Let yourself go with the poetic lines in this recital of poems from Ireland, Spain and Latin America. A journey through the 16th century until nowadays, selected by Poetry Ireland inaugural Poet in Residence, Catherine Ann Cullen, and by Hispanist Bill Richardson. Readings in Irish, English and Spanish, voices by Aifric Mac Aodha, Enriqueta Carballeira, Catherine Anne Cullen and Marcus Mac Conghail. Give it a listen!
Enriqueta Carballeira is a Spanish actress. She began her career in 1961 at the María Guerrero theatre in Madrid, while she continued her studies at the School of Dramatic Arts. Carballeira continued her training for ten years at the William Layton School. A defender of continuous learning, she approaches each job as an opportunity to learn, believes in good stories and her desire is to make them credible to the audience. She has a long career in theatre, film and television and has received numerous acting awards.
The Covid-19 pandemic interrupted her work in Transformación (Transformation), a play by Paloma Pedrero that brings to us the world of youth transsexuality. It will be performed at the National Theater in October 2020.
Catherine Ann Cullen is the inaugural Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland. She is an award-winning poet, children’s writer and songwriter, and recipient of a Kavanagh Fellowship for Poetry 2018. Her three collections include The Other Now: New and Selected Works (Dedalus, 2016), and her latest of three children’s books is All Better! (Little Island 2019). She won the national Business to Arts Award for Best Use of Creativity in the Community for her residency in East Wall, Dublin, 2016-19. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Middlesex University, and her research interests include ballads and children’s literature.
Aifric Mac Aodha was born in 1979. Her first collection, Gabháil Syrinx, was published in 2010. She has taught in St Petersburg, New York and Canada and has lectured in old and modern Irish at UCD. She was the winner of the Oireachtas Prize for Poetry (2017). Foreign News (The Gallery Press, 2017) is a bilingual collection of poems in Irish translated by David Wheatley. She has edited Comhar, The Stinging Fly and Poetry Ireland's Trumpet. She lives in Dublin where she now works as an editor for the Irish-language publisher, An Gúm.
Marcus Mac Conghail. This year he wrote and recorded a sound essay for the podcast, Ar Leac Mo Dhorais, a series produced by Emma Ní Chearúil which traced the local in this age of the covid. He has a poem in Aneas, Simon Ó Faoláin’s new journal which came out recently. He edited a book of essays, Meascra ón Aer, which was published by Coiscéim. And he played the part of the Poet in the film, Aisling Hiroshima, which is being made by Paula Kehoe.
Bill Richardson is an Irish Hispanist. He is currently Professor Emeriitus in Spanish at the National University of Ireland Galway. He has published books and articles on Spanish culture and society, linguistics, translation and Spanish and Latin American literature, as well as occasional individual poems, and has a special interest in the classic Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.