GALWAY'S LITERARY festival, the Cúirt International Festival of Literature has announced the dates for its 2021 festival, which will take place between Wednesday April 21 and Sunday 25.
The 2021 programme will feature in-person and online events. Organisers will be following Government advice closely to deliver a festival that is safe and accessible for both the audience and participants. The full programme will be announced in March 2021.
On the streets and online
Cúirt presented a host of successful online events in April 2020, adapting quickly to the Lockdown restrictions. Live audiences totalled close to 4,000 viewers during the week of the festival, and the events now have more than 25,000 views online.
“We were blown away by the warmth of the response from writers and audiences," said Cúirt director, Sasha de Buyl. "We were delighted to play our part in bringing books and words to readers during such a challenging year. Having said that, we couldn’t be more excited to bring Cúirt back to the streets in 2021.”
Cúirt and the Irish Queer Archive
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Cúirt has also announced a new commission in partnership with the National Library of Ireland. In 2021, award-winning poet Seán Hewitt will be appointed as the first poet in residence at the Irish Queer Archive in the NLI. This project will shine a light on the histories of the Irish LGBTQ+ communities; reflect upon the Irish LGBT+ history; and support new work from Irish queer writers.
The project will be launched at Cúirt 2021, with readings from Seán and other LGBTQ+ poets, and examine why archival material is so important within minority communities.
"The archive is not a silent place," says Seán. "It's full of voices, all of them vital, which deserve to be heard, and to be attended to. It's an honour for a poet to be given the opportunity to spend time amongst other voices. I hope to give them the space of a new form, a new cadence, to invite them to sing through me."
Seán will spend three months working in the archives, learning and drawing inspiration from these historical documents, and creating a series of poems in response to the materials there. The commission will support the creation of 10 poems, which Seán will present at Cúirt in 2022.
