Capturing CœirtÕs magic on camera

Date Published: 25-Apr-2013

 Connacht Tribune photographer Joe O’Shaughnessy has been covering the Cúirt International Festival of Literature since it was first held 1986 in Galway City, when it was exclusively dedicated to poetry.

Since the beginning, it brought renowned national and international authors to read in Galway, broadening out in 1994 to include fiction in its remit. Later on that was expanded still further to incorporate music, visual arts and theatre.

Past participants include Nobel prize winners Derek Walcott, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee and Seamus Heaney as well as authors like John McGahern, Allen Ginsberg, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk, Nick Hornby and E Annie Proulx.

Joe has captured many of these participants in relaxed and informal moods, as some of the photos above, demonstrate. Those he has photographed during previous festivals include Seamus Heaney and Edna O’Brien.

Seamus Heaney has taken part in Cúirt several times over the years and in 2005 he unveiled a plaque featuring one of his poems, Girls Bathing, Galway 1965 on the Salthill Prom during the festival.

For this year’s Cúírt previous visitors such as Heaney and O’Brien are joined by a new generation of authors, and Joe O’Shaughnessy will be on hand to capture their images for archives of future years.

This Friday, Ben Marcus and Keith Ridgway will discuss Surrealism and Realism in the Novel with Chairperson Mike McCormack at 6.30pm while on Saturday, at 11am, young female poets Priscila Uppal, Tishani Doshi and Tiffany Atkinson will read from their most recent collections.

Other highlights include The Literary Brunch on Sunday at 12pm at Vina Mara and The Harvill Secker Crime Panel in Town Hall Theatre at 6.30pm on Saturday 27. Recently formed local group The Cabin Collective, whose members include Leo Moran, Anto Thistlethwaite and Noelie McDonnell, will also be performing an additional concert in An Taibhdhearc Theatre at 10pm on Saturday following the selling out of their Friday performance.

For more information go to www.Cuirt.ie