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Dublin: A Year in Words

Dublin: A Year in Words celebrates the breadth and diversity of our city’s living poets through a year-long series of poetry videos filmed across 12 Dublin bookshops.

Like the city itself, the poets featured in the series are more than the sum of their parts. Collectively they tell of a Dublin full of light and shade, a city of contradictions, in constant flux. They show us that the story of Dublin is everybody’s to tell. It has no fixed points. Beyond wild, it exists far more in the unspoken and the unseen than any attempt to distil it down to a neat package can do justice to. And yet it is our poets perhaps more than anyone who have grappled with the task of laying our lifelines bare and bringing voice to the city. Dublin A Year in Words presents a cross-section of 12 poets who do just that, filmed in establishments that keep the city’s essence alive.

Dublin: A Year in Words is a celebration of what is happening in ‘the now’, supporting our living poets instead of drawing from the past.

This project is kindly supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.

Dublin: A Year in Words was curated by Linda Devlin and Stephen James Smith and filmed by Design for Life. Here is a playlist of the 12 featured poems.

 

Dublin: A Year in Words 

  1. ‘Dublin’ by Kerrie O’Brien filmed at Books Upstairs. (August 2016)
  2. ‘Native’ by John Cummins filmed at The Winding Stair. (September 2016)
  3. ‘You Think I wear this for you?’ by Raneem Saleh filmed at An Siopa Leabhar. (October 2016)
  4. ‘vinyl Sublime’ by Richard Brennan The Secret Book & Record Store. (November 2016)
  5. ‘The Ghost Song’ by Paula Meehan filmed at Ulysses Rare Books. (December 2016)
  6. ‘Grangegorman’ by Hazel Hogan filmed at Oxfam Books. (January 2017)
  7. ‘Story Buddleia’ by Ophelia Mc Cabe filmed at Hodges Figgis bookstore. (February 2017)
  8. ‘Six Harcourt Street (An Conradh)’ by Ciara Ní É filmed at Forbidden Planet. (March 2017)
  9. ‘City of Foot Soldiers’ by Matty Tamen filmed at Eason Bookshop. (April 2017)
  10. ‘Some Advice’ by Darragh O’Reilly filmed at Alan Hanna’s bookshop. (May 2017)
  11. ‘Lullaby’ by Stephen Clare filmed at Rathgar Bookshop. (June 2017)
  12. ‘Críochfort’ by MC Muipéad filmed at the Gutter Bookshop. (July 2017)