Sunday Poetry | 2pm

We’re delighted to present an afternoon of poetry with Caroline Bracken, Lauren McNamara, Rafael Mendes, D’or Seifer and Molly Twomey. All are welcome to enjoy the poetry from 2pm on Sunday 5th October.

 

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

CAROLINE BRACKEN’s poems have been published in Poetry Wales, New England Review, Belfield Literary Review, The North, The Irish Times, the Honest Ulsterman and elsewhere. She won the Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Competition 2024 and her debut poetry pamphlet Boy, Mother was published in 2025 by Smith | Doorstop. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2018. Her work has been supported by DLR Arts Office and the Arts Council of Ireland.

Boy, Mother is a deeply moving exploration of a mother’s relationship with her son who has a long-term mental illness. In innovative forms the poems evoke the day-to-day depredations of illness, psychiatric treatment and societal attitudes and yet the thread that runs through the collection is love.

 

Dr LAUREN MCNAMARA is a writer and performer from Limerick. Her debut poetry collection Quarter Life Crisis was published with Revival Press in 2024. She has performed her work in several countries and at festivals including Glastonbury, Electric Picnic and Indiependence. She has written two poetry plays Quarter Life Crisis (2018) and Hello My Name is Single (2019). She is a two time Munster Slam champion and two time All Ireland Slam runner up. She co-hosts the First Wednesday poetry series and the Lime Square Poets series.

In her debut poetry collection Lauren McNamara captures the chaotic, confusing, and often comical experience of leaving college behind and stumbling head-first into adulthood in modern Ireland. With an arresting blend of wit, sarcasm, and profound introspection, Quarter Life Crisis gives an unfiltered look at the unique struggles facing today’s twenty-somethings.

 

RAFAEL MENDES is a Brazilian-Irish migrant whose work has recently appeared or is upcoming in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Wasafari, gorse, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions 2023, and his pamphlet, The Migrant Dictionary (Howl New Irish Writing), was a co-winner of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Pamphlet Series 2025.

The Migrant Dictionary, by Rafael Mendes, is a sequence that challenges our conventional sense of poetic form. Using the dictionary entry as its shaping principle, it troubles ideas of fixed meanings in a world of instability and change.

D’OR SEIFER’s debut collection On Being Un/Able to Walk Through Walls came out with Revival Press earlier this year. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies in Ireland and abroad and she has read her poetry in a number of events, including the Cuirt International Literary Festival and Limerick Writers’ Centre’s April Is Poetry Month. She co- founded and co-hosts the online poetry series Lime Square Poets, co-hosts the First Wednesday Series in Limerick, and is co-editor of Skylight 47. She lives in Limerick. www.dorseifer.com

D’or Seifer’s debut collection On Being Un/Able to Walk Through Walls, (Revival Press, 2025) is a lyrical journey across three continents and generations. With a theme of emigration, it explores the interplay between displacement and belonging and weaves together themes of identity, historical legacy, and personal mythology. Her poetry navigates the tensions between distant roots and present realities, a nuanced perspective on heritage and home in our increasingly globalised world. Seifer invites readers to contemplate the invisible barriers we face and the walls we long to transcend.

MOLLY TWOMEY’s debut poetry collection, Raised Among Vultures, was published by The Gallery Press in 2022 and won the Southword Debut Collection Poetry Award. She was awarded the 2023 Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2024 to work on her second collection, Chic to be Sad, published in 2025 by The Gallery Press.

Molly Twomey’s first collection, Raised Among Vultures, touched readers and listeners in uncommon ways. Reviewing it in Poetry Ireland’s Trumpet Annie Brown wrote that it ‘feels like a friend’. Chic to be Sad continues a young woman’s report from the front lines of experience. These fearless poems, rich in simile (a smile ‘wide / as a long weekend’) and striking detail, rest in ordinary settings — an ‘Online Staff Meeting’, an Aldi car park in Youghal. Framed between work that centres on a fire in her family home this book displays an even wider range than her debut — from ‘My Brother’s Friends Draw Dicks’, ‘The Mechanic Speaks to My Boyfriend Over My Head’ and ‘Why We Don’t Have Kids’ it reaches to the Guggenheim Museum in Venice and considerations of art. There’s a constant sense of the aftermath of illness and the poems never shy from physical and emotional vulnerability. Brave in its honesty and directness, Chic to be Sad confirms a special gift and presence in Irish poetry before reaching its wise conclusion: ‘There is so much to know, / so much I want you to hear.’