An evening in honour of the winner of the Orwell prize, Looking at Women, Looking at War, by Victoria Amelina.
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and Ukrainian Action Ireland invite you to an event to celebrate Victoria Amelina (1986-2023) and her wonderful, posthumously published, book Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary, which recently won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
This year, to mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and Dublin Book Festival are proud to dedicate the event to our first Honorary Member, Kurdish poet İlhan Sami Çomak, one of Turkey’s longest-serving political prisoners. Joining us will be: Paula Meehan, poet; Caroline Stockford, PEN Norway, İlhan’s friend and translator; Ipek Ozel, İlhan’s McKenzie Friend; Iggy McGovern, poet and Board member of Irish PEN, and Burhan Sönmez, President of PEN International. With artwork by Gianluca Costantini@channeldraw on display.
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.
The event is FREE but booking is essential. Please click here.
Paula Meehan was born and raised in Dublin’s north inner city. Her award-winning poetry has garnered widespread popular and critical acclaim. She has been translated into many languages; recently Japanese & Dutch with collections forthcoming in Spanish, Polish, Greek. Her poetry has been scored for choirs, for solo voice, has been made into songs by artists from divers traditions — the folk, including the legendary Christy Moore, and the avant garde; has been made into wee films; has been danced; has been inflicted on the youth of the country in school & university. Has been 8/1 to come up on the Leaving Cert. She was Ireland Professor of Poetry, 2013–2016 and Imaginary Bonnets with Real Bees in Them, her public lectures from the Chair, are published by UCD Press. Recent publications are As If By Magic: Selected Poems, (2020) and The Solace of Artemis (2023) which received the Pigott Prize for Poetry, 2024. They are published by Dedalus Press, Dublin.
Caroline Stockford is a poet and translator of Turkish literature. She works as Turkey Adviser for PEN Norway and has led the campaign for Ilhan since 2019. She and other translators produced his selected works in English, Separated from the Sun, in 2021 (available from Smokestack books) and an anthology of world poets writing for Ilhan is on the way.
Ipek Ozel is an academic at the faculty of law, with a focus on human rights, law and prison studies. Lecturing for the last 27 years. Advocating for students in prisons for the last 15 years. Ipek has served as a McKenzie Friend to 8 students who were long term prisoners and has followed up on many trials of students charged with political crimes. She has been one of Ilhan Sami’s staunchest supporters and friends.
Iggy McGovern was born in 1948 in Coleraine; since 1979 he has resided in Dublin, where he lectured in Physics at Trinity College, retiring in 2013. He has published three collections of poetry with Dedalus Press: The King of Suburbia (2005), Safe House (2010) and The Eyes of Isaac Newton (2017). Other publications include A Mystic Dream of 4 (2013) and Making Waves (2019), both with Quaternia Press. Awards include The Hennessy Award for Poetry and The Glen Dimplex New Writers Award for Poetry.
Burhan Sönmez is the author of six novels. He is president of PEN International and a Senior Member of Hughes Hall College and Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His novels have been translated into forty-eight languages and received international prizes, including the EBRD Literature Prize and Vaclav Havel Library Award. He was born in Turkey and grew up speaking Turkish and Kurdish. He worked as a lawyer in Istanbul before going to Britain for political reasons and living there in exile for several years. He has been on the judging panel of several events, including Inge Feltrinelli Prize and Geneva International Film Festival and written for press such as La Repubblica, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. He has translated the poetry book of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake into Turkish. Having written five novels in Turkish, he began to write in his mother tongue, Kurdish, with his last novel Lovers of Franz K. He lives between Cambridge and Istanbul.
This year, to mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and Dublin Book Festival are proud to dedicate the event to our first Honorary Member, Kurdish poet İlhan Sami Çomak, one of Turkey’s longest-serving political prisoners. Joining us will be: Paula Meehan, poet; Caroline Stockford, PEN Norway, İlhan’s friend and translator; Ipek Ozel, İlhan’s McKenzie Friend; Iggy McGovern, poet and Board member of Irish PEN, and Burhan Sönmez, President of PEN International. With artwork by Gianluca Costantini@channeldraw on display.
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.
The event is FREE but booking is essential. Please click here.
