The latest episode comes from the Ennis Book Club Festival. It features participants and audience members in performance and conversation.

This month we are joined in the attic by Irish poet Katie Donovan, who talks to us about her career as a writer. She also reads some poems from her latest poetry collection Off Duty (Bloodaxe, 2016).

Featuring

Katie Donovan
FB: http://www.facebook.com/katie.donovan.7547
Twitter:

Presented by Nessa O’Mahony
Blog: www.nessaomahony.com
FB: www.facebook.com/nessa.omahony

Music by Ellen & Carla
‘Dreamer’, from the EP ‘Floods’
available on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ie/album/floods
FB: www.facebook.com/EllenAndCarla/

This month on the Attic Sessions we have a performance special with appearances by The Poetry Divas and Tommy Keyes.

The Divas – Kate Dempsey, Barbara Smith and Maeve O’Sullivan – perform a unique set of poems about family, friends and the ‘odd’ terms we use for female appendages. Tommy Keyes performs a song called ‘Surprised by Joy’ from his album Some Of These Stories Are True.

This month we thought we’d try something completely different and report from one of Ireland’s most inspiring Summer Schools, The John Hewitt Society International Summer School in Armagh City.

Now in its 29th year, the John Hewitt Summer School features talks, readings, theatre, performances, discussions and workshops in a unique blend of culture and creativity.

In The Attic Sessions this month, we talk about the poetry scene in Northern Ireland.  Belfast poets Maria McManus and Stephen Connolly talk about the experience for poets now compared with twenty years ago and the issues around anthologies and read from their own work.