Popular Tipperary poetry festival to return for fourth edition

The fourth annual Circling the Square Festival comes back to The Source Arts Centre next weekend.

The festival honours Thurles-born poet Dennis O’Driscoll who would have turned 71 this year and welcomes many of the foremost poets from this country and beyond.

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Dennis O’Driscoll was an Irish poet, essayist, critic, and editor.

Regarded as one of the best European poets of his time, Eileen Battersby considered him “the lyric equivalent of William Trevor” and a better poet “by far” than Raymond Carver.

Gerard Smyth regarded him as “one of poetry’s true champions and certainly its most prodigious archivist.

His book on Seamus Heaney is regarded as the definitive biography of the Nobel laureate.

Three main performances on Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening will intersperse powerful and inspiring poetry with magical music and song.

The star-studded line up of poets includes Polina Cosgrave, Sean Lysaght, Moya Cannon, Joseph Bathanti, Mary O’Donnell, Eleanor Hooker, Mary Roper, Jane Clarke, Bernard O’Donoghue, and Grace Wilentz.

All complemented by musicians and singers across several genres, including Leslie Dowdall, Hugh Buckley, Emma Roche, Ed Dwan Trio, Ceola, Pat O’Callaghan, Daniel Byrne, Tim V Smyth, Carol Ann McGowan and more.

The programme will also feature a poetry workshop for beginners and emerging poets presented by US Poet, Novelist and Professor Joseph Bathanti former Port Laureate for North Carolina.

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Sunday will see a guided walk around Dennis O’Driscoll’s Thurles facilitated by local historian Jimmy Duggan, and the festival will be wrapped up with a fun afternoon of poetry and music, including open mic poetry from emerging poets.

This Festival wouldn’t be possible without Thurles man Larry Doherty and his team who tirelessly put this three-day event together.

Larry has published his debut collection of poetry, entitled ‘The State of Us’.

Larry, or Doc as he is known to many, has been writing poetry for several years.

Although he had been threatening to publish for quite a while, it was only after much encouragement from friends and family that he finally bit the bullet and decided to put the lockdowns to good use.

So, he started to gather, sort, finish and edit a sizable collection of his poems.

Larry eventually settled on eighty-five and set about the huge task of putting his first book together.

He enlisted the invaluable help of Brendan O’Connor to set out, typeset and co-ordinate the book’s printing.

He also used a beautiful painting that he owns of a white horse by the brilliant Thurles artist Jurga Ryan, with her generous permission, as the basis for the beautiful cover design created by Jana Lulovska.

One of his poems is actually titled ‘White Horse’.

Advance tickets for all shows are available online at www.thesourceartscentre.ie.

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