The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation 1

A series of 12 poetry films commissioned by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, in collaboration with Poetry Ireland and Druid, showcasing work by Ireland’s most exciting new poetic voices, as well as performances and new takes on classic Irish poetry.

Films featuring Seán Hewitt, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, FeliSpeaks, Evgeny Shtorn, Theo Ndlovu (Touché) and ATMOS Collective were all filmed in Coole Park, Co Galway as part of DruidGregory, Druid’s celebration of the life and work of Lady Augusta Gregory. The films featuring Nithy Kasa, Sasha Terfous, Kayssie K and Dagogo Hart were filmed in Dublin in collaboration with Poetry Ireland.

This selection of gorgeously captured poetry films is a celebration of beloved poems of Irish history as well as the diverse and thriving poetry of the present day.

Over a number of days, viewers can tune in to experience Ireland’s most exciting new poetic voices reading their own work, as well as that of the poets who inspired them.

Subjects span the personal and universal, touching on broad human themes that include immigration, inspiration, and our relationship with the natural world.

Two new poetry films will be streamed each day over six days in partnership with the St. Patrick’s Festival.

Nithy Kasa reads “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by WB Yeats and Seán Hewitt reads his own poem “Barn Owls in Suffolk”.

Nithy Kasa was born in Kimpese, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and grew up in the country’s capital, Kinshasa. In 2005, the teenaged Kasa moved to Galway, Ireland, to live with a relative.

A poem she submitted to her secondary school’s magazine caught the attention of her English teacher, a renowned Galway poet. Her teacher’s encouragement led to her enrolment in Poetry Ireland’s national Poetry Aloud Competition, where she reached the finals multiple times. More contests followed in poetry and public speaking, and from that point on, writing poetry became a major part of Kasa’s life.

Poet and academic Seán Hewitt was born in 1990 in Warrington, to an Irish mother and English father. Nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2012, and was awarded funding by Arts Council England for a series of poems in 2014. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2017, Hewitt finished his first poetry pamphlet, Lantern, which was the Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice for 2019, won an Eric Gregory Award, and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award.

A debut full-length, Tongues of Fire, in April 2020 weds narrative and lyric poetry, connecting elegiac poems grieving the end of Hewitt’s father’s life with translations and reimaginings of the traditional Irish tale Buile Suibne, both threaded through with invocations of the natural world.

Tongues of Fire received both popular and critical acclaim, garnering Book of the Year recognition from the Guardian, Spectator, Irish Times, and Irish Independent, as well as being named a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and The Observer Poetry Book of the Month. In 2020, he was one of the Sunday Times’ "30 Under 30" Irish artists and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

Hewitt teaches Modern British & Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin and is a book critic for the Irish Times.

Films by Matthew Thompson
Images by Matthew Thompson