POETRY IS one of humanity's oldest forms of artistic and personal expression, found across all eras, languages, and cultures. Today is Poetry Day and Galway will mark the venerable form with a number of events.
For Poetry Day, more than 10,000 people in healthcare settings in Galway, and across Ireland, will receive Menu of Poems 2016, featuring poems by Emily Dickinson, Ian Duhig, Louise Glück and Yehuda Amichai.
Produced by Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust in collaboration with the Derry born poet Colette Bryce, along with Arts and Health Co-ordinators Ireland, Poetry Ireland, and HSE Health Promotion and Improvement, it is also available to anyone working in a healthcare facility to print and distribute in their own locations.
Another Galway event marking Poetry Day is the announcement of a new book, Fermata is edited by poet Eva Bourke and broadcaster Vincent Woods, and published by the Galway based Artisan House Connemara.
A fermata in musical notation is a pause or a hold extending the length of the note played. The 65 contributors to Fermata exploring the connection between music and the written word. It features a new short story by acclaimed Galway crime fiction author Ken Bruen, as well as poems and prose by Moya Cannon, Theo Dorgan, Paul Durcan, Seamus Heaney, Rita Ann Higgins, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Longley, and Gabriel Rosenstock.
A crowd-funding campaign to raise funds for the publication of Fermata is currently running on Fund-it. Those wishing to pledge support can see fundit.ie/project/fermata-poetswriters-respond-to-music
