Cuisle Limerick City International Poetry Festival

A long and enjoyable Thursday in Limerick attending the various Cuisle Limerick City International Poetry Festival events. And International it certainly was!

John Pinschmidt, a retired American High School teacher, now living with his Irish-born wife in county Limerick read at 1pm in the Hunt Museum. He took us on a journey from the USA, to Berlin before the wall came down, to rural Limerick.

At 7pm The Stony Thursday Book was launched by editor Jo Slade and Limerick Arts Officer, Sheila Deegan. Three members of our LitLab group are included in the anthology, Honor Duff, Pat Devaney and myself. Honor and I read our poems to a large, appreciative audience.

The sixty nine page book is a beautiful production and the poems are wonderfully varied in themes and styles.


At 8pm we had readings by Slovenian poet, Radharani Pernarcic, who read in Slovenian and English; by English poet Lorna Thorpe, who read from her Sweet Torture of Breathing which deals with her close brush with death following a cardiac arrest; and by widely-published Irish poet Máire Áine Nic Gearailt.

These readings were following by films. The first was a series of readings by Latin American poets marking the publication of Hallucinated Horse: New Latin American Poets. This was introduced and translations read by Tom Slingsby of Pighog Press.

And finally we had a short film, Room, scripted by Limerick poet Mark Whelan.

A busy day indeed. And the festival continues until Saturday night. More details on the website, on the Facebook page and some photographs here on Flickr.

Picture above is of Honor Duff reading at the launch with Stony Thursday editor Jo Slade.