Limerick Literary Festival 2022 will promote Limerick as a place of literary excellence 

Limerick Literary Festival 2022 launch – Pictured above are Marie Hackett, Emily Cullen and Vivienne Mckechnie at O Mahonys Bookshop.

The event continues to honour the life and works of the Limerick author, Kate O’Brien

The Limerick Literary Festival 2022 takes place in Limerick on June 18th and 19th with the programme taking place in The People’s Museum, Number 2 Pery Square on Saturday and the Belltable on Sunday. 

The launch of the Limerick Literary Festival 2022 in Honour of Kate O’Brien took place at O’Mahony’s Bookshop Limerick. The Festival, usually scheduled for February was moved into June this year due to the ongoing Covid 19 restrictions. The festival programme for 2022 includes talks, interviews, poetry, an exhibition and more to be announced. 

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The event continues to honour the life and works of the Limerick author, Kate O’Brien while attracting prominent participants from all over the world. The theme for 2022 is re-emergence and centres around the following quote from Brendan Kennelly’s poem Begin. 

Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.

— From The Essential Brendan Kennelly

In the wake of the Covid 19  crisis, as we return to live events, this quote is particularly apt especially as we also celebrate the re-publication of Kate O’Brien’s Pray for the Wanderer. This book, the first to be published after she had been banned in Ireland, represents her indomitable spirit and ability to begin again.

Building on this significant history, the Limerick Literary Festival 2022 seeks to promote Limerick nationally as a place of literary excellence and to provide a platform where readers can meet their favourite authors and other readers.

The festival will be opened by Professor Kerstin Mey, the President of the University of Limerick and will feature authors Frank Shovlin, Stephen Kinsella, Mary Coll, Caitriona Clear and previous winners of the Kate O’Brien Award Una Mannion and Sue Rainsford. Authors Caitriona Clear and Mary Coll will lead a session entitled ‘Kate O’Brien: why would you bother?’ exploring the reasons why we should still read the novels of Kate O’Brien, in an Ireland which has changed almost beyond recognition from the ‘de Valera’s Ireland’ deplored by the writer in her angry polemic Pray For The Wanderer (1938). 

Festival highlights will also include a tribute to the late Limerick artist Dave Lilburn. On Sat June 18th a group of Dave’s friends and collaborators, Tony Curtis, Ciaran O’Driscoll and Judith Hill, among others, will come together in a programme to celebrate the late artist. The Tribute will feature a short film made by Mike O’Neill in 1994 of Dave at work in his studio as well as a small exhibition of Dave’s work. Dave was a loyal supporter of and regular  attendee of the LLF in honour of Kate O’Brien, he is much missed by all who knew him and admired his wonderful work

The festival will culminate with a very special event, Wild Wild Erie: A Paul Durcan Celebration

Wild Wild Erie, Paul Durcan’s most recent book, celebrates artworks in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. In his books Crazy About Women and Give Me Your Hand, Durcan wrote startlingly original poems in response to the National Gallery of Ireland and London’s National Gallery collections. In Wild Wild Erie, Durcan with characteristic playfulness, insight and an altogether unusual way of looking response to works in Toledo‘s extraordinary collection including works by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Victoria Dubourg, Edward Hopper, Matisse, Jack B. Yeats, Sean Scully and Diane Arbus. On Sunday, 19 June, actors Ingrid Craigie and Mark O’Regan will perform Paul Durcan poems, beginning with much-loved classics such as ‘The Kilfenora Teaboy’, ‘The Cabinet Table’, ‘Making Love Outside Áras an Uachtaráin’ and ‘The Cabinet Table’. This will be followed by poems from Wild Wild Erie and the readings will be accompanied by images of the artworks projected on a large screen.

For more information on the Limerick Literary Festival 2022, go HERE 

For more stories on Limerick  Literary Festival go HERE