What Is The Connections Through Literature Series ?
All events at Kildare Library Services are free of charge and open to everyone, but booking is required.
The Connection Through Literature Series has been born out of a joint love of literature, with the goal to unite our readers, writers and artists with our audiences through the medium of stimulating, contemporary and accessible events in an exciting partnership between Kildare Libraries and the Irish Writers Centre.
See our Connections Through Literature Programme below.
Programme of Events
This Modern Life: Poetry Masterclass with Rachel Long
Thursday 13 July, 6.00 pm- 8.00 pm
Location: Online via Zoom
Course Summary:
A two-hour poetry masterclass inspired by writing contemporary real life; brunching, online dating, plant-parenting, toy-dog walking, cleaning, coping You’ll explore and write about juggling family, friendships, two inboxes, that burgeoning book pile. This is a course that pretends it’s casual-cool, but sometimes cries at night under the weight of its heart.
Course Outline:
We’ll explore the multiplicity of modern life, in all its velocity and stillness. We’ll read, discuss, and write poems that feel fresh, present, so very now; poems that capture the energy, rhythm, eerie laptop light of our lives.
For guidance and inspiration, we’ll read poems by Morgan Parker, Kim Addonizio, Caroline Bird, Cecilia Knapp, and Jack Underwood.
Participants will write in-session through a series of guided prompts. There will be an opportunity to share and celebrate the new work, if you would like to.
Course Outcomes:
By the end of the masterclass, participants will have a clutch of new and exciting poems/poem beginnings.
Course Details: Course will take place online via Zoom. Booking essential, places are limited to 25 participants.
Applications Closed
Life Writing on Food & Drink with Rosie Schaap
Saturday 15th of July from 10.00 am – 5.00 pm.
Location: Celbridge Community Library
Course Summary:
When is a dinner more than a dinner? When it’s also a lens through which to see a world, a framework within which to consider ideas and relationships, even a platform from which to advocate for justice. When we write about food and drink, we are also telling the stories of our lives, and the lives of others. This one-day creative nonfiction master class is appropriate for essayists, memoirists, journalists – any writer who has ever considered the meaning of a meal.
Course Outline:
We will read and discuss short works by writers including Ciaran Carson, Jessica B. Harris, and Colson Whitehead, which, taken together, convey some sense of the breadth, depth, and creative range possible in writing about food and drink. Using prompts inspired by our reading, participants will draft their own pieces, each with a dish, a drink, a dining experience, or another food memory at its heart, and will generate ideas for longer essays, too.
Course Details: Course will take place in person in Celbridge Community Library. Booking essential, places are limited to 10 participants.
Applications Closed
Writing for Podcasts and Radio with Zoe Comyns
Saturday 2nd of September from 10.00 am – 4.30 pm.
Location: Leixlip Community Library
Course Summary:
Learn to write for the ear. Participants will learn about effective audio narratives – documentary/short features and fiction, from generating an idea to ways to record your work.
– How are audio stories different to those on the page.
-Tips on story, scene and sentence levels.
-Introduction to short features and documentary structure.
-Introduction to narrators, internal monologues, dialogue and structure for drama.
Podcasts & radio techniques, proposals and treatments will be explored in this workshop. Participants will listen to examples of great short pieces that prompt ideas and outline effective story telling for the ear. Participants will complete short exercises that will help them better understand how to approach their own work.
Course Outcomes:
An insight into how writing for the ear differs from the page. An understanding of style, format, techniques. Confidence to start your own projects.
Course Details: Course will take place in person in Leixlip Community Library. Booking essential, places are limited to 12 participants.
Applications Closed
The Road to a Debut: Writing the First Poetry Collection with Nithy Kasa
Thursday 7th, 14th & 21st of September from 6.30 pm – 8.00 pm.
Location: Newbridge Community Library
Course Summary:
Especially designed for beginners and for emerging poets on their way to their first collection. This 3-week The Road to A Debut course will explore the multitudes of new voices in the contemporary Irish poetry community. Topics include how to find oneself in it, the facilities available, and tips on getting the debut collection on the shelves.
Course Outline:
This 3-week workshop will focus on three elements.
1. Creative writing: how to develop your poetry writing and get poems published.
2. The Irish poetry community; the poets and the organisers.
3. Preparing a debut collection, finding a publisher, the facilities available.
Poetry readings and writing exercises will be included in the creative writing sessions.
Course Outcomes:
This course will help participants to identify their personal poetry genre. It will help to develop their writing and furnish them with publishing tips and contacts of the facilities available, overall leaving them with a better understanding of the Irish poetry scene.
Course Details:Â Course will take place in person in Newbridge Community Library. Booking essential, places are limited to 12 participants.
Please Contact Newbridge Library to Book
Masterclass in Memoir with Arnold Thomas Fanning
Saturday 9th of September from 10.30 am – 1.30 pm.
Location: Athy Community Library
Course Summary:
Memoir presents both challenges and rewards to the writer exploring this fascinating genre. In this Masterclass writer Arnold Thomas Fanning will introduce participants to the fundamentals of understanding and writing Memoir, a form that can cover a wide array of subjects, but ultimately is rooted and grounded in the life experiences of the writer, based on their memories. In this practical three-hour Masterclass in writing Memoir, participants will explore themes such as veracity, ethics, motivations, & approaches, all the while navigating both the potentials and limitations of memory. This course is aimed at those with some experience in writing in other forms who now wish to explore the genre of Memoir for the first time.
Course Outline:
Participants will be introduced to key themes in, and approaches to, Memoir, read and discuss a variety of examples of meaningful and significant Memoir texts, have the opportunity to write a short passage of memoir based on a prompt, and share and critique each other’s work in a supportive, constructive, and encouraging way.
Course Outcomes:
This course will: introduce participants to key themes of Memoir; present and explore readings in Memoir; and give the participants the tools and confidence to begin writing Memoir based on a prompt.
Course Details: Course will take place in person in Athy Community Library. Booking essential, places are limited to 12 participants.
Applications Closed
These workshops are free of charge to attend, but places are limited. Please apply to your chosen workshop via the Microsoft Forms link, with your expression of interest, please be as detailed as possible in your applications. These workshops take place as part of the Connections Through Literature Programme, a series of events and workshops organised by Kildare Libraries in partnership with the Irish Writers Centre.
Kildare Libraries
Irish Writers Centre
