Queer Irish Poetry Now - A Symposium

'Queer Irish Poetry Now' - A Symposium

Trinity College Dublin, Long Room Hub, January 25, 2025

Ellen Orchard (Trinity College Dublin) and Dr Mícheál McCann (Queen's University Belfast)

As we approach a decade since the thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland, with the array of queer Irish writers greeted with new visibility and attention in anthologies like Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (Lifeboat Press, 2021) and Green Carnations, Glas Na Gile (Book Hub Publishing, 2020), this symposium celebrates and interrogates what it means for a poem to be queer. With a keynote address from Professor Ed Madden (University of South Carolina), a keynote conversation with Dr. Paul Maddern, editor of Queering the Green and several panel discussions which approach queerness from a myriad of angles across Irish poetry, including Irish-language poetry, the day promises to be a rich one. The symposium will culminate in a 6pm reading, presented in association with Poetry Ireland, featuring poets Padraig Regan and Zara Meadows.

This symposium is a cross-institutional, cross-border collaboration between Trinity and the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's. This project has received funding from the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin.

This free day-long symposium is an in-person event only. If you wish to attend, please register so that the organisers can gauge numbers.

Image Credit: 'Romance' by Alice Maher

Schedule

Registration open from 9.30-10

10.00 Welcome and Introduction: Ellen Orchard (TCD)

10.05 Queer Then, Queer Now, and Queer When?: Queer(ing) Irish-language Poetry ·Dean Farrell (Concordia University), ‘You can’t be a muse poet because people will think you’re a lesbian!’ Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s ‘Lesbian’ Poems

· Dr Seán Mac Risteaird (DCU), Voicing Silence and Voicing Violence: Who’s afraid of Queerness in the Poetry of Cathal Ó Searcaigh?

· Darragh Ó Caoimh (Independent Researcher), ‘Is tar gach siocair ar son Éamuinn’ - Pádraigín Haicéad, a queer 17th century poet?

11.30 Keynote Lecture: Professor Ed Madden (University of South Carolina)

· "There's a moment ... / Before the form appears / That sings": Form, Time, and Desire in the Queer Poem

12.30 Lunch

1.30 Queer (In)Visibility

· Kit Fryatt (DCU), ‘Nor Priapus in Action shall equal her Fame’: Transmasculine encounters with William King’s The Toast

· Charlotte Buckley (TCD), ‘(No)place to write from’: A Queer Ecofeminist Ethic in Colette Bryce’s Poetry

· Sarah Deneher (UG), “Mionlach laistigh den mhionlach”: Queer Irish-language poetry and the digital landscape

3.00 Coffee

3.30 Queering Ireland

· Maureen DeLeo (UG), ‘You will guide all wayfarers that walk this mountain’: The Old Woman Allegory in Patrick Pearse’s Poetry

· Deirbhile Brennan (Independent Researcher), Liminality in the Queer Lyric: A Close Reading of Pillow Queens’ Leave the Light On

· Liz Quirke (UCC), The Futurity of Queer Irish Poetry?

4.55 Keynote Conversation: Dr Paul Maddern

· Editor of Queering the Green, in conversation with Dr Mícheál McCann

5.40 Closing Remarks & Launch of Follow-up Reading Group - Ellen Orchard & Rafael Mendes Silva (TCD)

Interrogating Queer/Cuir Poetry: Defamiliarising 'Queer' through reading Irish and Latin American Poetry

6.00 Poetry Reading, presented by Poetry Ireland - Padraig Regan and Zara Meadows

Host or Publisher Trinity College Dublin, School of English