Olivia O'Leary presents an hour of poetry, music and conversation on RTÉ Radio 1 on Christmas Day.
Louis de Paor reads Christmas poems in Irish and English, both his own and by Máirtín Ó Direáin, Sorley MacLean and the satirist John Clarke. Born in 1961 in Cork, as editor of Innti, the poet was a key figure in the Irish language literary renaissance of the 1980s and 90s.
He spent time as a lecturer in Irish at University College Cork and Thomond College, Limerick, before moving to Australia in 1987, where he worked in local and ethnic radio in Melbourne and taught evening classes in Irish language and literature at Melbourne University and the Melbourne Council for Adult Education.
He was Visiting Professor of Celtic Studies at Sydney University in 1993 and Visiting Fellow in 1992. He returned to Ireland in 1996 and worked as proof editor of the Irish language newspaper Foinse before being appointed Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway in 2000. He was Jefferson Smurfit Distinguished Fellow at the University of St Louis-Missouri in 2002 and received the Charles Fanning medal from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 2009.
Jessica Traynor, whose two volumes of poetry are published by Dedalus Press, reads three poems. She shares a memory of a childhood Christmas and a cherished gift from her father which has now been handed on to her own daughter.
Listen to Jessica read Hamelin from a previous edition of the programme
Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus, 2014) was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award and was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. It has recently been translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. Her second collection, The Quick, was was an Irish Times poetry choice of 2019.
Read Paddy Kehoe's review of The Quick here
Jessica has worked as Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre and Deputy Museum Director of EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. She is Poet in Residence at the Yeats Society, Sligo and a Creative Fellow of UCD.
In the course of the programme, Jessica considers some of those who may be looking forward to Christmas with trepidation. There will also be music and conversation with the incomparable fiddle-player Martin Hayes, who reads a poem by Séamus Heaney.
Also in the programme are readings of poems suited to the time of year from Maeve O’Sullivan, Mark Ward, Michael O’Loughlin, Polina Cosgrave, Mícheál McCann and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.
The Poetry Programme is available to listen back to after broadcast on the RTÉ radio player.
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The Christmas Poetry Programme, RTÉ Radio 1, Christmas Day, 6 pm.
