Seminar and Wine Reception: 27th February

We are delighted to announce that the last seminar of term will feature the poet and critic Gerald Dawe in conversation with Maria Johnston. Gerald will read from his forthcoming poetry collection and work in progress Points West. This will be followed by the end-of-term wine reception.

Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952 and educated at the University of Ulster at Coleraine and University College Galway (now National University of Ireland, Galway) where he taught from 1977 to 1987. He is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin where he lectures in English and directs the graduate writing programme. He was Burns Visiting Professor at Boston College in 2005. His first collection of poems, Sheltering Places (Blackstaff) was published in 1978. His second collection, The Lundys Letter (1985) published by The Gallery Press, was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. Other awards include Arts Council Bursaries for Poetry, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship and the Ledig-Rowholt International Writers' Award. His subsequent poetry collections, Sunday School (1991), Heart of Hearts (1995), The Morning Train (1999) and Lake Geneva (2003) have also been published by The Gallery Press. His collected essays, The Proper Word was published in 2007. My Mother-City, a memoir, also appeared in 2007 along with a special issue of An Sionnach. He is the new presenter of the RTE Poetry Programme.

All are Welcome!

Guest Speaker: 20th February 2008

We are delighted to announce that our guest speaker for this week's seminar is Prof. Clair Wills (Queen Mary, University of London). Prof. Wills will be speaking about 1950s Ireland and the Emigration Commission.

Clair Wills’s research focuses on twentieth-century Irish literature and culture, and contemporary English, Irish and American poetry. Her most recent book, That Neutral Island, is a social and cultural history of Ireland during the Second World War, published by Faber and Harvard University Press in 2007. She edited the Contemporary Writing section of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volumes IV and V (Cork University Press, 2002). In addition to her books on Irish poetry (Improprieties: Politics and Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry (1993), and Reading Paul Muldoon (1998)) she has published articles on poets such as Roy Fisher, Denise Riley, and Fanny Howe. She regularly reviews contemporary poetry for the Times Literary Supplement. Her current research, for which she has been awarded a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship, looks at cultural relations between Britain and Ireland in the 1950s. In collaboration with Dr Ian McBride of Kings College London Clair Wills runs the interdisciplinary London Irish Studies Seminar at the Institute of English Studies, Senate House.

All are welcome!