Kilkenny Arts Festival welcomes Poet in Residence Kwame Dawes

Kilkenny Arts Festival, in association with Poetry Ireland, is to welcome Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Kwame Dawes to Kilkenny as this year's Poet-in-residence. 

Each year Kilkenny Arts Festival (KAF) brings exciting artists and voices from across the arts to the Marble City. In recent years the Festival has featured a poet-in-residence who, as well as reading / discussing some of their own work, has been involved throughout the Festival Programme, delivering a masterclass for poets, and helping to launch the Irish Poetry Review and the Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet.

Join Kwame on August 18 at the Watergate for a reading / discussion, as he explores the murky waters of voice in language. What happens when we remove the ‘I’ from a line of poetry, or from other lines? What do we gain, and might others lose? 

Since Progeny of Air won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1994, Kwame Dawes has never looked back. In prolific career he has published 36 books of poetry, fiction, criticism and essays, an acclaimed study of Bob Marley’s lyrics, and 15 plays.

His long poem ‘Inheritance’ won a Pushcart Prize in 2001 and he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry in 2018. His interactive site LiveHopeLove.com, based on his Pulitzer Center project HOPE: Living and loving with AIDS in Jamaica, won numerous awards including an Emmy.

Kwame will also lead a poetry workshop at Kilkenny Arts Festival on Saturday, August 19 at 3pm. Participation in this workshop is by application and places were strictly limited. This workshop is specifically aimed at poets with strong publication credits. 

He will also be part of The Poetry Broadsheet launch at the Parade Tower on August 18 at 11am. All are invited to join this celebration of the publication of Kilkenny Arts Office’s Poetry Broadsheet #23 which gives local writers a platform to showcase their work. It will be officially launched by Kwame Dawes and Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet Editor Afric McGlinchey.

He finishes a busy festival period helping to launch Poetry Ireland Review #140 in the company of editor Annemarie Ní Churreáin and a number of guest contributors in the Parade Tower at 6pm on Saturday, August 19.

Kilkenny Arts Festival runs from August 10-20.  Booking online at kilkennyarts.ie; by phone and in person +353 56 775 2175  /The Festival Box Office 76 John Street, Kilkenny.