Poetry Reading: Voices for Justice
This event happened on 26 April 2009
Review of Event
FLAC marked the 40th anniversary of its founding with a poetry reading at the James Joyce House, Ushers Island, Dublin 8 on Sunday 26 April 2009.
Irish poets Dennis O'Driscoll and John O'Donnell and US poet Jane Hirshfield read from their work. FLAC was fortunate enough to be able to present poetry from three poets with connections to the law and justice, the area in which the organisation campaigns and works. It was also an opportunity for those who did not make it to Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway this year to hear Jane Hirshfield, a featured poet at the Galway event.
O'Driscoll, a noted and internationally acclaimed poet, studied law at UCD and his philosophical and thoughtful poetry has been described as seeking to "give a voice to the language of law and commerce". He has worked as a public servant since the age of 16, and has also authored eight books of poetry, three chapbooks and a collection of essays and reviews.
Hirshfield, a leading American poet, has written six books of poetry, several translations and two collections of essays. Her most recent volume After was nominated for the TS Eliot Award and named one of the Washington Post's best books of 2006. She has written several poems with justice as a central theme including the poem "Justice without Passion" in 2003, explaining later that the poem was inspired by a hope that in the word "passion", readers might also hear the word "compassion."
O'Donnell is a Senior Counsel whose poetry has been published in newspapers, journals and anthologies in Ireland, England, Australia, and the United States. John won the Hennessy / Sunday Tribune New Irish Writing Award for Poetry in 1998, and in 2001 took The Ireland Fund's Listowel Writers' Week prizes for Best Individual Poem and Best Short Collection. Some Other Country, his first collection, appeared in 2002, when he also won the SeaCat Irish National Poetry Prize. His most recent collection of poems is Icarus Sees His Father Fly, which appeared from Dedalus in 2004.
FLAC was honoured to host three esteemed poets and hopesd that the audience will reflect on the shared aspirations of giving a voice to law and bringing compassion to the pursuit of justice.
Venue
James Joyce House, Ushers Island, Dublin 8