2016-11-28

TEA WI THE ABBOT/ TAE I dTEANNTA AN ABA

IMRAM, in association with The Onslaught Press, Turas and Poetry Ireland/ Éigse Éireann, are delighted to announce two special multi-media haiku performances with John McDonald and Gabriel Rosenstock to mark the publication of their bi-lingual Scots and Irish haiku collection Tea wi the Abbot/Tae i dTeannta an Aba. These performances in Belfast and Dublin will feature music by acclaimed guitarist Enda Reilly, and beautiful on-screen projections by artist and designer Margaret Lonergan.



THE PERFORMANCES

DUBLIN
7.00pm, Thursday 8 December 2016
Poetry Ireland/ Éigse Éireann, 11 Parnell Square East, Dublin 1
Admission free

BELFAST
7.30pm, Friday 9 December 2016
Turas, The Skainos Centre, 241 Newtownards Rd, Belfast BT4
Admission free

TAE WI THE ABBOT

‘Above all else, a haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi pastorelle,’ wrote Jack Kerouac. The haiku in Tea wi the Abbot exhibit all these qualities. John McDonald’s haiku celebrate both rural and urban landscapes, and are marked by their precision in capturing fleeting moments of beauty.

Alan Titley has commented: ‘These poems in the Scots language are an invitation to see more clearly, to hear more sharply, to feel more soulfully...These verbal explosions echo in the chambers of wisdom’. The poems have been translated into graceful Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock, Ireland’s foremost practitioner of haiku and tanka.

John McDonald
John is a retired stone-mason living in Edinburgh who came to haiku in the mid-nineties and fell in love with the genre. He writes in Scots, one of the two languages native to Scotland (the other being Gaelic). His bi-lingual web blog attracts an international readership: http:/zenspeug.blogspot.com 
Over 80 of John's haiku have featured in the weekly column Haiku na Seachtaine in the online newspaper Tuairisc.ie. Some of these, along with new haiku, will feature in the Dublin and Belfast shows:

alane nou
the bodach sterts
tae reek o pish

            leis féin anois
            boladh múin
            ag teacht ón seanóir

Gabriel Rosenstock
Gabriel is a poet, tankaist and haijin. He has written or translated over 180 books and edited and contributed to books of haiku in Irish, English, Scots and Japanese. He is a prolific translator into Irish of international poetry (including Seamus Heaney and Rabindranath Tagore) and songs (including Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Kate Bush). 


Enda Reilly

Enda is a singer, guitarist and songwriter from Dublin whose projects include New Songs In Irish/Amhráin Nua i nGaeilge. He has worked with many Irish language poets through IMRAM.  He has played concerts with John Spillane, Kiía, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Rónán Ó Snodaigh and John Prine amongst others and has performed with with The RTÉ Concert Orchestra. He has recently released his latest album, Whorls, a selection of W. B.  Yeats’s poetry set to music.

Margaret Lonergan

Margaret is a freelance design consultant and illustrator. Her work has been published regularly in the national press (most frequently in the Irish Times), and she shared in a Society of Newspaper Design Award for Excellence for illustration work with the Sunday Tribune. She has create visuals for numerous poetry and music projects curtaed by IMRAM, including most recently Réaltneach/Starman: The David Bowie Project.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Contact Liam Carson, Director, IMRAM Irish Language Literature Festival.
Phone: 00-353-87-2912797
Email: liamog62@mac.com