The Irish PEN/PEn na hÉireann Freedom to Write event has become a popular fixture at the John Hewitt International Summer School (Armagh). This year was no exception. The 120-seat theatre was booked out, with a waiting list (tickets were free thanks to a generous grant from Dublin Unesco City of Literature). Caoilfhionn Gallagher spoke eloquently about the increasingly systematic suppression of press freedom around the world. Our Empty Chair featured journalist, editor and digital media CEO Mzia Amalglobeli from Georgia. Mzia has been held in detention since January 2025 on spurious charges. Her complaints of ill-treatment have yet to be investigated. Her story is so compelling that 84 members of the audience were moved to write postcards of support in a heart-warming gesture of international support and solidarity. FULL REPORT TO FOLLOW IN OUR NEXT NEWSLETTER.
With huge thanks to the Dublin Unesco City of Literature office for sponsoring this event, to the John Hewitt Society and the Marketplace Theatre, Armagh for hosting us.
Before the new iteration of for Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann was formally launched, we formed an alliance with other PEN Centres on these islands: the WISE group (Wales PEN Cymry; Irish PEN; Scottish PEN and English PEN). We worked together on many events and supported each other in various campaigns, too many to list here. This was an incredibly productive and rewarding alliance.
Over the years we have also worked with other literary and human rights organisations including but not limited to: The Irish Writers’ Union, the Irish Writers Centre, Aontas na Scríbhneoirí Gaeilge, Frontline Defenders, Index on Censorship, the Italian Institute of Culture, the Ukrainian-Irish Cultural Platform and the John Hewitt Society.
We have presented the work of imprisoned and endangered writers at numerous festivals at home, abroad, in the Poetry Jukebox and online.
We have joined several PEN International committees, including but not limited to the Turkey Action Group, Writers for Peace and the Women Writers Committee.
2021
In this year, we consulted with PEN International, established and registered a Company, drew up a formal Constitution and set up a formal Board. We also held an online launch in November, featuring the President of PEN International Jennifer Clements.
We took part in the (ultimately successful) campaign to allow the family of Margaret Keane (Coventry) to have an Irish language inscription on her gravestone without translation. This was a victory for all minority languages.
To remember Lyra McKee on the second anniversary of her murder and to celebrate the launch of the paperback edition of her thought-provoking book Lost, Found, Remembered, we partnered with English PEN and Faber Members to bring about a film of readings and tributes to Lyra.
In May, working with the Wise group, we organised and hosted an international Roundtable meeting of organisations who work to protect journalists, with a specific focus on threats to working journalists in Northern Ireland. One of the issues raised here and followed up later was the issue of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPS).
We received confidential information from Myanmar, which we passed on to relevant personnel in the DFA (this continued until 2023)
Together with the WISE group we held an International (online) reading to raise awareness of the plight of Indian Poet Varavara Rao, who was on temporary medical release from prison at the time.
We initiated a members-only event, PEN Friends, where members from across the country meet online to discuss the cases of imprisoned and endangered writers and send messages of solidarity.
2022
Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and the re-location of hundreds of Ukrainians to Ireland, we contacted PEN Ukraine to extend a hand to any writers who may be among them. In this way we made contact with several writers, some of whom remain in touch with us and began a long and fruitful relationship with Ukrainian writers internationally.
This year we hosted a memorial event and award ceremony in MoLI for Eavan Boland, the last recipient of the Irish PEN Award for outstanding contribution to Irish Literature.
As part of the Imagine Belfast festival programme, we hosted an event celebrating and supporting the dangerous work of South American journalists such as Paola Ugaz (Peru) and Dan Collyns; this was followed by a discussion on threats and difficulties experienced by journalists in Northern Ireland, featuring Patricia Devlin and Kathryn Johnston.
Board members gave a presentation and readings related to imprisoned writers in person and online at several Book Festivals and on the Poetry Programme (RTÉ Radio 1)
In September, following the brutal attack on Salman Rushdie, members gathered at the gates of the National Library to read extracts from The Satanic Verses in a show of solidarity.
In October, representatives attended and gave presentations at a memorial event for Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose case has been a focus and motivating force for much of our work to date.
Also in October, Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina came to speak in Smock Alley at our invitation, supported by the UNESCO City of Literature Office. While here, Victoria gave a workshop at a party for Ukrainian children in Pearse street library; we arranged a meeting with officials in the DFA and at the Ukrainian Embassy; and she gave media interviews to raise public awareness about Ukraine.
A representative from the Board attended the Opening Ceremony of the Frontline Defenders’ Conference.
In November, we held a screening of Narges Mohammadi’s film White Torture in Dublin Castle as part of the Dublin Book Festival
In December we held an online reading party for members, to celebrate the Winter Solstice.
