around us, and what’s happening in our own lives. Each new work finds its own form – playing with and dismantling conventions of how theatre should be made and experienced. But it always comes back to the live encounter: creating the circumstances for an exchange between people who might not otherwise meet.
Quarantine was started in 1998 by directors Richard Gregory and Renny O’Shea – who still lead the company today – with designer Simon Banham. We operate as an ensemble of artists and producers working with a shifting constellation of creative collaborators. We’re rooted in Manchester, UK, and make and tour work around the world – work that is intimate and immediate in its relationship with people and global in reference, scope, and ambition.
Lisa Mattocks (lead artist) is a digital artist and coder and has been making work with Quarantine since 2011. Lisa has made films, trailers, websites, written essays, performed in shows. She has been a stage manager, a technician, a co-deviser, a conductor, a typesetter, a producer, a collaborator, a lead artist, a video programmer and a graphic designer. Lisa has a history of creating work in collaboration with others and her own work has been commissioned and presented by Sick! Festival, LeftCoast, Manchester Metropolitan University, Contact, and Noorderzon Festival (NL) & collaborated on work for Compass Arts Festival (Leeds), In Between Time (Bristol), MIF (Manchester), ICA (London), Sibfest (Romania) & ACT (Bilbao),
Lowri Evans (lead artist) is based in Manchester and São Paulo, Brazil. She makes intimate art projects in unusual places with complete strangers. Lowri studied art at Manchester Metropolitan University and has worked with Quarantine on several projects, and also with: MITsp, coletiva Ocupação, Transform Festival, Contact, Est.1761, WOW Festival, Martha Kiss Perrone, 32ª Bienal de São Paulo, Capital 35, Heart of Glass, Casa do Povo, Sonia Hughes, Latitude Festival, Ovalhouse & National Theatre of Scotland. Lowri won a Manchester Theatre Award in 2015 for The Shrine of Everyday Things with Renato Bolelli Rebouças, Rodolfo Amorim and Contact Young Company. Lowri is also an associate artist with Eggs Collective, the international producer for Coletiva Ocupação and in the band Hotpants Romance.
Montana and San Francisco
Dates: Thursday 28 September – Thursday 12 October
The selected poet for this residency will have the opportunity to spend ten days at Tippet Rise Art Center, located in south-central Montana, a beautiful and rustic corner of the American West. Set on a 12,500-acre working sheep and cattle ranch, Tippet Rise opened in 2016 and celebrates the union of music, art, architecture, and nature. It is also the sister organization of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, which Poetry Ireland has collaborated with on a number of projects. Each summer, the art center invites visitors to experience large-scale sculptures and structures by some of the world’s foremost artists and architects, including Mark di Suvero, Ensamble Studio, Francis Kéré, Patrick Dougherty, Ai Weiwei, and more, in addition to hosting an indoor and outdoor concert season featuring internationally acclaimed classical musicians.
Tippet Rise is situated roughly between the cities of Billings and Bozeman and is approximately two hours north of Yellowstone National Park. Montana State University at Bozeman, will also host the Poet in Residence for a reading at the university on Monday, October 9, 2023.
On the completion of the residency in Montana on 10th October, the poet will travel to reading opportunities elsewhere in Montana and in California before returning to Ireland on Thursday 12 October.
Edinburgh
Dates: March 2023
This three-week residency in Edinburgh is a unique opportunity to live and write in a city renowned for its rich heritage of storytelling and literature. Boasting the world’s largest literature festival and home to a myriad of bookshops, as well as the highest concentration of public libraries in Scotland, Edinburgh is a city which celebrates the power of the written word quite unlike any other.
The selected poet will be given a number of professional development opportunities with the Scottish Poetry Library, including the opportunity to facilitate writing workshops for young people at Royal Mile Primary School – Welcome to our website, one of the most diverse inner city primary schools in Edinburgh. The poet in residence will be invited to participate in a showcase event at the Scottish Poetry Library at the culmination of the visit to Edinburgh. This residency is particularly aimed at writers interested in upskilling their work with young people and primary schools. There will also be an opportunity to visit and network at Stanza Poetry Festival.
