The New York City/Ireland love affair is hardly a new romance, but it continues to bloom.
A fine example is a great idea that began in 2009 when Irish Arts Center Executive Director Aidan Connolly and Dublin’s ‘’Poetry Now’’ curator Belinda McKeon were chatting, and poetic sparks began to fly.
Why not bring poets from Ireland, virtually the land of poetry (think W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney but don’t stop there) to New York, a poetically fertile oasis, on a regular basis?
It was the first festival in the U.S. devoted to Irish poetry, and since has become an annual celebration of Irish and North American poetry, with 2025 being its 16th iteration.
There will be seven different events on the weekend of Friday, Dec. 5, through Sunday Dec. 7. Friday at 8 pm is opening night with ‘’My Favorite Irish Poem,’’ by various poets or novelists -- as in the case of the Dublin-born Kevin Holohan -- as well as other personalities.
Beginning in 2010, acclaimed Northern Irish poet Nick Laird became curator. He was soon joined by Vona Groarke, poetry editor at the Irish Times. In September, she was named Ireland Professor of Poetry.
At the new Irish Arts Center building, finished in 2023, a newly luminous environment prevails. But from the first, the lights of Irish, Irish-American and other American poetry were always brightly lit. Some of the greats now gone— Thomas Kinsella, John Montague and Michael Longley to name three — featured in the earlier years. Poets of later generations, such as Sinead Morrissey, also appeared early in the series,
And in 2019 there was a marvelous tribute to the late Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, which featured Catherine Heaney, Zadie Smith, Nick Laird and Pulitzer Prize winner and former poetry editor at the New Yorker, Paul Muldoon, to name a few.
It would be impossible to name all the great Irish, Irish American, Afro-American, other American poets and artists who have graced the stage on 11th avenue or before that around the corner on West 51st Street. But there has been an embarrassment of riches: Pulitzer and T.S. Elliot Prize winners, US Poets Laureate, New Yorker Poetry Editors, Oxford Professors of Poetry. Enough said. To name just a very few of them: Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell, Kevin Young, Ada Limon, Alice Quinn, Vijay Seshadri, Anne Carson, Terrence Hayes, Paul Muldoon, of course, and now former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove.
From Saturday the 6th and Sunday the 7th in the afternoon, a dazzle of 10 Irish and American poets will share the brilliance of their imaginings. Poetry is about thinking via metaphor. It is sound, sense and form running together.
If you are in a hurry, pick up a quality comic book. But if you wish to spend your precious time slowly and get away for a weekend from the gnawing, screaming, scraping distractions, ‘’go where,’’ says Rachael Gilkey, Director of Programming and Education of the Arts Center ‘’ people sit and let their (the poets) words wash over them’’
Here in outline is the schedule for the weekend: Saturday at 2 pm, hear Northern Irish poet Scott McKendry and Northern Cheyanne Nation poet, m.c. Red Cherries
3pm presents a conversation ‘’Poetry Beyond its Margins’’ moderated by Vona Groarke and with American poet from Yale Divinity School, Christian Wiman, and Irish poet (in Irish and English), Padraig O’Tuama .This is already sold out but the Irish Arts Center is creating a waiting list. Act quickly.
5pm finds Alan Gillis, from Belfast and editor of the Edinburgh Review, and American poet from St. Louis, and Columbia University, Dorothea Lasky.
Sunday at 1pm brings us Grace Wilentz, from New York City but emigrated to Dublin, and Jennie Xie Chinese-born American poet
Sunday at 2:30 pm, hear “Desert Island” 5 poems each chosen by Rita Dove and Paul Muldoon, which they would be sure to bring with them were they ever so stranded on one. Moderated by Vona Groarke
Then at 4pm, Dove and Muldoon will be joined by Vona Groarke for a reading of each of their own poems.
I save the best for last — All the Saturday and Sunday readings are free! But you need to make a reservation, nonetheless. It’s a weekend worth coming into town for.
Poetry for the People!
Box Office: 888-616-0274, boxoffice@irishartscenter.org, Phone hours: 10am-6pm, Monday-Friday. The JL Greene Theatre, Irish Arts Center, 726 11th Avenue, Hell’s Kitchen, New York City.
