Award-winning Irish Poet to visit Albuquerque and Santa Fe
As part of an international book tour, Irish poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin will visit New Mexico in February 2019 to deliver a series of readings from her much-acclaimed debut collection Bloodroot (Doire Press 2017).
Shortlisted for The Shine Strong Award for best first collection in Ireland and for the 2018 Julie Suk Award in the U.S.A, Bloodroot explores the theme of landscape in the context of the author’s own ancestry, looking closely at the historical and cultural silences imposed upon women in Ireland by the Irish State.
“Bloodroot is written out of the experience of having had a grandmother who gave birth in an Irish Mother and Baby Home in the 1950’s. Many of the poems reference family separation and the intergenerational grief of adoption loss. The book is dedicated to my foremothers and it’s the kind of book that readers everywhere will relate to. Family loss is a universal experience. I’m really looking forward to visiting New Mexico. I grew up speaking Irish in a rural fishing village in northwest Donegal, so the desert is going to be a culture shock! I’m keen to share my experience of family and poetry, but most of all I’m looking forward to connecting with new audiences.
In 2016 Ní Churreáin was the recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award by President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins on behalf of the Arts Council. She has previously been awarded literary fellowships from Akademie Schloss Solitude Germany, Jack Kerouac House Orlando and Hawthornden Castle Scotland. The Yale Review has surmised that “Ní Churreáin often captures a whole world of cultural and historical implications in a single, simple, but metaphorically rich image.” The Los Angeles Review of Books has stated: “That Ní Churreáin can condense the prototypical life of a young Irish woman into half a page while sustaining the poem’s impact is testament to her ability as a storyteller, the vividness of her language, and the universality of the portraits she is painting”.
Ní Churreáin is a member of the Arts Council Writers in Prisons Scheme in Ireland. She is also the author of a special limited edition letter-press book about Dublin titled Town (The Salvage Press 2018). During her 2019 Bloodroot New Mexico Tour, which is part- funded by Culture Ireland,
Info from www.studiotwentyfive.com
Additional Info: creativeceardlann@gmail.com
Contact: Argos MacCallum 505-577-2679 argos@teatroparaguas.org