New Irish Poetry: Daring Us to Act

Representing a new generation of voices in Irish literature, meet Stephen Connolly, Stephen Sexton, Caroline Bracken, Simon Lewis and Kathy D’Arcy. St. Mary’s College professor Raina Leon moderates the session, helping us examine how a writer’s work reflects the dynamic and diasporic experiences of nostalgia, resistance, and home connectedness, through language that defies erasure of self, and dares us all to act.

Stephen Connolly is a Belfast-based poet and a postgraduate student at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University.
Simon Lewis’s Hennessy Award-winning poetry collection, “Jewtown,” chronicles the experiences of  Jewish settlers in Cork.
Belfast native Stephen Sexton’s poem “The Curfew” recently scooped the UK National Poetry Society Competition Award.
Caroline Bracken’s poems have been published in The Irish Times, Hennessy New Irish Writing among several other publications.
Raina Leon’s fellowships and residencies have included Cave Canem and the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland. She is Associate Professor of Education at St. Mary’s College of California.