Gather in the Square for Drum Dance Ireland and follow them and a host of young people in a lively, magical, colourful parade to the library.

Join the spectacular fun that is playing drums and percussion in the Eigse parade.

Urs Wenk of Drum Dance Ireland is going to host a brief workshop for anyone interested participating prior to this event. There will be a great amount of lightweight drums and also shakers, bells and other instruments to make a great rhythmical impact in the parade. Total number of people catered for is 45.

In the performance the group will then be joined by more experienced drummers that work with Urs for these kind of events.

Official Opening of Éigse by Mayor John Moran, with special guests poet Paddy Bushe and musical trio, Jaskane. The Michael Hartnett Poetry Award, will be presented to this year’s winner. No invitation needed.

Venue: Newcastle West Library.
Admission: FREE

Venue: Whelan’s Beer Garden, Maiden Street.
Admission: FREE

Natasha Remoundou is a writer, poet, translator, critic, and literary scholar, born and raised in Athens, Greece. Her work has been published by Dedalus Press, The Stinging Fly, The Gallery Press, Púca, JoLT, Abridged, The Madrigal, Live Encounters, ASSODYO, Kastaniotis, Parasito, and it has been featured as part of the UCD Irish Poetry Reading Archive, The Linenhall Arts Centre, Galway 2020, Reading Over the Edge, Memoriam Walking Festival, Ennis Book Club Festival, and Women X Borders . She lives in the west of Ireland since 2003.

Light lunch served. Booking recommended as numbers are limited.

Venue: Desmond Complex.
Admission: €15
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lunchtime-reading-by-galway-poet-rita-ann-higgins-tickets-1007440169667?

Rita Ann Higgins was born and lives in Galway. She has published eleven books of poetry including Throw in the Vowels, Ireland is Changing Mother, Tongulish and Pathogens Love a Patsy. Rita Ann has also written essays, plays and screenplays. In 2021 she received The Living Poets Society Award. She was shortlisted for The Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2022. She is a member of Áosdána. Her poetry became a national salve during the pandemic, uniquely capturing the mood of the country as read live from RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor radio show. Her latest collection, The Long Weekend contains the bank holiday poems heard on the show and many others which sets a tone for every season. From bank holidays to saints’ days and many other annual celebrations on the Irish calendar year, The Long Weekend leaves no question that Rita Ann Higgins is the people’s poet.

Picture credit – Andrew Downes

Curated by John Upton, this exhibition brings Newcastle West’s past to life in photographs and film clips.

Venue: The Red Door Gallery
Admission: Free

John Upton has successfully turned his hobby into an impressive online presence. From small beginnings, he began collecting old photographs, video and film clips about Newcastle West, its characters and events and has built them over the years into an invaluable historical archive of the town and surrounding areas. It began with a Facebook page in 2007 and then developed as a Covid Project with the launching of his website in 2020.

This year Éigse wants to honour and highlight the work being undertaken by John Upton in a display in The Red Door Gallery entitled ‘Building an archive – Newcastle West Olden Times’.

Venue: Red Door Gallery, The Square.
Admission: FREE

Venue: Red Door Gallery.
Admission: FREE

Michael Dooley’s poems have appeared in Banshee, the Irish Independent, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, The North, The Stinging Fly, online at RTE Culture, and elsewhere. He has had work shortlisted for awards including the Cúirt New Writing Prize, the Dermot Healy International Poetry Prize, the Doolin Poetry Prize, The Patrick Kavanagh Award and The Strokestown International Poetry Competition. His poems placed runner-up in both the Charles Macklin Poetry Award and the Mairtín Crawford Award. His work has been selected for the Introductions Series at the Cork Spring Poetry Festival, and was shortlisted for the Fool for Poetry Competition. His poems have also been anthologised in The Best New British and Irish Poets (2018, Eyewear) and Local Wonders (2021, Dedalus Press). In 2021 he contributed to Solus Nua’s multimedia project, View Source, writing collaboratively with Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe. He has twice been longlisted for the National Poetry Competition (UK), and in 2023, he read at Listowel Writers’ Week, and was featured poet in the summer edition of The Stinging Fly. He is a teacher, and lives in Limerick.

In Spring We Turned to Water is the first full-length collection of poetry from Michael Dooley. It brings together poems of intricate watchfulness and stunning revelation from the natural world. In parts memory and experience, parts lore and the dreamlike, these visually striking and distinctly sounded poems emerge from a liminal terrain tightly charged with folklores and heritages, water bodies, outsiders and wild creatures.

Venue: Desmond Complex
Admission: €10
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/still-hearing-you-loud-and-clear-tickets-1007450179607?

