Packed programme for 2015 Shorelines Festival

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

There is a top-quality line-up on the bill for this year’s Shorelines Festival in Portumna, which runs from Thursday September 17 to Sunday September 20.

The organising committee has scoured the country to find the very best readers, writers, artists and acrobats, including performers and artists from the Portumna area. There’s something to please all the varied audiences in the area and many of the events are free, while organisers have kept prices down to a minimum for the ticketed events.

The main acts this year include writer Joseph O’Connor (Thursday September 17); singer Mary Coughlan (Saturday September 19); drama with Fishamble: The New Theatre Company (Sunday September 20); and the popular group The Lost Brothers (Friday September 18). All of these events should be booked in advance to ensure admission.

Shorelines will host a live recording of RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany on Sunday September 20 in Portumna’s Christ Church. The programme will feature a mix of new voices and well-known writers as well as live music and will be presented by the programme producer Aoife Nic Cormaic.

Literary guests at the festival include Paul Kingsnorth – longlisted for the Man Booker Prize – who will engage in conversation with poet Grace Wells on the role of the writer in this age of ecological change.

Poet and scholar, Bernard O’Donoghue talks on Yeats; and guests at the annual Literary Brunch include Louis de Paor, Grace Wells and Anne Marie Kennedy. Join in the Lines Learned by Heart annual recitation competition or write in the Pub Limerick competition and nominate your favourite Yeats poem online or in town.

Workshops are a big part of the annual programme. With a prose workshop with John MacKenna (Friday September 18) and a poetry workshop with Grace Wells (Saturday September 19) as well as a Botanical Art Workshop (Saturday September 19), adults are well catered for.

Children can participate in puppet making workshops, MineVention workshops and students in the local national school will create a collaborative story with writer, Betsy Cornwell. Street theatre with Lulu, Duille Beag and Just a Guy, as well as a Flea Circus and Tegolin’s Tales, will have all the family entertained.

Culture Night will be celebrated in the programme with many free events including drama with The Half-Day Thursday Drama Group, a teatime reading with writer, John MacKenna and guests from Crannóg Literary Magazine – Mary Melvin-Geoghegan, Aoibheann McCann and Pat O’Connor.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.