ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Festival

Ó Bhéal’s 9th Winter Warmer (and 1st hybrid) festival presented 30 poets live from eight countries. Almost half of these featured guests apeared in-person at Nano Nagle Place, with others appearing virtually.

This year, Contemporary Poetry and Politics: Social Conflicts and Poetic Dialogisms (POEPOLIT II) sponsored two activities, both chaired and organized by Cornelia Gräbner, member of our research team.

• Sunday 28th Nov – Round table discussion: ‘Nurturing Poetries: Organizing and the Creation of Poetry Scenes in Port Cities.’ With Paul Casey, Yolanda Castaño, and Dave Ward, chaired by Cornelia Gräbner.

Poetry needs nurture. It needs a social context, spaces for learning, listening and response, and interaction with social environments. The poetry performance and the poetry recital in particular are credited with promoting the communitarian and social aspect of poetry, including a respectful and critical culture of listening and response. But who creates, runs, maintains, initiates, re-invents the events, the recitals, the slams, the festivals, the workshops, residencies, magazines, competitions, prizes and training opportunities for socially and culturally embedded poetries

In this event, three poetry organisers from different port cities – Cork, Liverpool and A Coruña – speak about what it takes to create a nurturing environment and a ‘social infrastructure’ for poetry with a view to the medium and long term”.

• Sunday 28th Nov – Poetry reading ‘Nurturing Poets: Eight Poets from Port Cities.’ With Bene Sebuyange, Lucía Aldao, Julie Goo, Nathalie Linh Bolderston, George Harding, Eleanor Rees, Emma Pedreira, Molly Twomey.

For more information, please visit Winter Warmer Poetry Festival.