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| Annemarie Ní Chuirreáin and Sue Rainsford with Lucina Russell, County Kildare Arts Officer (centre). |
Last evening's official launch of the
10th Kildare Readers Festival in
Woodbine Books was a stimulating affair, providing both a flavour of the next three weeks across the county and an insight into the work of Kildare's latest Writers in Residence,
writes Brian Byrne.
Introduced by Amy Quigley, Coordinator of the Festival — which is organised by the Kildare Library and Arts Service — the event featured readings by Annemarie Ní Chuirreáin and Sue Rainsford. Annemarie is a poet, Sue a writer in fiction and the visual arts.
In discussion with County Kildare Arts Officer Lucina Russell they each provided a context to their ambitions both for their own work and their Kildare residency projects.
Donegal-born Annemarie read poems from her debut collection,
Bloodrot, dedicated to the women she calls her 'foremothers'. Among these her is her grandmother, who gave birth to Annemarie's father in the Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home and subsequently had to give her child up for adoption. Her readings last night were short, and strong to the point of garnering sharp intakes of breath from the Woodbine Books audience.
Sue Rainsford recounted typical tribulations of a beginning writer, with nobody prepared to read her first novel
Follow Me to Ground until she read a 'strange' short story at a Culture Night event. She was afterwards contacted by New Island Books. "They said if I ever had a novel in a drawer that they'd be interested. I told them I have a very strange novel in a drawer." The Irish publisher took it on board, and now it is being published in the UK and in the US. A mix of horror and folklore, the story is about a father and daughter who heal people. Sue read a passage devoted to snails, which doesn't sound promising, but was absolutely riveting.
Overall, a really absorbing evening and a very solid taster for a
programme of events that should keep those into books and writing across the county very happily absorbed over the next few weeks.
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