Paula Meehan was born and raised in Dublin’s north inner city. Her award-winning poetry has garnered widespread popular and critical acclaim. She has been translated into many languages; recently Japanese & Dutch with collections forthcoming in Spanish, Polish, Greek. Her poetry has been scored for choirs, for solo voice, has been made into songs by artists from divers traditions — the folk, including the legendary Christy Moore, and the avant garde; has been made into wee films; has been danced; has been inflicted on the youth of the country in school & university. Has been 8/1 to come up on the Leaving Cert. She was Ireland Professor of Poetry, 2013–2016 and Imaginary Bonnets with Real Bees in Them, her public lectures from the Chair, are published by UCD Press. Recent publications are As If By Magic: Selected Poems, (2020) and The Solace of Artemis (2023) which received the Pigott Prize for Poetry, 2024. They are published by Dedalus Press, Dublin.
Caroline Stockford is a poet and translator of Turkish literature. She works as Turkey Adviser for PEN Norway and has led the campaign for Ilhan since 2019. She and other translators produced his selected works in English, Separated from the Sun, in 2021 (available from Smokestack books) and an anthology of world poets writing for Ilhan is on the way.
Ipek Ozel is an academic at the faculty of law, with a focus on human rights, law and prison studies. Lecturing for the last 27 years. Advocating for students in prisons for the last 15 years. Ipek has served as a McKenzie Friend to 8 students who were long term prisoners and has followed up on many trials of students charged with political crimes. She has been one of Ilhan Sami’s staunchest supporters and friends.
Iggy McGovern was born in 1948 in Coleraine; since 1979 he has resided in Dublin, where he lectured in Physics at Trinity College, retiring in 2013. He has published three collections of poetry with Dedalus Press: The King of Suburbia (2005), Safe House (2010) and The Eyes of Isaac Newton (2017). Other publications include A Mystic Dream of 4 (2013) and Making Waves (2019), both with Quaternia Press. Awards include The Hennessy Award for Poetry and The Glen Dimplex New Writers Award for Poetry.
Burhan Sönmez is the author of six novels. He is president of PEN International and a Senior Member of Hughes Hall College and Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His novels have been translated into forty-eight languages and received international prizes, including the EBRD Literature Prize and Vaclav Havel Library Award. He was born in Turkey and grew up speaking Turkish and Kurdish. He worked as a lawyer in Istanbul before going to Britain for political reasons and living there in exile for several years. He has been on the judging panel of several events, including Inge Feltrinelli Prize and Geneva International Film Festival and written for press such as La Repubblica, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. He has translated the poetry book of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake into Turkish. Having written five novels in Turkish, he began to write in his mother tongue, Kurdish, with his last novel Lovers of Franz K. He lives between Cambridge and Istanbul.
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and Wicklow Arts Office present an international poetry reading from poets Sean Borodale, Jane Clarke and Viviana Fiorentino.
Poetry from the Edgereflects on climate change, nature and how poetry and words can inspire change. Three poets celebrate internationality, all the more needed at this time when we see hostility and division growing all over the world.
Viviana Fiorentino grew up in Italy and has made her home in Co. Wicklow. Jane Clarke also lives in Co. Wicklow and Sean Borodale has recently moved to Co. Sligo from England. They will read from their work, inspired by the natural world and exploring environmental loss and restoration.
The latest issue of Kalliope X Magazine features four poems from former imprisoned writer and honorary PEN member Nedim Türfent, written when he was still unfairly detained. The poems are translated by Hidayet Ceylan & Matt Hetherington. Please read and share widely:
Nedim Türfent is a poet, journalist and editor at https://bianet.org. His first poetry book Bird Mirror was published in Turkey in 2021. In 2022, his book of poems and writings Über Mauern was published in Germany. He is an honorary member of PEN Melbourne.
Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann is delighted to host this event in partnership with Smashing Times, International Centre for the Arts and Equality for the annual Dublin International Arts and Human Rights festival. The event is supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, in association with Dublin City Council.
George Szirtes, award-winning Hungarian writer primarily in the field of poetry, translation and memoir, will be interviewed by Mary Moynihan, writer, director, theatre and filmmaker and Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality. He will discuss migration, human rights and freedom of expression, and the role of poetry in these challenging times. He will also give a short reading from his work. Csilla Toldy, also Hungarian and also an award winning poet, novelist, translator and film-maker will join the discussion and read from her work.
Tickets are for free but booking is essential here.
Speaker Biographies:
George Szirtes was born in Hungary and emigrated to England with his parents — her mother a survivor of concentration and labor camps—after the 1956 Budapest uprising.
