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2025 Éigse Michael Hartnett festival brings poetry and music to Newcastle West
2025 Éigse Michael Hartnett festival brings poetry and music to Newcastle West. Photo: Cian Reinhardt
The 2025 Éigse Michael Hartnett Festival will return to Newcastle West this October 2 to 5, bringing four days of poetry
The Éigse Michael Hartnett Festival returns to Newcastle West from October 2 to 5, bringing four days of poetry, performance, music, and remembering one of the country’s most celebrated poets and writers.
Celebrating the 2025 edition, the festival has helped to platform and showcase some of Ireland’s contemporary voices in literature, music, and the arts. This year’s programme kicks off on Thursday, October 2, with a Drum Dance Ireland workshop in the Newcastle West town square, led by Urs Wenk, followed by the lively Umbrella Street Parade.
The official launch will take place in the town library with Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport Patrick O’Donovan, Mayor John Moran, and Limerick Arts Officer Etain McCooey, alongside guest poet Paula Meehan and musician Oonagh McMahon.
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On Friday, October 3, poet Theo Dorgan will mark the 50th anniversary of Hartnett’s work ‘A Farewell to English’ with a special reading at Springfield Castle. The day also features a ceramics exhibition, Órchloch, Alchemy, from the Painted Pot Collective, with a performance of The Six Marys, and the launch of Robyn Rowland’s poetry collection Deep Curve. Other events on the day include a screening of ‘The Blue Bird’, a film about Edna O’Brien.
The amazing schedule continues on Saturday with the Michael Hartnett Memorial Lecture by journalist and author Justine McCarthy. Saturday will be perfect for music lovers as Louise Mulchahy celebrates women in uileann piping, and the heartbeat of the festival, poetry, will see readings by Dublin performance poet Natalya O’Flaherty and Dean Browne, winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize.
Also at this year’s festival, a highly anticipated poetry slam, Slam Éigse, will take place on Saturday, October 4 at Whelan’s Bar. This event run in association with Poetry Ireland, invited performers of all experience to take to the stage, competing for a €200 prize and the title of Slam Éigse Winner 2025.
Saturday concludes with the launch of West Limerick Ink, an anthology from local writing group Desmond Scribblers, and a gala concert with Oscar-winning singer-songwriter Glen Hansard at Longcourt House Hotel.
Throughout the festival, family events are also on offer, including storytime and writing workshops for children with Irish-language author Sadhbh Devlin.
Sunday will take the festival in a different direction to close out the celebrations, with food historian Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire on the story of Irish food opening day, novelist Róisín Maguire reading from new work, ‘Night Swimmers’, taking place from 12:30 pm at Longcourt Hotel, and to wrap up the festival, Munster rugby legend Keith Earls will be in discussion with sportswriter Tommy Conlon at the Longcourt Hotel from 3:00 pm.
A full programme of events and more information for ticket booking is available on the Éigse website.
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