Irish Arts Center

Three #Grásta commissionsby Kaia Kater, Tamar Korn & Dennis Lichtman, and Dirk Powell & Michael McGoldrick Musicwill premiere as part of Carnegie Hall's #VoicesofHope. The two-week citywide festival kicks off today; the first IAC presentation is Dirk and Mike's "Which Star Are You Going to Follow" this Monday, 4pm ET irishartscenter.org/event/carnegie-hall-voices-of-hope

A song about a fictional Irish emigrant from Galway, and a glimpse at Mick's lockdown life in Thailand. Follow us for more episodes in our #Songbook series, and to access all Irish Arts Center's free digital programming and events.

The final work in this year's #poemoftheday series is "The Vocation," by PoetryFest curator and esteemed poet, novelist, and screenwriter Nick Laird. The 12th annual festival continues this afternoon, at 1pm EST/6pm IST, with readings and conversations featuring our full roster of participants: Ailbhe Darcy, Miriam Gamble, Terrance Hayes, Ada Limón, and Paula Meehan. Join us via Facebook or YouTube: irishartscenter.org//at-home-with-irish-arts-center-12th-a ***... The Vocation It’s good for a poet to have some dirt beneath his fingernails or a piece of leaf caught in her hair. When you ask them about stuff it’s fine if they shuffle up the bench to let the ghosts sit down then write what is this feeling on a scrap of envelope and lose it at the supermarket and on the bus home think about it being found and read by the security guard who nods twice and folds it, and puts it back upon the shelf. Many poets I know keep a length of string in their pocket for tying things together like their fingers, and they choose the window seat while novelists and playwrights tend to want the aisle. If she is wearing black again it’s because mourning is perpetual, and if she’s chewing gum or smoking or drumming her fingernails on the table, it’s only because the mundane too deserves its due, its beautiful due, and on the marble top she’s set her wallet, and in the wallet sit the little cards she’s printed: I am right and you are wrong and on the other side You are right and I am wrong. Nick Laird * * * Shared with permission from the author. Purchase his most recent collection, FEEL FREE, at wwnorton.com/books/9781324002741. See more

At Home With Irish Arts Center: 12th Annual PoetryFest Irish Arts Center is proud to present Favorite Irish Poems on Friday night, the opening night tradition of special guests and festival participants sharing the Irish verses they love most. The evening includes readings by Emma Dabiri, Ailbhe Darcy, Kit de Waal, Terrance Hayes, Nick Laird, Ada Limón, Belinda McKeon, Paula Meehan, Graham Norton, Katie Raissian, Leanne Shapton and Zadie Smith, plus Ciaran O'Reilly and Charlotte Moore of the Irish Repertory Theatre, John Waters of Glucksman Ireland House, Brendan Costello of Irish American Writers & Artists, and George Heslin of the New York Irish Center.

Terrance HayesMacArthur "Genius" fellow, National Book Award winner, and #PoetryFest alumnus (2017)gives us "George Floyd," our penultimate #poemoftheday, presented as an audio-visual piece illustrated by the author. Hayes reads tonight! The 12th annual festival launches at 8pm EST with our Favorite Irish Poems opening program > irishartscenter.org//at-home-with-irish-arts-center-12th-a

At the start of the season, IAC asked our community to create an online pop-up book with usand you've done it! We're delighted to share the results of our collective storytelling project, THE GIANTS, and thank all who participated.

The second leg of Rufus Wainwright's virtual tour, featuring music from the past 10+ years of the artist's celebrated discography, kicks off at 5pm EST today with a livestreamed concert of the first half of his legendary #WantOne album. Special guest Sharon Stone. Tickets for tonight and the rest of the month's performances are available at irishartscenter.org/event/a-rufus-retro-wainwright-spective.

The second episode of Picnic Picks, our series of favorite #MuldoonsPicnic moments from over the years, features performances by Min Jin Lee, Naughty Clouds, Damsel, Simon Armitage, and Paul Muldoon with house band Rogue Oliphant. Join us at 7pm EST this Monday, Nov 9 > irishartscenter.org//at-home-with-irish-arts-center-picnic

Our new PoetryFest #poemoftheday is "Mare at Large" by Miriam Gamble, this year's Belfast-born winner of the prestigious Pigott Poetry Prize for her collection WHAT PLANET. Reserve a place to watch Gamble read at Favorite Irish Poems tomorrow evening, and again on Saturday with Ada Limón and Ailbhe Darcy > irishartscenter.org//at-home-with-irish-arts-center-12th-a Today, join our festival partner Glucksman Ireland House NYU for the Tom Quinlan Lecture in Poetry, a tradition...al prelude to the PoetryFest weekend > youtube.com/watch?v=Mro0YMlhQXY All #PoetryFest events are free. *** Mare at Large The mare has lifted into the sky, has cleared the hedge and breached the next farm along. All afternoon she will gallop freely with her tail over her back; she isn’t minded to be caught. She has jumped, and she will gallop the mare who, finding your finger in her jaws, will press the bone and look at you and stop. A mare is not a river, is not a child jumping hedges from the window of a train gather and reach, gather and reach, jump the houses, the factories and everything: what is visible is jumpable, so long as the striding’s right. A mare is not a river. She will tire, will take into her foam-slashed mouth a carrot like a finger, she will be caught. But still, the mare has jumped the hedge and breached the next farm along. She has galloped all afternoon, flags flaunting in the wind. This cannot be taken away from her. *** "Mare at Large," from WHAT PLANET, is shared with permission from Bloodaxe Books. WHAT PLANET can be purchased at bookshop.org/books/what-planet/9781780374840.

After the 1983 murder of the great Galway accordionist Sean McGlynn, the songwriter Eugene O'Donnell memorialized him in music. Specifically, in a mazurka that came to him in a dream. Decades later, Mick, Athena Tergis, and Billy McComiskey had the privilege of performing the piece for O'Donnell in his Derry home, just months before his own passing. They perform it again here, in this week's Songbook.