A number of special events to mark Poetry Day Ireland have been announced for the first-ever digital/virtual version of the festival.
Due to the on-going coronavirus pandemic, the festival, Poetry Ireland's annual celebration of the spoken and written word, will take place as a digital/virtual event allowing everyone to take part from the safety of their own home and collectively experience the joy of poetry.
Poetry lovers the length and breadth of the country can connect through virtual poetry workshops, video poetry readings, social media and much more.
To mark the occasion, Poetry Ireland will also guest-edit RTÉ Culture for the day.
The theme this year – 'There will be time' – has been in the works since last autumn, long before the current guidelines were put in place in Ireland.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Among the events, there will be videos of well-known figures and poets reading poems on social media, while acclaimed poet Nessa O'Mahony will run a poetry workshop for beginners.
Poets short-listed for the Moth Poetry Prize will read ahead of the announcement on Instagram of the winner of the €10,000 prize.
Poetry Ireland Poet in Residence Catherine Ann Cullen will host a time-themed poetry clinic, while there will also be a virtual pub quiz, and an online encounter with Brazilian poetry, music and arts.
Junior and Leaving Cert students will take part in the Poetry Performance Challenge, while the Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again exhibition will hold an interactive workshop on Instagram Live.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
The theme was partly chosen as 2020 is a leap year, when we gain an extra day of time that didn’t exist in the previous year. Today, the theme of time resonates in another way, due to the impact of the Covid-19 measures on our daily lives and our sense of time passing.
