Louis de Paor conjures an imaginary village in the west of Ireland and Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan gives a round up of spoken word and open mic events. A Rockfinch production for RTÉ.

Louis de Paor is one of Ireland's leading Irish-language poets and was a key figure in the Irish language literary renaissance of the 1980s and 90s, editing the influential Irish-language journal Innti for a time. Since 2000 he has been Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway.

He joins presenter Olivia O'Leary to read from his dual-language book Crooked Love/Grá fiar (Bloodaxe Books/Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2022). The book contains the sequence Lá dá raibh/One day, which conjures an imaginary village in the west of Ireland and was first performed as a collaboration with Brooklyn-based composer Dana Lyn at the Irish Arts Center in New York in 2014. It was adapted as a dual-language radio feature that was broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm and Raidió na Gaeltachta in 2021 and is available to listen back to via a QR code in the book.

As spoken word events open up again, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan goes along to sample the atmosphere at a Circle Sessions open mic night and a Talkatives slam poetry event in Dublin, and gives a round up of some of the other live events happening around the country.

The Poetry Programme is a Rockfinch production for RTÉ.

The programme will be available to listen back to after broadcast on the programme webpage: https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/the-poetry-programme/