2023
We held a very successful public event as part of the Imagine Belfast Festival in March. The topic was immigration, and Sally Hayden discussed her powerful book The Fourth Time, We Drowned, with Board member, Liz McManus.
Our next activity – online – was a PEN Friends event on 21 June, where Irish PEN members gathered virtually in order to write to those writers who are imprisoned or harassed because of what they write. Among the imprisoned and persecuted writers to whom we wrote were men and women from Peru, Egypt, Iran and Turkey.
In September of 2023, we held the first FESTIVAL OF ITALIAN AND IRISH LITERATURE organised by the Italian Institute of Culture in partnership with Irish PEN. The launch was held at the IIC on 7 September, with an exhibition celebrating Irish writers in Italy between the two world wars.
We met regularly with the other PEN Centres of England, Scotland, and Wales, and were in regular contact with PEN International, keeping ourselves informed about threats to democracy worldwide.
On 14 October, in partnership with the Dublin Arts and Human Rights Fesival, we held an event at Pearse St Library with the renowned poets George Szirtes and Csilla Toldy.
In 2023, Victoria Amelina was killed by a Russian missile strike. She had been due to return for events in the Dublin Book Festival, at our invitation. Instead, we held events in her memory that November, including a range of invited Ukrainian speakers and poets who spoke not only about Victoria, but about the cultural war that Russia is waging against Ukraine
Also as part of that festival, we produced a concert in Windmill Lane in partnership with The Ukrainian-Irish Cultural Platform, in which Ukrainian and Irish poets and musicians participated
December saw another iteration of the PEN Friends writing/solidarity event. During this event we also support English PEN’s PENWrites campaign.
2024
In April, Irish PEN took part in an event to welcome the Palestinian poet, Marwan Makhoul, to Dublin. The event was organised in partnership with Poetry Ireland took place in the James Joyce Centre. That month we also took part in an online fundraising event for Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund (Gaza), organised by Fiona O’Rourke.
We also had a stand at the Belfast Book Festival to talk to people about PEN principles and what we do. We held an Empty Chair event for each day of the festival at the Crescent Arts Centre, selecting 21 writers from the PEN International Case List and invited participants to send postcards of support
In July, an Irish PEN event was one of the main events at the John Hewitt Summer School. This event commemorated the life and work Victoria Amelina on the first anniversary of her death. It was the first year of our partnership with the JHSS, which also saw twenty emerging writers from across the island of Ireland sponsored to take part in a programme of workshops and events
In September, Irish PEN, in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute, held the second edition of FIILI – Festival of Italian and Irish Literature in Ireland.
In November, we partnered once again with the Dublin Book Festival. The Day of the Imprisoned Writer took place on the 15th November, and focus was on the Kurdish poet, and first Honorary Member of Irish PEN, Ilhan Sami Çomak, imprisoned for 30 years. He was one of Turkey’s longest-serving political prisoners. We were joined by İpek Özel, Ilhan’s Mackenzie Friend, Caroline Stockford, his translator, and Burhan Sonmez, President of PEN International.
Throughout 2023 and 2024, Irish PEN worked in partnership with English PEN and the Heaney Estate in order to award a new poetry prize that embraced the values of PEN and of Heaney himself. The first such award ceremony was in December 2024, the second will take place in December 2025.
2025
Work in partnership with, among others, The John Hewitt Society, The Italian Cultural Institute and the Seamus Heaney Estate, along with various festivals, continues throughout the year
In June, our first partnership with Listowel Writers’ Week was a great success. We also had a stand during the Belfast Book Festival, where volunteers spoke to the public about the woprk of PEN International.
In June, we also circulated a statement to the media calling for an immediate end to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, signed by 400 Irish writers. The statement received extensive media coverage.
In August, we followed this with a statement on our website decrying the arrest of dozens of people in London who were exercising their right to peaceful protest against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Our statement concludes: “To arrest and charge with terrorist offences those expressing their opposition to genocide seems like an unnecessary and unwelcome form of censorship.”
In July, we held a Dublin launch for Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary written by our friend and colleague Victoria Amelina, which has won the 2025 Orwell Prize for political writing. One of the book’s editors, Yaryna Grusha, came to Ireland for the launch.
We then travelled up to Armagh for a second event as part of our partnership with the John Hewitt Summer School. For the second year running, our partnership with the John Hewitt Society has also seen a writers’ development programme with 20 early-career writers participating in a series of workshops throughout the Summer School, culminating in a masterclass in editing.
Our partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute saw the third iteration of FIILI: The Festival of Italian and Irish Literature in Ireland in September.
This autumn, we’re very excited to be hosting Kurdish poet Ilhan Sami Çomak in person, alongside Ipek Ozel, who was his Mackenzie Friend during his long period of imprisonment. Ilhan was our first Honorary member. In 20024 he was the subject of our Dublin Book Festival as an imprisoned writer. This year he is free, after 27 years of imprisonment. We are very proud to have been part of the campaign for his release. We held an event during the Dublin Book Festival (8th November).
