Incantation for the Hare: commemorating Seamus Heaney’s tenth anniversary

Concluding the first day of Trinity’s inaugural Arts and Humanities Research Festival, poet, pacifist and fabulist Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe read her new poem, ‘Incantation for the Hare’ which was inspired by Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Names of the Hare’, his translation of the Middle English poem ‘Les Noms De Un Levre En Englais.’

At the event ‘Writing Nature, Remembering Heaney’ on the 25th of September, also featuring award-winning Trinity writers Sean Hewitt and Yairen Jerez Columbié, Nidhi framed her reading of ‘Incantation for the Hare’ in the context of the animal’s symbolic role in indigenous cultures worldwide, including Ireland, where it is said to be the oldest surviving mammal.

The text of her poem was distributed among the audience in a special pamphlet edition, with artwork by Sarah Gillespie (Bridgeman Images) displayed on the cover.

Against the backdrop of the ecological crisis we are facing, Nidhi said her project Honey and the Hare has allowed her to return to shamanic and indigenous knowledge practices. “I want to thank Dr Peter Rooney for the generous and uninterrupted gift of time and space that this fellowship has provided.”

Forward Prizes for Poetry 2023

For the first time, an outstanding performance of a poem will be celebrated with a dedicated award as part of the Forward prizes for poetry. The shortlists for the 2023 prizes, announced today, feature categories for the best collection, debut collection and single written poem along with the new award for best performed poem.

“The performance category is a much-needed addition to the literary prize,” poet and chair of judges for the best single poems panel Joelle Taylor told the Guardian. “Historically, spoken word artists have been ignored by the poetry establishment, and this prize means that is no longer possible. It signals that spoken word and performed poetry is as valuable, dynamic and exploratory as published works.”

The winner of the inaugural performance prize will receive £1,000. The shortlisted entrants include TS Eliot and Ondaatje prize winner Roger Robinson for his performance of The City Kids See the Sea and Bohdan Piasecki for Almost Certainly, which incorporates gentle guitar music through a poem that narrates an explosion. Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe was shortlisted for And our eyes are on Europe, a poetic response to James Joyce’s Ulysses. The poetry film sees Zak/Eipe reciting in a sunlit room and walking a quiet city street.

Trinity Long Room Hub announces new Rooney Writer Fellow

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe has been appointed as the 2023 Rooney Writer Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub.

During her tenure as the Rooney Writer Fellow, Nidhi will research a project titled ‘Honey and the Hare’, exploring the human relationship to the more-than-human across both ancient Celtic and Indian traditions, and ultimately how indigenous wisdom and practices recognising the interconnectedness of being can provide enduring responses to intersecting social and ecological crises. This transdisciplinary project draws inspiration from Joseph Beuys’s 1965 performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare and an anonymous Middle English poem ‘The Names of the Hare’, investigating the symbolism of the Hare linking to Vedic, Buddhist, Celtic and Gaelic deities, alchemy, the moon and the feminine while also exploring connections in folklore, mythology and deep ecology.

Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, welcomed Nidhi as the new Rooney Writer Fellow and said that her fascinating research project would “illuminate unchartered aspects of the human relationship with other entities and species, while also furthering research links between Irish and Indian literary traditions.”    

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe said, “I am deeply grateful to Dr Peter Rooney and the leadership at Trinity Long Room Hub for this extraordinary opportunity to work with a vibrant research community in an institute at the forefront of cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research. It’s a rare gift to be able to contribute to this uniquely transformative endeavour of shared discovery.  The chance to invite the voices of older, embodied wisdom traditions into conversation with advances in contemporary intellectual discourse and scholarship lives like a bright thing inside me.”

Poetry Ireland Announces Guest Editor Appointments for 2023 Poetry Ireland Review

Poetry Ireland is delighted to announce three new guest editors of Poetry Ireland Review for the 2023 publication year, who will each take up editorship of an upcoming issue of the highly-regarded poetry journal. The three guest editors are Maurice Riordan, Spring Issue, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Summer Issue, and Nidhi Zak / Aria Eipe, Winter Issue.

