Text as Material: Appropriated Texts

This intimate, salon-style discussion – with readings of poetry and select screenings of verbal-visual material – will query the potential of state, archival and other official textual matter as source material for transformative re-visioning of collectively held memory. 

Julie Morrissy is the first Poet-in-Residence at the National Library of Ireland in the Decade of Centenaries programme. Her project Radical!: Women and the Irish Revolution comprises a podcast series and poetry pamphlet, forthcoming in June 2022. She is a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her debut poetry collection Where, the Mile End is published by Book*hug (Canada) and tall-lighthouse (UK). She is a recipient of the MAKE Theatre Residency Award and the Arts Council ‘Next Generation’ Award. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing at Ulster University, and she holds degrees in literature and law. Her work has been acquired for the OPW State Art Collection, exhibited in the TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, and collected at The Burns Library at Boston College.  

Gail McConnell is from Belfast. Her debut poetry book, The Sun is Open (Penned in the Margins, 2021), won The John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Award and The Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. She has also published Northern Irish Poetry and Theology and two poetry pamphlets: Fothermather and Fourteen. With Conor Garrett, Gail has made two arts features based on her poetry for BBC Radio 4: Fothermather and The Open Box.