Dialogue in Verse: Rosa Berbel & Billy O'Hanluain
This Irish-Spanish poetry reading, presented by the Instituto Cervantes and University College Dublin, is part of the program of the Annual Conference of the Association of Hispanists of the United Kingdom and Ireland (AHGBI). The Spanish poet Rosa Berbel and the Irish poet Billy O'Hanluain will read some of their poems which will be linked one to another creating a dialogue of poetry in two languages.
Rosa Berbel (Estepa, Spain, 1997) has a degree in Comparative Literature and a master's degree in Literary and Theatrical Studies from the University of Granada, where she has been living for five years. His first book, Las niñas siempre dicen la verdad (Girls Always Tell the Truth) (Hiperión, 2018) was awarded the XXI Antonio Carvajal Young Poetry Prize and was subsequently awarded the Andalusian Critics Prize for the Best First Work and the Ojo Crítico Prize of Poetry (RNE, 2019). She was the winner of the IV Edition of the Ucopóetica Contest, organized by the University of Córdoba. She has appeared in various anthologies of young poetry such as La pirotecnia peligrosa. 11 poetas sevillanos para el siglo XXI (Ediciones en Huida, 2015), Supernova (Bandaàparte Ediciones, 2016) or Algo se ha movido (Esdrújula Ediciones, 2018). Berbel has coordinated, together with Pablo Romero, the digital anthology of Spanish-Argentine poetry Orillas and has collaborated in the selection of the young poetry edition Piel fina (Maremágnum, 2019). She has written a preface to a new edition of Poeta en Nueva York by Federico García Lorca (Austral, 2020).
Billy O’Hanluain is an emerging writer whose work includes essays, poetry and pen portraits of his native Dublin. His work is largely autobiographical and concerned with themes of identity, the urban landscape and its inhabitants. As well as being a teacher of English, Billy has frequently appeared on RTE Radio as a critic of film and music. His work has been published in Cassandra Voices, The Village, Totally Dublin and The Passage Between.
