SPOKEN WORD
Thurs 1st May
St Peter’s Church, Phibsborough
8.00 pm  
Admission: Free 

PHIZZFEST LAUNCH WITH POET PAULA MEEHAN
AND THE OFFBEAT ENSEMBLE   

Paula Meehan was reared in the north inner city and Finglas. She has published six award winning collections of poetry and has written plays for both adults and children. She is Ireland Professor of Poetry for the years 2013 to 2016.
The Offbeat Ensemble, a late-starters string orchestra which rehearses in Phibsborough, presents an evening of wonderful music, including Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Scarborough Fair, William Tell, Wipe Out and pieces by Beethoven, Dvorak and Vivaldi. Directed by Nathan Sherman and Ciara Cavanagh.
(There will be a voluntary collection in aid of the restoration of the organ in St Peter’s Church following the launch.)
FRI 2ND MAY
Venue:  McGeough's Bohemian Lounge
8.00 pm (Doors 7.30 pm)  Cost:  €12 Booking Essential
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DERMOT BOLGER IN 
CONVERSATION WITH  CARLO GEBLER

Dermot Bolger’s annual public conversation with a leading writer had become an integral part of each Phizzfest. This year he interviews a writer whose family had deep roots in Cabra and Glasnevin about his complex relationship with his father. 
Dublin in 1954, Carlo Gébler is the son of the writers Edna O¹Brien and Ernest Gébler. After their separation when he was ten his father made him sit down and write a letter declaring which parent he wished to live with. Carlo was raised by his mother and endured difficult visits to Dublin see his Cabra-born father, who was initially a more famous writer than his mother but became an reclusive and contrary figure until he succumbed to Alzheimer’s and Carlo became his father’s guardian.
Carlo Gebler’s first novel The Eleventh Summer was published in 1985. This was followed by others including Life of a Drum; The Cure;  How To Murder a Man and A Good Day for A Dog. His classic memoir, Father and I, explores what it is like to be a writer who is the son of writers. His most recent novel, The Dead Eight is inspired by a famous 1940 murder and subsequent miscarriage of justice in Tipperary.

He is currently writing a book about his father whose childhood was spent in Marguerite Road, Botanic Ave, Phibsboro Road and Cabra Grove. He says: “I didn’t really know my father, what his childhood was like, who his parents were or where they came from. This was because we didn’t speak much.  However, before his Alzheimer’s swept in, he tried to write his autobiography.  The material is chaotic and contradictory but it does, albeit in a confusing way, tell a story – his story; his musician father’s courtship of his Glasnevin mother, his strange neglected childhood in Glasnevin, Düsseldorf, and Wolverhampton before his return to Cabra (1933), his miserable young adulthood as a cinema projectionist in Dublin, his early success as a writer in the late 1940s, his disastrous first marriage to an American starlet, his even worse marriage to my mother and his final anguished years of peevish petulant alienation.” 
Back in his father’s childhood heartland, Carlo discusses with Dermot Bolger the remarkable and chaotic story of the Gebler family of Cabra.
Dermot Bolger is one of Ireland’s best known writers. His ten novels include The Journey Home, The Family on Paradise Pier and, most recently The Fall of Ireland. His first play, The Lament for Arthur Cleary, received the Samuel Beckett Award; his acclaimed Ballymun Trilogy of plays has been staged in several countries and his works translated into numerous languages. His poetry sequence, The Venice Suite: A Voyage Through Loss, was recently performed by John Kavanagh on RTE Radio. Bolger writes for most of Ireland’s leading newspapers and in 2012 was named Commentator of the Year at the Irish Newspaper awards. 
SAT 3RD MAY
McGeoughs Bohemian Lounge, Doyle’s Corner
4.30 pm    
Admission:  Free

"THE HOMER OF THE NORTH CIRCULAR ROAD”

Presented by Colbert Kearney, Author of The Writings of Brendan Behan
Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Brendan Behan

This talk will argue that 'Borstal Boy' is a great coming-of-age novel that stands comparison with any ever written anywhere, in which Behan managed to transcribe the oral storytelling tradition of inner-city Dublin of which he was the last great exponent.

Colbert Kearney was born in Eccles Street and grew up in Finglas where he was lucky enough to be taught by Eugene Watters/EoghanÓTuairisc.  After further study at UCD and Cambridge University he was appointed to the English Department at UCC from which he recently retired as professor emeritus.  Among his written works are a range of essays mostly on Irish writing, two books concentrating on the working class language of Dublin writers--The Writings of Brendan Behan and The Glamour of Grammar (Sean O’Casey)—and a novel, The Consequence.  He is currently translating ÓTuairisc’sAifreannnaMarbh into English.
Sat 3rd May
Clarkes Phibsborough House
6.00pm    
Admission:  Free

PHIZZFEST POETRY AWARD AND READINGS

This is the third year of the Phizzfest Poetry Award. The winning poem will be announced and there will be readings by the prizewinners, members of Rathmines Writers Group and other invited poets who submitted work. The Award will be presented following the reading.  

Rathmines Writers Group members have won many accolades in creative writing competitions both in Ireland and abroad.  They work closely with other community meeting groups in the Dublin area.

2014 Poetry Award Winner

Ráithín na Cloig, Bray 
 
All day a louring sky has squatted 
low on the slate-grey horizon. 
Under its sullen light, the sea 
is beaten metal, tarnished, unannealed, 
sending slow scallops landward. 
The brae is in winter livery: 
bare furze, tree-fern and bracken. 
I’ve climbed to this silence again. 
The waves of hundreds of years have broken 
since Bray last heard a bell here 
inside this open ruin, roofless, 
mute as a cleft palate, 
from which faith, a lost language, 
has long since flown. 
 
David Butler