First major festival of the year

From the Munster Literary Centre

Just a reminder that we are only one week away from the first major Munster literary event of the year.

All workshops were sold out before the Irish Times coverage last Saturday - since then we could have sold them three times over. Next Monday the Irish Examiner features the festival in its daily Arts page.

The Metropole Hotel in MacCurtain Street is the venue for this year's Cork Spring Festival. Every year we choose a new theme and this year's theme is sense of place. Sense of place and the business of place-naming holds such an integral position in Irish literature that the theme warrants its own specialist term: Dinnseanchas.
Headline authors this year include an array of poets, novelists and story writers: Jennifer Johnstone, Martín Espada, Paula Meehan, Bernard O'Donoghue, Mary O'Malley, Michael Coady, Thomas McCarthy, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and many others. There will be a slam competition with a prize of 300 euro, workshops with distinguished American authors, the launch party for Theo Dorgan's new poetry collection, the presentation of the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize as well as all the wonderful readings. Audience and authors alike are encouraged to socialise afterwards at the festival club in the Boqueria on Bridge Street.
All readings are free (no one will be turned away for lack of funds) but we will be encouraging people to donate what they can. €5 being the suggested amount. Oh, and be sure to look out for the world-famous Itinerant Poetry Librarian who will be offering her very eccentric services around the city during the course of the festival.