A gala bi-lingual poetry reading in Irish and English with Caitríona Ní Chléirchín, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha.

Free, booking essential - all welcome

Doors at 5.30pm

Thu 24 Sep 2026

Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University

38-40 University Road

Belfast BT7 1NJ

Fuair Caitríona Ní Chléirchín ardmholadh ó lucht Ghradam Mhíchíl Uí Airtnéide 2015 as a bheith in ann sruthanna traidisiúnta a mheascadh le sruthanna comhaimseartha ina cuid dánta. Ag scríobh faoina chnuasach is déanaí, Rince Aeir, dúirt an criticeoir Máirín Nic Eoin: ‘Tarraingíonn an file ar acmhainní na miotaseolaíochta agus an dinnseanchais chun fearainn dhúshlánacha mhothála agus pholaitíochta a thaiscéaladh…Cnuasach iontach tráthúil é seo ó fhile a bhfuil a sainghuth féin á shaothrú go binn aici le blianta beaga anuas.’

The judges of the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry in 2015 praised Caitríona Ní Chléirchín for her ‘powerful, courageous, sassy and important’ poetry. Her bilingual collection The Talk of the Town was praised by the Dublin Review of Books as ‘intriguing and beguiling…hollowed out of the bedrock of inspirational love, its location in nature, and in the care for life in its broadest sense’.

Ina chnuasach nua Tonn Teaspaigh, déanann Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh cuir síos ar an mháithreachas agus ar shaol na máthar ag tógáil linbh óig. Tugann sí a dhúshlán do go leor den insint seanchaite atá ann faoi ról na mban sa tsochaí agus déanann sí é go fíor, paiteanta agus go liriciúil.

In her poetry Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh explores loss and longing through sensual images and expressions – with banshees and pookahs appearing within a modern, urban sensibility. In her review of Ailbhe’s bilingual collection The Coast Road, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill described it as ‘a feast for the eye and the ear and a consolation for the heart’.

Guth nua corraitheach i saol na héigse in Éirinn í Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha a chuimsíonn téamaí a bhaineann leis an dúlra, an timpeallacht agus an grá. Dánta colainne agus creidimh, dánta faoin teanga agus cearta an duine, dánta faoin bhfilíocht féin – tá siad uilig le fáil ina dara cnuasach, Mainistir na Feola.

Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha is a dynamic new voice in Irish poetry. Of her work, poet Louis de Paor has commented: 'Like Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, she acknowledges and then rejects the limitations of a linguistic imagination moving from English to Irish, integrating the spoken dialects of Donegal and Conamara with the acquired Irish of new speakers of the language to forge an alternative poetic dialect grounded in a thousand years of literature, inflected by her own distinctive tones and accent. To paraphrase her own tribute to her principal avatar, Biddy Jenkinson, the best of her poems are a rare combination of nettle-scald and dew-balm’.

IMRAM IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE SEAMUS HEANEY CENTRE AT QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY, BELFAST

Description supplied by the event organiser.