English, Drama, Film and Creative Writing: Poetry Reading Archive

Information on books, journals, databases and other useful english, drama & film resources.

The Irish Poetry Reading Archive is leading a new project which will use poetry as a means to explore how Ireland's struggle for independence and the Civil War shaped the emergence of the Irish State.

The project is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Working with Poetry Ireland and the Arts Council in Northern Ireland , IPRA will collaborate with a diverse range of poets, institutions, groups, and individuals to deliver innovative and imaginative outputs

More information can be found here.

Web archiving the Irish Poetry landscape

Increasingly a huge amount of material of importance can only be found in digital form on websites. Accordingly, we have decided to embark on a project whereby websites relevant to Irish poetry in the 21st century would be preserved so that they are available to researchers of the future.

Web-archiving is defined as the process of collecting, preserving, and providing enduring access to web content. Material published on the web is vulnerable to loss or change. To preserve this information for the future a version of a web site is captured at a particular point in time is collected and archived digitally. This archived version can be navigated like a live website.

Copyright of the material on these sites is the responsibility of the owner of the site. UCD Library archives these materials in the public interest and we make them available for the purposes of research and private study.

Explore the Web archive of Irish Poetry at https://archive-it.org/organizations/1846.

Recently Added Poets - Previews in YouTube

Paul Perry reads his poem "Wintering" in the UCD Special Collections Reading Room. Preserved in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive.

All ten of his poetry readings can be viewed in the Archive.

Taken from our “Poets of Diversity” collection, Nithy Kasa reads “Mother’s Day” in the Special Collections Reading Room at UCD Library. Eight of Nithy’s poems have now been preserved in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive.

Taken from our “Poets of Diversity” collection, Rafael Mendes reads his poem “First Death” in the Special Collections Reading Room at UCD Library. Nine of Rafael’s poems have now been preserved in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive.

Follow @UCDPoetry

Poetry Ireland Tweets

Irish Diaspora Poets

Poetry is a powerful tool to build Irish communities abroad, to foster dialogue on contemporary social and cultural issues.

This project will record the work of Irish diaspora poets for inclusion in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive, ensuring access to Irish poetry by affinity Irish communities at home and abroad,. The Archive will preserve and disseminate these unique Irish poetry recordings for contemporary viewers and for future generations. This year we are working with:

Gary Barwin - in Canada
Alvy Carragher - Canada
Lizz Murphy - In Australia
Leeanne Quinn in Germany

THANK YOU

The Irish Diaspora Poets series, which will help to celebrate and strengthen the links between Ireland and the Global Irish, is made possible by the support of the Government of Ireland Emigrant Support Programme , administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs. UCD Library is very grateful for this support

Calling Irish diaspora poets

We are compiling a list of Irish Diaspora poets

If you have at least one published collection and would like to be associated with this archive, please get in touch. We are working to better understand who the Diaspora poets are, where they are living, and a little about their connections to Ireland. We will use this information to seek opportunities to include more diaspora poets in the archive.

Interested in getting involved? Send along a brief overview of your work, your connections to Ireland to ipra@ucd.ie or contact evelyn.flanagan@ucd.ie Please use "Irish Diaspora Poets" in the subject line. Thank you.

Leeanne's poems are now available to listen to on the UCD Special Collections YouTube Channel

The Poetry in Lockdown project (May 2020 - October 2021) captured in poetry some of the experiences of the pandemic for the UCD Community.

It holds the work of UCD students, staff, and alumni and from those with associations with the University, and from the wider community. This collection, which is part of the Irish Poetry Reading Archive in UCD, forms part of the University’s record of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of the project, 98 people submitted over 200 poems. More information at https://libguides.ucd.ie/lockdownpoetry

The Irish Poetry Reading Archive holds the voices of our poetry community, and presents the wealth and diversity of Irish poetry today, in English and in Irish. The archive records and curates these voices, making them freely available around the world and preserving them for future generations.

The Irish Poetry Reading Archive, which started in 2014, now holds the work of over 150 Irish poets living in Ireland and abroad

For the majority of readings, the poets provide handwritten transcriptions of the poem, allowing the audience interact with the poem and poet in a unique way.

Thank you to all of the poets who have generously and freely given their time, helping us to create this digital heritage archive. We are committed to the principle of fair and equitable remuneration for artists. We believe that our investment in curating and preserving the voices of poets, as well as in giving poets access to high quality video recordings, constitutes a legitimate 'value exchange'.