Paul Muldoon is regarded as one of Ireland’s greatest contemporary poets, known for the sophisticated handling of poetic form and technique. Born in Portadown in the 1950s, he served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry until 2004, when he relocated to New York where he lives. Muldoon holds a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and a T. S. Eliot Prize among many recognitions of his work. In November 2022, he was appointed as the Ireland Professor of Poetry. Join the author of 14 collections of verse, for a reading from his work this February at The Linen Hall.
For decades Richard Hayward (1892 – 1964) was a household name in Ulster and one of Ireland’s best loved cultural figures. Local folk-singers Maurice Leyden and Jane Cassidy team up with Hayward’s biographer Paul Clements to present a show celebrating Richard Hayward’s fascinating career and contribution to the cultural life of the island of Ireland, through anecdote and folk–song.
Gerald Dawe celebrates the art of living in places. Whether the Belfast of the 1960s, the anxious territories of the 1970s and 1980s, or the emergent Irelands north and south of recent decades, his writing expresses the potency of memory to shape and sustain.
In his second outing, Andrew Beattie captures the inner conflict of the mind through poetry. This unique collection of poems engages with reality, hidden behind the facade of world ideology. The irony is reflected in isolation caused by a detachment from society.
Eamonn Mallie is one of Ireland’s most respected and well-known media personalities and his ‘Covid-19 Poetry’ became a social media hit on Twitter from 2020-2022. Join us at the Linen Hall for a special evening where Mallie will bring together his favourite poems as read by a collection of ordinary and extraordinary individuals.
Anchoring reflects on differing languages and cultures. Poets Maria McManus, Viviana Fiorentino, and Ammar Al-najjar will read from their works in this special event at The Linen Hall.
The Linen Hall Library has been always known as the home of poetry in Belfast, holding some of the most significant works of local poetry, from the historic works of Robert Burns to Belfast poets Louis MacNeice and John Hewitt.
