CULTURE: An afternoon with three poets in Louisburgh

This Sunday, Louisburgh’s Books@One bookshop is hosting what promises to be an engaging and thought-provoking afternoon: ‘Poetry in Place’, a reading by Mayo poets Ger Reidy and Geraldine Mitchell and polish poet Katrina Dybzynska. This will be followed by a Q&A and discussion, during which the poets will converse about what it means to be a poet in these difficult times, reflecting on place, home and belonging.
Currently living in Mayo, Dybzynska has won many awards for her work in Poland but is also widely published in English. She already has an award-winning English language poetry pamphlet, ‘Secrets of the Dictator's Wife’, which won the 2022 Aryamati Prize for Peace and Social Change Poetry.
Dybzynska writes about power, resistance, climate emergency and what it means to belong. With an outsider’s perspective as a Polish poet living in Mayo and writing in English, her poetry offers fresh perspectives on our shared environment, enriching our way of seeing ourselves and the landscape. For the past year, she has been mentored by Geraldine Mitchell through the Irish Writers' Centre mentoring scheme.
With her profound connection to nature, Mitchell’s work illuminates the beauty of our local landscapes in ways that will resonate deeply with listeners. Commenting on ‘Naming Love’, her new collection, poet Jane Clarke said: “It celebrates birds and weeds and the changing of the seasons. It laments loss of people and loss of nature. It tracks the changing of the seasons. It notices the little things in the everyday and makes them marvellous.”
Meanwhile, Ger Reidy draws on his life as a Mayo farmer and civil engineer to create vivid portraits of rural Ireland, inviting readers to explore both the beauty and the hardship to be found there. He has described his own work as ‘a pastoral gaze with a hard edge’. Ger is a long-established poet and short-story writer with many awards and accolades to his name. ‘Clay’, his most recent collection of poems, is published by Arlen House.

‘Poetry in Place’, with poets Ger Reidy, Geraldine Mitchell and Katrina Dybzynska, takes place in Louisburgh’s Books@One bookshop this Sunday, July 7, at 3pm. This event is being supported by Mayo Arts Office and Creative Ireland.