In April of 1986, an unknown university teacher from Belfast was seized by Muslim gunmen in Beirut, Lebanon. Nearly five years later, Brian Keenan re-emerged as a free man. He had become “The Man from Beirut” and the world was anxious to watch his every movement.
He had survived his incarceration, chained to the walls of tiny cells, thanks in part to the companionship of the blind musician, considered by many as the father of Irish music 17th century harpist Turlough O'Carolan, who came to visit him - in his mind., is the subject of Keenan's latest novel Turlough .
In 1985, Brian Keenan travelled to Beirut to teach literature at the American University. A year later, he was taken hostage. No group claimed responsibility for the abduction; he had virtually disappeared. Then, in 1988, French hostage Jean-Paul Kauffmann, who had been freed by the Islamic Jihad, assured Keenan was alive.
His first book, An Evil Cradling , a best-selling account of his harrowing years as a hostage and his personal struggle to retain his sanity. His first title won several awards including the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Non-Fiction and the Time-Life PEN Award.
Recently, Keenan has published his first novel, Turlough , which brings together his time of captivity with the imagined personal life and loves of the harpist who was blinded by smallpox. Keenan chose to write about an Irish hero, lauded by his fellow men, and yet knew next to nothing about him. It was a difficult enterprise. Although plenty is known about O'Carolan's art and music, little has been established about his private life.
In an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian , Keenan acknowledged he was ill-prepared for the endeavour. He was neither an historian nor a musician. He couldn't play the harp and he wasn't blind. And to top it off, he had never written a work of fiction. ‘ When one spends a long time in small dark spaces, a prolonged time of desolation where you see no one, and you hear nno one, and you're in the dark, strangely people come to visit you.They come in to your mind from God knows .'
Interview in The Guardian Newspaper
'Why Turlough O'Carolan should choose to come to visit me, I don't know and I don't question. All I knew of the man previously was that he was blind, he played the harp and he lived in Ireland some centuries ago. Beyond that I could hardly whistle two tunes of any song or tune that he ever composed…' Take me to The Maynooth Day and Keenan's Lecture Poetry and Captivity
DAVID AXELROD
Long Island's newest Poet Laureate, appointed to serve from 2007 to 2009. He is an author and sponsor of international writers' programs covering dozens of countries and nearly forty languages. He has performed and taught as an author and educator lecturing in England, France, Sicily, Italy, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia, Hong Kong and throughout the People's Republic of China.
Himself a student of 10 languages, author of 16 books, his work has been translated and published in numerous languages including Albanian and Bulgarian, Chinese and Japanese, Hebrew and Yiddish, Italian and Sicilian, Greek and Macedonian, Russian and Romanian, French and Creole, Spanish and Portuguese, German and Dutch among others!
As founder and director of Writers Unlimited Agency, Inc., David Axelrod continues to provide information on the writing arts. In that capacity he also publishes arts books under the imprint of Writers Ink Press. More recently he founded 3WS, World-Wide Writers Services, a network for authors and editors aiding international publication and exchange.
David will read in Monasterevin House 3.30, Tuesday 24th.; and at the Festival Club on Thursday 25th at 10.00 pm.
DESMOND EGAN
Bred, born and reared in Athlone, Desmond Egan's close identification with the town emerged in his Collection Athlone? (1980).
A full-time writer, Desmond has had 18 collections of his poems have been published; one collection of Prose; two translations from the Greek. Two books of Criticism about his Work have been published in the USA where a video documentary has also been made for TV. Eighteen books of translations of his work have been published all across Europe and in Japan and Russia. Egan has been the recipient of a number of awards notably The National Poetry of USA Award (1983) and the Bologna Literary Award (1998). In 1999, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Washburn University.
In 2000, a short poem of his was chosen for The Poet's Garden in Annascaul, Co. Kerry where it is inscribed on a stone seat. In the same year, his poem Peace was translated in 24 languages as a poem of the millennium.
Desmond is a founder and Artistic Director of The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Summer School (last week in July each year).
Desmond reads his poem PEACe at the Medellin Poetry Festival.
Born in Greece, Petros Mastoris went to the United States where he has resided in Chicago since 1955
His first publication was back in 1962 when he wrote and produced a play titled “ One Way ”. In 1992 he started publishing poetry. “ Messages ”, was followed in 1993 by“ Visions ”. In 1995 was the book titled “ Waves ” followed by “ Healing of the Soul ” in 2003. The most recent publication of poetry is the book called “ Satire Opportunities ” published in 2004.
Petros is currently working on his next poetry book called “ Healing of the Soul ” which will be published in 2009.
Petros is a member of the “Pan-Hellenic Association of Poetry” and the “International Association of Greek Writers”. A variety of his poems where chosen to be published in Newspapers and Magazines throughout Greece and the United States.
In August of 2007 Petros was invited to attend and participate in a reading of his poems at the 1 st Annual Qinghai International Poetry Festival held in Qinghai Lake, China. Petros has been honored numerous times by his fellow Peers and Poets from Both Greece and the United States.
Dragan Dragojlovic CV
Dragan Dragojlovic was born in Serbia and currently lives in Belgrade where he is Director of The Ivo Andric Foundation and has published eighteen books of poetry in the Serbian language, of which two books of Selected Poems . His books have also appeared in translation in the Albanian language in Kosovoa, as well as in Australia, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Greece, China and United States and his Selected Poems have appeared in Australia and China.
Dragan has been the recipient of many literary awards.
In one of his poems, Dragan asks, "What are we to do with so much grief?" His poetry captures the horror of the civil war and acts of genocide that ravaged Yugoslavia. What he does is tell the truth in startling images and expresses the resilience of the human spirit even in the midst of despair in such phrases as, "What joy a single star can bring."
