Harold's Cross

Join us for an evening of Poetry and Music in Harold’s Cross Community Centre, from 7.30 to 9.30 on Thursday 21 May 2006.

Writer Amanda Bell will introduce readings by local poets – some festival regulars, some new faces: Alvy Carragher, Catherine Ann Cullen, Gilles Fabre, Michael O’Loughlin, Roisin Sheerin, and Gerard Smyth.

Music by Pearse McGloughlin and Nocturnes.

Pearse McGloughlin makes atmospheric folk-noir that meets life’s shadows with defiant optimism, giving dreamers and doers a poetic refuge to reclaim hope, trust themselves, and find beauty in the everyday.

Pearse has released six albums: Busy Whisper (2009), In Movement (2012) and Idiot Songs (2013) in collaboration with composer Justin Grounds. 2016 saw the release of an ambient-folk collection ‘The Soft Animal’. The Rest, Pearse’s fifth collection was released in 2020. ‘Keg’ his sixth album was released on Urchin Music and Bluestack Records in June 2023. In 2025 he released The Falls EP.

Amanda Bell is an award-winning poet and author. She was the inaugural writer in residence in Harold’s Cross in 2021. Her most recent poetry collection is a collaboration with Donald Teskey RHA (Winter Heliotrope, Fine Press Poetry, 2023). She has two books forthcoming in 2027: The Mending Room, a novel from Salt Publishing, and a new poetry collection, Brittle Cinder, from Doire Press.

Alvy Carragher is the author of three poetry collections, most recently What Remains the Same (The Gallery Press, 2024), shortlisted for the Farmgate National Poetry Award. She was selected for Poetry Ireland’s Eavan Boland Award (2025–2026) and has received the Irish Arts Council’s Literature Bursary Award (2022 and 2024). She has also published a children’s novel.

Catherine Ann Cullen was the inaugural Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland 2019-2021. She is an award-winning poet, children’s author and songwriter. Her eighth book, Storm Damage, was published by Dedalus Press in October 2025. It includes her poem ‘Pencilling the Dates’ which was shortlisted for the prestigious Moth International Poetry Prize. Her postdoctoral monograph on street poets and tenement balladeers of nineteenth century Dublin will be published by The Ballad Partners in Autumn 2026.

Gilles Fabre is a French national. His haiku in English and French have won awards and been widely published internationally, and his work has been translated into Japanese and Portuguese. Gilles is the founder of seashores, an international journal to share the spirit of haiku, and its French-speaking counterpart l’estran. He is Chief Editor of DOUBLE HORIZON, an international and bilingual (English/French) haiku anthology (The Fishing Cat Press, 2025).

Michael O’Loughlin was born in Dublin in 1958, and is a poet, critic, translator, screenwriter and commentator. He has been Writer Fellow in Trinity College Dublin, Writer in Residence in Galway City and County, and UNESCO Writer In Residence in Prague. He has published seven collections of poetry, including Poems 1980-2015, and Liberty Hall. He is a member of Aosdána.

Roisin Sheerin:

Inspired by John Cooper Clarke, Ivor Cutler and others, Róisín became a punk poet in the last century. In recent times, she has been writing new verse and performing regularly in various venues around Dublin. She is currently working on her own show which will be a combination of memoir and poetry. Roisín has been published by Attic Press, Icarus and The Dublin Review of Books.

                                 Roisin Sheerin

Gerard Smyth:

Gerard Smyth’s 11^thcollection The Turn for Ithaca (Dedalus Press ) was published this year. Other books from Dedalus include The Sundays of Eternity ( 2020 ) and The Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems (2010). He was the 2012 recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota and is a member of Aosdána. www.gerardsmyth.com