Cúirt back with a bang as in-person events return

One of the first events to fall victim to Covid-19 restrictions in 2020 was the Cúirt Festival of Literature, which had just welcomed its new director, Sasha de Buyl. Her debut Cúirt programme was launched in the Hardiman Hotel in early March that year – just over a week later, the government announced restrictions on all gatherings.

But Sasha and the crew responded brilliantly with an online literary programme that was the first chink of creative light in our strange new world. Last year’s Cúirt was also held online, despite hopes in October 2020 that it might be an in-person event.

Sasha, who is from Cork and came to Galway from Scotland where she programmed Book Week Scotland for several years, hopes she’ll finally get to experience the atmosphere of a Cúirt that’s held in Galway with in-person audiences. Writers at the festival, which runs from April 4-10, include Olivia Laing, Louise Kennedy, Sarah Baume, the Aislings, Colin Barrett, Edel Coffey and Ruman Alam.

A highlight for Sasha is a reading featuring British poets Roger Robinson and Raymond Antrobus.

Roger Robinson was the first black British poet to win the TS Eliot prize. He was awarded it in 2019 for his collection, A Portable Paradise, in which he explored subjects including the Grenfell Tower disaster, the Windrush scandal and the legacy of slavery.

Jamaican-British poet and performer Raymond Antrobus won the Rathbone Folio Prize in 2019 for his debut poetry collection, Perseverance, the first time this prestigious award went to a poet. It also won the Ted Hughes Award. His latest collection, All The Names Given, continues his exploration of family, history, race and deafness – he was diagnosed as deaf as a child and wears hearing aids. He will read some of his poems in British Sign Language at Cúirt.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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