Award-winning author and former Serbian Ambassador to Australia, Dragan Dragojlovic presents Death's Homeland , a cruelly serious anthology of poetry rooted in the horrors of the civil war that recently plagued Yugoslavia.
Kirsti Simonsuuri
Born in Helsinki, Kirsti Simonsuuri is a Finnish scholar, writer and poet. After studies in Helsinki, she holds a doctorate from Cambridge University (1977) where she studied as a 'Rhodes scholar'.
Awards
• Dr. Simonsuuri received the British Academy Wolfson Award for younger q scholars in 1981,
• Visiting Scholar at the Warburg Institute in London (1981-82), at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel (1983) and at the William Clark Library of the University of California, Los Angeles (1984),
• Fulbright Scholar, at Harvard University 1984-86 and at Columbia University (1986-88),
• Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford for Trinity term 1994
• Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki 1994-95;
• Director of the Finnish Archaeological Institute in Athens 1995-98
• Cultural Counsellor at the Finnish Embassy in Athens;
• Fellow at the Collegium Budapest 2003-04,
• Fellow at the Swedish Collegium at Uppsala 2006-07.
Dr Simonsuuri was a Juror for the Neustadt International Literature Prize 2000. She has lectured widely and given readings in many countries.
Publications
• Homer and the early Greek epic (Cambridge UP 1979),
• numerous studies on Greek mythology, Greek drama, European literature and Finnish literature; several collections of poems, novels, radio plays and essays in Finnish. Translations of her work have appeared in English, French, German, Swedish, Hungarian, Greek, and many other languages.
• Enchanting Beasts , an anthology of modern Finnish women poets, which she edited and translated, won a Columbia University Translation Award in 1991.
• Her translations into Finnish include many works of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, as well as the Oresteia of Aeschylus, Medea of Euripides, and The Sonnets of William Shakespeare.
A well-known , Latif Pedram was first published in Afghanistan when he was only 14. After being black listed by the Taliban at their arrival in Kabul, he headed the Nasser Khossrow Public library before the Taliban burnt down the 55 000 books it contained.
He lived in Afghanistan during the years of war and opposed the Soviet invasion. He was finally obliged to leave his country in 1998.
Awards and Prizes
1999 Latif Pedram was awarded the Hellman-Helmet Priz e by Human Rights Watch
1998 He received a special grant from Reporters sans Frontières in December 1998.
Pedram is an honorary Member of the International Parliament of Writers and a guest of the city of Suresnes in France.
Latif Pedram's poetry has been translated into English, German, Bulgarian, Spanish, French, Russian, Kirgiz, and Arabic. He has also published widely on aspects of Central Asian politics, history, language, folklore, journalism and culture.
Latif Pedram has participated in numerous conferences related to political, social and cultural affairs. He has been regularly interviewed: the BBC, Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, Radio France International, France Inter, France Culture etc. and television etc.
For reasons unknown, Mr. Pedram has being held under de-facto house arrest in Afghanistan. Friends of Latif have signed a letter of protest to the Government of Afghanistan, the European Union, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan and Nato.
LI LI, POET
Dr. Li Li was born in in Shanghai, China and now lives in Sweden.
He studied Swedish at Beijing University and moved to Sweden in 1988, where he studied Swedish literature at the Stockholm University. His first publication was Sight in water (1989), written in Swedish, for which he was awarded The De Nio Literary Award.
Li Li is the author of 6 volumes of poetry in Swedish, the latest Origin (2007), whish focuses on the life of his mother and his cultural background. His work has also been published in China and translated into several languages in anthologies and magazines. He has been awarded prizes for his poetry and translations, among them Bei Dou Xing (2004) and he is currently working with a 10 year writing award from the Swedish Authors Foundation.
Apart from his own work, Li Li has translated several Scandinavian poets into Chinese, including the complete works of Tomas Tranströmer , selected work of Edith Södergran (Finland), Harry Martinsson and Gunnar Ekelöf .
He has also produced a series of short films, five of which have been broadcasted by the National Swedish Television.
Fr. John Geary C.S.Sp.
Father Geary taught in schools in Canada from 1961 - 1989 and studied in Paris and Rome. He did his doctoral studies in Toronto University.
Interests: Studies in the Four Gospels; any form of English Literature; Music, Orchestral and Opera, Rugby Football.
Title of Fr. Geary's Lecture: The Sonnets of Donne and Hopkins
Thursday July 24th 11.45 St. Paul's
Vicki Rhomberg Poet
Salah Niazi Poet
Salah Niazi was born in Iraq, and studied Arabic literature at the universities of Baghdad and London. Since the 1950s he has published poetry, essays, criticism and translations. He and his wife are founding editors of the literary journal al-Ightrab al-Adabi .
He is a well-known poet and critic, and founder editor of the quarterly Arabic literary journal Al Ightirab al Adabi . He has published many collections of poetry and translated into Arabic Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth , and James Joyce's Ulysses .
Two long-exiled Iraqi poets, after reading their poetry at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts in the wake of war and a complex liberation in their homeland, discuss with the audience the legacy of a long dictatorship on their own and their compatriots' spiritual condition.
Raymond Murray is crusader for human rights in Northern Ireland. With Denis Faul he is co-author of 33 books and pamphlets on violations of human rights. His books The SAS in Ireland traces the history of the British Army Special Air Service Regiment, the SAS, in Ireland over the past twenty years. It details their activities – intelligence gathering and surveillance, their links with British intelligence, notably MI5 and MI6, their connection with sectarian murders and many other deaths.
Fr. Murray reads his Poems in Maynooth and at the Festival Club
