Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend kicks off in Mayo today
THE 20th annual Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend at St. Thomas Church and Hall in Dugort, on Achill Island, gets underway today (Thursday) and continues until Sunday, April 30.
The weekend programme will focus on the heritage of writing in Achill, and on the environment and involvement of Heinrich Böll in emerging environmental politics in Germany in the 1970s.
Events start this evening (Thursday) at 8 p.m. in St. Thomas’s Church, Dugort, with readings organised by Poetry Day Ireland in association with Mayo Arts Office and the Heinrich Boll Memorial Weekend, marking the third anniversary of the death of Eavan Boland.
In 1989, Eavan Boland published her famous essay, ‘A Kind of Scar’, setting out her vision for poetry in an Ireland that had previously been hostile to women writers and using Achill Island, and an old woman that she met there, as the starting point of her argument about ‘the difficulties for a woman poet within a constraining national tradition’.
Over three decades later and as part of the programme of events for Poetry Day Ireland 2023, a panel of writers and commentators come together on Achill Island to perform their own work and to discuss Eavan’s legacy and the landscape for women poets in Ireland in the 21st century.
The event will be chaired by Nessa O’Mahony, editor of Poetry Ireland Review 138, the special tribute issue to Eavan Boland. Participants include other contributors to the special issue, poets Moya Cannon, Geraldine Mitchell and Mary O’Malley.
Other speakers over the weekend include Ambassador Cord Meier-Klodt, German Ambassador to Ireland, Micheál Ó Briain - Achill’s rich natural heritage - a valuable link in the special places for biodiversity in Europe, Art Ó Súilleabháin - Dánta grá – grá don saol, don nádúr agus don duine, Pádraic Fogarty - biodiversity and the climate crisis, Jan Philipp Albrecht, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Saoirse McHugh, environmentalist, Seán Lysaght, nature writing, Judith Mok, reading from The State of Dark, Roman Ehrlich/Professor Kerstin Mey, Gisela Holfter, Michael O'Loughlin, Sujata Bhatt, Michael Augustin, Eoin Halpin, Eoghan Daltun, and the Achill Writers Group.
Full details and to book tickets at http://heinrichboellcottage.com/.