Olivia O’Leary and poets of witness for Cúirt discussion on human rights

Broadcaster Olivia O’Leary, US poet Patricia Smith, and Palestinian spoken-word poet Rafeef Ziadah will be in discussion at the Town Hall Theatre on Friday, April 12, as part of this year’s Cúirt Festival of Literature. Cúirt runs from April 8-14.

Ms O’Leary will moderate a public discussion with the writers, which will take place on the main stage of the Town Hall Theatre at 8pm.

The event will be recorded for broadcast on RTE Radio.

“Literature of Witness is a central theme of Cúirt this year,” says Programme Director, Emily Cullen, “and this idea of ‘witness’ is fundamental to the work of these two urgent, compelling voices.”

Patricia Smith was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Poetry for her collection, Incendiary Art, in which she confronts the violence enacted against Africa-American men and the grief of the women who mourn them.

The collection won the €100,00 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the 2018 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Image Award. The teacher and performance artist is the author of seven books of poetry and a four-time winner of the national poetry slam. Ms Smith’s reading at Cúirt coincides with the UK launch of Incendiary Art.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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