December 2025 will see a re-run of our popular PEN Friends event.
In December, we will also celebrate the second annual award ceremony for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize, to be held in the National Library of Ireland. This prize is managed jointly by the Seamus Heaney Estate, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and English PEN. Last year’s ceremony was held in Queen’s University Belfast. This year it will be in Dublin, Next year in London.
Individual cases who have been particularly supported, 2021–2025
Varavara Rao (India)
Daphne Caruana Galizia (Malta)
Nedim Türfent (Turkey)
Narges Mohammadi (Iran)
İlhan Sami Çomak (Turkey)
Victoria Amelina (Ukraine)
Paola Ugaz (Peru)
Fatma Hassona (Palestine)
Uyghur writers (China)
Alaa Abd El-Fattah (Egypt)
We lobbied in support of a successful application for visas for a family from Afghanistan
In all of these years we have held online gatherings for members, where we highlight cases of writers who are in danger or in prison because of their work. We then write letters and cards of support to these people and/or their families. Some of this work is in conjunction with English PEN’s PEN Writes programme.
We have participated in international online festivals and in person in places including Belfast, Armagh, Dublin, London, where we have highlighted issues related to Freedom of Expression and the cases of people who have been persecuted for their writing. All of this work has been done on a voluntary basis. It is against the constitution of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann for a Board member or committee member to earn money from appearances or work on PEN business. However, since we believe in the principle of Pay the Writer, we do accept donations to Irish PEN for services rendered.
Launched in 2024, the PEN Heaney Prize recognises a single volume of poetry, published in the UK or Ireland, of outstanding literary merit that engages with the impact of cultural or political events on human conditions or relationships – celebrating work that resonates with Heaney’s own values and interests, work that remains “true to the impact of external reality and … sensitive to the inner laws of the poet’s being”, to quote from his Nobel Lecture.
The event will feature speeches and readings from the shortlisted collections, followed by the announcement of the winner and a drinks and canapés reception. Doors open at 6pm, and the ceremony starts at 7pm
The shortlisted poets are Don Mee Choi, Najwan Darwish (translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid), Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Tom Paulin, Stav Poleg and Karen Solie.
The PEN Heaney Prize is delivered in partnership by English PEN, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and the Estate of Seamus Heaney and is generously supported by the Hawthornden Foundation.
BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL. Tickets are available from the English PEN website here.
This event was sponsored by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature in association with Dublin City Council. It was dedicated to the memory of Victoria Amelina, who was scheduled to appear on the panel before she was killed, along with 12 other people, by a Russian Missile strike on a pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, Ukraine (27th June, 2023)
This event, organised by Letters With Wings, was dedicated to the women artists Chimengul Awut (award-winning Uyghur poet) and Nûdem Durak (a folk-musician of Kurdish origin who is a political prisoner in Turkey).
Participants included: Lia Mills (Chair of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann), Catherine Dunne, Celia de Fréine, Kate Ennals, Moyra Donaldson, Evgeny Shtorn, Gianluca Costantini (activist, cartoonist and visual artist), Antje Stehn (Rucksack, A Global Poetry Patchwork), Simone Theiss (Westminster and Bayswater Amnesty International Group) and Letters with wings’ poet members Nandi Jola, Csilla Toldy and Viviana Fiorentino. It was a powerful, inspirational evening and a great privilege to be involved at all.
(With thanks to the Imagine! Belfast Festival & its production staff: Richard, Emma, Gillian)
***
Lia Mills:
First, I want to acknowledge the horrific circumstances and the courage of the two women who this event has been set up to honour, Chimengul Awut and Nudem Durak. I also want to acknowledge what’s happening in Myanmar, where poets and artists are included among the hundreds of people imprisoned and killed during unarmed protests. Other readers will read the work of Burmese poets tonight, I leave that to them.
We take so much for granted, including the simple ability to dial into an event like this and speak freely, without fear of detention, or torture, or the fear of losing everything, our jobs, our homes, our lives.
You might ask, what difference can an event like this make? What is their point? If we are free to speak and other people aren’t, how does one of those facts meet the other?
At its most basic level, an event such as this introduces us to people we might otherwise never hear about – people just like us, except that they live in more oppressive, authoritarian states; people whose freedom can be taken away because they write or say or paint what they think.
What you do with the knowledge you gain here is up to you. The problem might seem too big for ordinary individuals to solve. But one positive step you can take is to decide to write to someone who is in prison, tonight. Maybe someone whose words you will meet for the first time in the next hour.
You may never know the difference your letter makes, but the testimonies of prisoners whose cases are monitored by PEN International tell us that a note or a card from a complete stranger can make the difference between light and darkness in a prison cell, just as art and literature can.