Szirtes studied painting at Harrow School of Art and Leeds College of Art and Design. At Leeds he studied with Martin Bell, who encouraged Szirtes as he began to develop his poetic themes: an engaging mix of British individualism and European fluency in myth, fairy tale, and legend. Szirtes’s attention to shape and sound, cultivated through his background in visual art and his bilingual upbringing, quickly led to his successful embrace of formal verse. In an essay in Poetry magazine defending form, Szirtes argues that “rhyme can be unexpected salvation, the paper nurse that somehow, against all the odds, helps us stick the world together while all the time drawing attention to its own fabricated nature.”
His first book, The Slant Door (1979), won the Faber Memorial Prize. Bridge Passages (1991) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. Reel (2004) won the T.S. Eliot Prize, and his New and Collected Poems was published by Bloodaxe in 2008.
Szirtes did not return to Hungary until 1984, when he visited on the first of several Arts Council travelling scholarships. He has since translated, edited, and anthologized numerous collections of Hungarian poetry. For his translation work Szirtes has won several awards, including the Déry Prize for Imre Madach’s The Tragedy of Man (1989) and the European Poetry Translation Prize for Zsuzsa Rakovsky’s New Life (1994). His own work has been translated into numerous languages and widely anthologised, including in Penguin’s British Poetry Since 1945.
He is the author of Exercise of Power (2001), a critical study of the artist Ana Maria Pacheco. He co-edited, with Penelope Lively, New Writing 10 (2001). Szirtes has written extensively for radio and is the author of more than a dozen plays, musicals, opera libretti, and oratorios.
Szirtes lives in England with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch, with whom he ran the Starwheel Press. They collaborated on Budapest: Image, Poem, Film (2006). He is a member of the Advisory Panel of the British Center for Literary Translation, and is on the Advisory Board of the Poetry Book Society. He has been a member of the Royal Society of Literature since 1982. www.georgeszirtes.blogspot.com
Csilla Toldy is a writer and translator from Hungary, living in Rostrevor, Co Down. Her publications include various literary magazines in the UK and Ireland, as well as three poetry pamphlets: Red Roots – Orange Sky (2013), The Emigrant Woman’s Tale (2015) and Vertical Montage (2018, Lapwing), and the short story collection, Angel Fur and other stories (Stupor Mundi, 2019). Her novel Bed Table Door, long listed for the Bath Novel award, and winner of the Desmond Elliot Residency explores the idea of political and personal freedom against the backdrop of the Cold War and Thatcher’s England. (Wrecking Ball Press, 2023). Csilla creates film poems as a visual artist. Her award-winning work has been screened at international festivals. In 2020 she was commissioned by the Executive Office of Northern Ireland to create a public artwork, a film poem for Holocaust Memorial Day. Csilla is a Creative Writing tutor with the Open University and a mentor with the Irish Writer’s Centre.
Her film scripts won the Katapult Prize and the Special Prize of the Motion Pictures Association of America as the Hungarian entry to the Hartley-Merrill Prize and they were placed as Drama (Foreign Film) Genre Finalist in the APMFF Screenplay Competition 2015 in New Jersey. The Bloom Mystery her documentary based on Joyce’s Ulysses was screened internationally. Her narrative non-fiction was short listed for the Kingston University Biography Prize and the Fish Memoir Prize. Csilla’s first novel, Bed Table Door was long listed for the Bath Novel Award and is recently with The Wrecking Ball Press.
In 2023 she was the recipient of the Desmond Elliot Residency awarded by the National Centre for Writing.
Mary Moynihan, Writer, Director, Theatre and Film-Maker and Artistic Director, Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality
Mary Moynihan, (she/her), MA, is an award-winning writer, director, theatre and film-maker, an interdisciplinary artist and one of Ireland’s most innovative arts and human rights artists creating work to promote the arts, human rights, climate justice, gender equality, diversity and peace.
“In celebration of International Women’s Day (8th March) and PEN’s 90th anniversary, PEN International asks PEN members to nominate one piece of writing by a woman that has moved them, made a deep impression, or that they greatly admire. Nominations will be featured on our site as a tapestry of recommendations in recognition of literary achievements by women. Nominations may include women’s writing of any form, including poetry, essays, novels, short stories and speeches. Please email nominations to communications@pen-international.org stating your name, your PEN Centre, the writer and title of the text you are nominating, and a brief sentence explaining why you have chosen this piece of writing. Deadline for nominations 29th February.”
