“Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person’s life.” Eavan Boland

Readings and conversation with four talented new poets from Ireland at the beginning of their writing journeys.

Poet Leeanne Quinn presents work from Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland and introduces the poets, who each read from their work. These poets were selected from those who submitted to the 2024 Dedalus Press Mentoring Scheme, chosen by Leeanne Quinn for their willingness to risk, discover, alter and undermine.

Mai Ishikawa is a Japanese theatre maker, translator, poet and performer based in Dublin. Her poems have appeared in The Stony Thursday Book, Banshee, Channel, Ragaire, The Storms and Ink Sweat & Tears. She incorporates poetry in her theatre work, combining poetic dialogue with physical movement, to suspend time and find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Róisín Leggett Bohan was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and Listowel Best Poem Award and was a finalist in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her work features in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Magma, Aesthetica, The Pomegranate London.

Emer Lyons was a Play it Forward Fellow with Skein Press in 2024 working on an experimental memoir, small town square, with mentor Pascal O’Loughlin. She has performed poetry as part of the 2025 Scene + Heard festival in Dublin. Her work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Banshee and The Stony Thursday Book.

Cal O’Reilly’s recent poems can be found in fourteen poems, catflap, Ink Sweat & Tears and Poetry with Pride (Belfast Pride). He is an alumnus of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year award, the Edna O’Brien Young Writers Bursary, the T.S. Eliot Prize Young Critics Scheme and the Freedom to Write project by the John Hewitt Society and PEN na hÉireann.

Presented in association with Poetry Ireland.

Duration: 1 hour