*
PEN International was founded on the principle of goodwill and fellowship among people who care about literature and the freedom of expression on which democracy depends. One of the things PEN has become known for is that its members write letters to writers and artists who have been imprisoned because of their work. The same principle is behind Letters With Wings, who have organised this event. (You might consider joining either or both of us.)
So one thing an event like this can do is to tell you – who are listening – about some of these courageous writers and activists and, importantly, encourage you to reach out and support someone who has been deprived of the kind of freedom we take for granted.
Prisoners report that such letters make all the difference to them during the unending, worrying days when they are cut off from family, friends, their future. It helps to know that people in the wider world know where they are and pay attention to what happens to them. It helps to remember that there is a wider world, waiting for their return.
***
One question we have been asked to address here is: Why do some governments fear the arts?
I think it’s because the arts nurture and express human faculties that can’t be obliterated by any external force or authoritarian regime: the imagination, the ability to empathise with other people; the capacities for love, hope, faith, idealism. The arts express what it is to be human in our time and place, and that brings news not everyone wants to hear, news that certain governments in particular want to suppress. So they bring in censorship, intimidation, vexatious lawsuits, punitive laws.
They can try to suppress artistic freedom along with every other kind, but with art that’s harder to do – because the work art does is not always out in the open. Art doesn’t just live in the moment when an image is seen, understood and felt, or when a poem is read. Much of it happens in our minds and hearts, in our imaginations. It takes root in us. It lives on when the moment has passed. You can’t imprison a story, or kill a song.
I’m going to read some examples that demonstrate the extraordinary resilience and power that prisoners find in literature. The writing they continue to do against overwhelming odds is not bitter, or negative; it’s not about recrimination or hatred. These voices soar, they are free. They rise far above their immediate circumstance and call us to join them, if we dare.
To illustrate the principle, here is a poem by Eva Gore Booth, a passionate advocate of the principles of non-violence, written in 1918 to her sister Constance (Markievicz) who was in prison. The sisters had an arrangement that they would think about each other at the same time every day. The poem says that even when we are separated by prison walls, we can reach each other.
Comrades
The peaceful night that round me flows, Breaks through your iron prison doors, Free through the world your spirit goes, Forbidden hands are clasping yours.
The wind is our confederate, The night has left her doors ajar, We meet beyond earth’s barred gate, Where all the world’s wild Rebels are Eva Gore-Booth, Broken Glory 1918
***
Next I’ll read a poem by Ilhan Sami Çomak. Imprisoned in Turkey at the age of 22, 27 years ago. Ilhan is held in solitary confinement.
27 years. Alone in a cell.
What could he possibly write about? Life, love, light and colour. His mind, his imagination, his words are free. PEN Norway/Norsk PEN are running a brilliant campaign for Ilhan, which includes people writing poems for him, to which he responds with poems of his own. I urge you to visit the website and learn more (details in the chat).
What Good is Reading Poetry?
It’s good for making hands fine enough to touch silk And for feeling the moment that stone turns impatient
It’s good for looking in the eyes of hungry cats And extending curiosity out among all animals
It is the darkness that makes my night voice heard And makes it easier to say ‘the moon will come up late’
For years my feet have been cold, so cold When I say this, it helps me compare winter to snow
Spring will begin today, I know Reading poetry helps me believe that feeling
It reminds me I don’t miss the Istanbul bustle Lets me know things to tell my love in a letter
When I’m tired, to stop and rest, not to drink water when I sweat, It helps me to cry and fret over wildfires, over death
To know anger’s reserved just for evil To stop and ask forgiveness of women
To feel youth when young, to understand it later on, It’s good for helping me to sit and write new poems
Good for helping me seduce and flatter Then to kiss my love when the leaves turn yellow Ilhan Sami Çomak
Translated by Caroline Stockford (reproduced with permission)
***
And finally, from writer and journalist Ahmet Altan, currently serving a 10 ½ year sentence in Turkey after being in pre-trial detention for over 3 years (he is 71 years old)
From I Will Never See the World Again
‘I am a writer. I am neither where I am nor where I am not Wherever you lock me up I will travel the world with the wings of my infinite mind. Besides, I have friends all around the world who help me travel, most of whom I have never met. Each eye that reads what I have written, each voice that repeats my name holds my hand like a little cloud and flies me over the lowlands, the springs, the forests, the seas, the towns and their streets. They host me quietly in their houses, in their halls, in their rooms. I travel the whole world in a prison cell. (…) I am writing this in a prison cell. But I am not in prison. I am a writer. I am neither where I am nor where I am not. You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here. Because, like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.’ (Granta. pp. 211-2)
***
And that, I think, is exactly why certain governments fear the arts.
Thank you.
Details/Useful sites
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann: irishpen.com (Website under revision, please be patient. Current campaigns are listed under “News”)
