Bloomsday Festival 2026: Work Out Your Brain with Finnegans Wake

Work Out Your Brain with Finnegans Wake is a public reading and writing performance that invites you to engage the right side of your brain in a fun and supportive setting. Most of us tend to write with one hand, strengthening neural pathways in the left hemisphere.

This event playfully encourages you to respond to James Joyce’s dreamlike book Finnegans Wake with your non-dominant hand, awakening the right hemisphere. Joyce was said to have departed from traditional English when he wrote Finnegans Wake, which is what makes this event especially comfortable for those with dyslexia or dyspraxia, as there are no rules about how to read or write.

Led by visual artist Vicki Davis, the event is 90 minutes long, but feel free to come and go from the room as you please.

is a visual artist based in Cork. She graduated from the Technological University Dublin on Sherkin Island in West Cork 2020. Her practice is multidisciplinary spanning performance art, film, experimental sound and sculptural installation. She enjoys blurring the genres and describes her films as filmed performance art - edited.

is organised by in partnership with Fáilte Ireland and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.

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Host or Publisher James Joyce Centre