Vona Groarke is the author of fourteen books, including eight poetry collections with Gallery Books (most recently, Link: Poet and World, 2021, and Double Negative, 2019). Her version of the ninth century Irish poem known as ‘The Lament of the Hag of Beare’ was published in 2023 as Woman of Winter, with illustrations by Isobel Nolan. A Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library 2018-19, her research there led to Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara, a multi-genre account of the lives of Irish women domestic servants in late nineteenth century New York, (New York University Press, 2022). Hereafter has been shortlisted for the RIA’s 2024 Michel Déon Prize. Her Selected Poems won the 2017 Pigott Prize for Best Irish Poetry Collection. Poet, essayist, reviewer and editor, her work has recently appeared in New York Review of Books, L.A. Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and Poetry Review. She is the current Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge.

Mark Roper’s latest collection, Beyond Stillness, came out in October 2022. It was longlisted for the Laurel Prize and the Julie Suk Award. Bindweed, 2017, was shortlisted for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award. A Gather of Shadow, 2012, was also shortlisted for that Award and won the Michael Hartnett Award in 2014. With photographer Paddy Dwan, he has published The River Book, The Backstrand, and Comeragh and, in October 2023, Sea and Stone. Mark has written the librettos for two operas composed by the late Eric Sweeney. He was Editor of Poetry Ireland for 1999. A book of short poems, From The Japanese Gardens, with images by the photographer Margaret O’Brien-Moran, will be published in early 2025.

“Mark Roper’s trademark spare, spiritual response to the natural world is intensified in Beyond Stillness.” Martina Evans, The Irish Times. 29/10/2022.

Éigse, in partnership with Newcastle West Film Club, presents “That they may face the rising sun”, the Irish-made film by Pat Collins based on John McGahern’s book of the same name.

Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate Ruttledge (Anna Bederke) have returned from London to live and work among a small lakeside community near to where Joe grew up. Now deeply embedded in the life around the lake, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters that move about them unfolds through the rituals of work, play and the passing seasons.

In passages of great beauty and truth, Pat Collins, in his second feature film following several acclaimed documentaries, sensitively interprets McGahern’s work, drawing out the novel’s deceptive simplicity, and transforming an enclosed world into an everywhere.

Venue: Desmond Complex
Admission: €8

Venue: Desmond Complex.
Admission: €15
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jon-kenny-actor-comedian-and-writer-presents-an-enthralling-hour-tickets-1007455535627?

Jon Kenny’s newest show ‘’Words, LIes and Craic’’ is a hilarious and poignant mixture of Storytelling, Song and Poetry. Jon who is a renowned comedian, actor and singer is now making a name for himself as a storyteller and poet.

He has wowed audiences during Listowel Writers Week and Kinsale Arts Festival and will be performing his show at the Spoken Word tent at Electric Picnic, The Patrick Kavanagh Festival in Inishkeen, The North Main Street Carnival, Cork city and The Éigse Michael Hartnett Festival in Newcastle West.

Remembering Michael Hartnett, a walking tour of the town and the places that helped shape him. Includes the unveiling of a memorial plaque at the Hartnett home in Assumpta Park.

Venue: Tour begins at Hartnett Statue.
Admission: FREE

Venue: Longcourt House Hotel
Admission: €10
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/claire-coughlan-tickets-1007752754617?

Claire Coughlan worked as a journalist in Ireland for many years. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UCD and lives in Co Kildare with her husband and daughter. Where They Lie is her first novel.

Claire has been named in the An Post Irish Book Awards’ new initiative, ‘New Voices: 20 Best New Irish Writers’.

Picture credit – Nick Bradshaw

The ever-popular and energetic music group Kíla takes to the stage for a powerful performance.

Venue: Longcourt House Hotel.
Admission: €25
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kila-at-eigse-michael-hartnett-tickets-980374104337?

Venue: Desmond Complex.
Admission: FREE

West Limerick native Mike Mac Domhnaill has had six books published to date, poetry and stories in Gaelic and English. He won the Francis McManus Short Story Award in 2013 and had a very successful collection, Sifting, published in 2015. His two most recent books were Weeds United (Revival Press) and Mise Fear Pluaise (Coiscéim).

Bailiúchán de scéalta atá sa leabhar nua seo, Agus Anois – Beagáinín Ciúnais, atá foilsithe ag Cló Iar-Chonnacht. Leanann sé leis an bprós-fhilíocht a chleacht sé i Sifting. Cuid des na scéalta bunaithe i gCaisleán Nua, Cnoc Fírinne agus Bearna. Tá greann ag rith tríothu.

A special concert for children with Kíla. This is an interactive show where children are invited to take part, to accompany with their own sounds and to dance. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Advance booking is advised.

Venue: Gaelscoil O’Doghair, Station Rd. V42 PD71
Admission: Family ticket €20
Tickets: Online sales now closed. Limited tickets will be available at the door.