Peter Sirr

Peter Sirr lives in Dublin. The Gallery Press has published his eleven poetry collections since Marginal Zones (1984), most recently The Swerve (2023) and The Gravity Wave (2019) which was a Poetry Society Recommendation and winner of the 2020 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award. In his essays, Intimate City (2021), he takes us wandering through the streets of Dublin, past and present, tracing old routes and discovering new ones. He has won many awards for his work including the O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry, the Patrick Kavanagh Award, the Eamon Keane Award at Listowel Writers' Week and the Michael Hartnett Award. He's written plays for radio, a children's book and criticism. He teaches literary translation in Trinity College and has led many workshops and mentoring sessions. Peter Sirr is a member of Aosdána and is married to the poet Enda Wyley.

Bill Griffin

There seems to be from within us a drive, a need to decorate ourselves and our surroundings. This is a means to record and venerate. Between 1500 and 1300 BC cave dwellers in Lascaux in France painted colourful images of their animal prey onto cave walls. Mark making has recorded our earliest existence. As early as 100,000  years ago primitive small-brained ancestors painted images of animals onto rocks. For 10,000 years we have been decorating pottery. Why?

Think of a painting on your wall. It is essentially nothing but a canvas with paint on it. However if the work is successfully executed the artist has created an order of effect with the made markings. All successful art requires order. Then the work’s very existence alone fulfils its primary requirement.

There will be a late night ferry arranged to bring people back to the mainland after the event.

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance. Click HERE to book your place.