About Scottish Poetry Library
Bringing people and poems together is at the heart of everything we do – our mission. With this in mind, we’ll strive for our visitors, borrowers and service users to experience the SPL as a welcoming and compassionate organisation, aiming to transform people’s lives through exciting experiences and creative engagement with poetry – the ‘spark o’ Nature’s fire’ as Robert Burns wrote.
As a membership organisation, we encourage younger people and students to join and connect with us and with poetry for the rest of their lives. We also seek to reach out to communities that are traditionally underrepresented in our audiences, often the result of real and perceived barriers connected to limitations of low income, physical ability, low literacy and sense of belonging.
John Burnside wrote that ‘the more imaginative we are, the more compassionate we become’. By supporting the poetry community, creative learning programmes in schools and community settings, and offering increased access to poetry in live literature events and high-quality online resources, we support imagination. And in supporting imagination, we aim to demonstrate the compassion in poetry and affirm that, as writer and former SPL Board member Jenni Fagan puts it, ‘Poetry belongs in every community’.
New York
Dates: 15 – 29 April 2023
This two-week residency in New York City will immerse its recipient in one of the greatest cities in the world.
The selected poet will be connected with leading cultural partners in New York, including Cave Canem, which was founded in 1996 to remedy the under-representation and isolation of African American poets in the literary landscape. Cave Canem will host the visiting poet for an afternoon at their offices, as well as arrange a dinner for the poet with a Cave Canem Fellow. Cave Canem will also provide an introduction to at least three literary cultural / artistic spaces in NYC (ex. Poets’ House, the Bowery Poetry Club, the Nuyorican Poets Café), along with a tour of the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. While in New York, writing space can be found for the successful poet at the NYPL. The residency will culminate with a showcase reading hosted by Cave Canem featuring the poet alongside a Cave Canem Fellow.
At the Irish Arts Centre, the Hell’s Kitchen home for artists and audiences of all backgrounds who share a passion or appreciation for the evolving arts and culture of contemporary Ireland and Irish America.
About Cave Canem
Founded by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady in 1996 to remedy the under-representation and isolation of African American poets in the literary landscape, Cave Canem Foundation is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.
A 501-c-3 non-profit literary service organization with administrative and programming headquarters in Brooklyn, NY, Cave Canem has grown from a gathering of 26 poets to become an influential movement with a renowned faculty, high-achieving national fellowship of over 400 and a workshop community of 900.
Cave Canem enjoys over 20 local, regional and national cultural partnerships, among them the Brooklyn Book Festival, where we are a Programming Partner; the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, where we are a Literary Partner; and collaborative residencies for fellows at such sites as the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and The Home School.
Cave Canem’s programs and publications enlarge the American literary canon; democratize archives; and expand for students, aspiring poets and readers the notion of what’s possible and valuable in a poem. In Cave Canem, poets of colour find productive space for writing without fear of censure or the need to defend subject matter or language—an intellectual and physical site where they validate their own and their peers’ voices and deeply know that s/he is not “the only one.”
About Irish Arts Center
Irish Arts Center, founded in 1972 and based in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, is a home for artists and audiences of all backgrounds who share a passion or appreciation for the evolving arts and culture of contemporary Ireland and Irish America.
We present, develop, and celebrate work from established and emerging artists and cultural practitioners, providing audiences with emotionally and intellectually engaging experiences in an environment of Irish hospitality. Steeped in grassroots traditions, we also provide community education programs and access to the arts for people of all ages and ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In a historic partnership of the people of Ireland and New York, Irish Arts Center recently completed construction on a fully-funded $60MM state-of-the-art new facility to support this mission for the 21st century.