Hymn to the Reckless: An Evening of Spoken Word

Hymn to the Reckless, the debut collection of poems by American-born Erin Fornoff, traces an arc from youthful adventures in the Appalachian mountains to a confrontation with life’s complexities, not least in the radically transformed America of recent times.

Moving between that America and her present 'Home from Home’ in Ireland, Fornoff finds a kind of consolation in community, while struggling to bridge the ever-widening gap between what is and what should be, between the world she left and the one that threatens to replace it.

She finds a peace in the natural world and rejoices in those moments of ecstatic recklessness that remind us to be present, no matter the shape of the world we’re in.

Erin Fornoff hails from the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. Based in Dublin, she has performed her poetry at dozens of festivals and events across Ireland, the US, and the UK including Glastonbury, Electric Picnic, Cúirt, and a national Irish tour with viral poet Hollie McNish. She has featured at Hozier and James Taylor concerts.

She has been published and anthologized in The Stinging Fly, Cyphers, New Planet Cabaret, The Irish Times, Icarus, Penduline, and many others. In 2015 she received an Arts Council bursary for her first novel Better People. In 2014 she received an M. Phil in Creative Writing with Distinction from Trinity College Dublin.

David Braziel is a performance poet, three times winner of the Belfast Book Festival poetry slam, winner of the Red Pill slam, the Bangor literature festival slam and the Belfast Heat of the All-Ireland slam giving him places in the All-Ireland finals. In recent years he has been invited to perform at the Dublin Lingo Festival, the Stendhal Arts Festival, Sunflower Festival and the Seamus Heaney “On Home Ground” festival and also took part in “Live form the Sunflower” on BBC Radio Ulster. In 2015 he supported spoken word artist Polar Bear at the Aspects Literary Festival Bangor. His chapbook, 'I Am Not A Poet (and other poems)' was released in May 2015 by Pen Points Press and his one-man show “Too Big for Words” debuted in Belfast in 2017.

Colin Hassard is a poet from Belfast. This year he was Runner Up in the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing and selected by Eyewear Publishing as one of the Best New British and Irish Poets. As well as being a former Belfast Book Festival Poetry Slam Champion, Colin is also a two-time Ulster Poetry Slam Champion. In the autumn, he is releasing an album with his band Dirty Words which features his poems set to music and is entitled ‘Age of the Microwave Dinner'. Colin is also developing his first collection of poetry with support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.