Poetry Ireland also welcomes William Keohane,who has been appointed guest editor of Trumpet, an annual literary pamphlet carrying reviews, opinions and essays on poetry and the writing life by newer voices.

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe said of the announcement:

"It's with a certain wide-eyed joy that I approached this invitation to edit an issue of Poetry Ireland Review, alongside a formidable team who are so incomparably supportive and nurturing of poets across the island. Poetry Ireland's pillars and people have been a second home to me; its legendary editors made me feel like I belonged to that lyrical world of words long before I ever quite believed it myself. I look forward to felicitating the possibility of poetry, to working with poets who are consistently expanding the palette of language and the arc of perception – and exploring the singular kinds of astonishment that contemporary poetry might introduce or incorporate which moves it, and us, to places anew."

Announcing the 2022 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist

The shortlist for one of the world’s largest literary prizes for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – has been announced. From Sri Lanka to Trinidad, Texas, and Ireland via the Middle East, this year’s shortlist features a powerful, international collection of writers who are offering platforms for under-represented voices.

The debuts on this year’s shortlist include Indian-born Nidhi Zak/ Aria Eipe whose first poetry collection Auguries of a Minor God follows two different journeys, the first of love and the wounds it makes and the second following a family of refugees who have fled to the West from conflict in an unspecified Middle Eastern country; the contemporary classic The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris who fuses together historical fiction with the complex reality of today’s society; and the achingly beautiful love story Open Water (now sold in 13 territories worldwide) by 25-year-old British-Ghanaian writer Caleb Azumah Nelson who shines a light on race and masculinity.

Minister Martin Announces Appointment of New Members to Culture Ireland Expert Advisory Committee

Catherine Martin TD, Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media today announced the addition of six new members to the Culture Ireland Expert Advisory Committee.

Announcing the new members of the Expert Advisory Committee, Minister Martin said: “Culture Ireland plays a vital role in building Ireland’s reputation globally through the promotion of Irish arts worldwide.  At this pivotal time, the in-depth expertise of the new Committee members will help to increase career opportunities for Irish artists and maximise the impact of the Government's investment in Irish arts abroad.”

The current members of the Expert Advisory Committee will be joined by Helen Carey, Visual Arts Curator, Tom Creed, Theatre and Opera Producer and Director, Louise Donlon, Executive Director of the Lime Tree Theatre, Noeleen Hartigan, Multidisciplinary Arts Strategy Advisor, Rosaleen Molloy, CEO of Music Generation, and Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Poet, Editor and Peace Ambassador.

Three Poems for Brigid

To celebrate St Brigid’s Day 2021, MoLI and the Department of Foreign Affairs, have collaborated on ‘Three Poems for Brigid’, a series of three short online films. Each film showcases a poet and a spoken word performer, and is based around one of the three aspects of Brigid as the triple goddess of poetry, healing, and craftwork.

The poems were commissioned from three of Ireland’s finest female poets, spanning the creative generations: Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Paula Meehan and Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe. Artists performing the works include Osaro Azams, Ruth McCabe and Caitríona Ennis, with music by Syn, Dowry, and Dreamcycles.

Through the poem and accompanying imagery, each film explores the theme as it relates to Irish women from past to present. The films aim to reach the widest audience possible, both local and international, and to engage Irish people around the world with living female Irish writers, performers and the feminine continuum that stretches through our history, is alive in our society, and is exemplified through both the Pagan and Christian symbolism of Brigid.

RTÉ launches Illuminations

From spring to autumn 2020, we have lived through a different sort of season, halting normality, forcing change, bringing fear and stress. Art helps us to understand our experience so that we can begin to heal, as individuals and as a nation.

Illuminations is an online gallery of 30 works commissioned by RTÉ exploring the shades of lockdown. Launching on Wednesday, 7 October and rolling out from then to early December, it will feature visual art, photography, film, music, poetry, essays and spoken word pieces from a wide range of established and emerging creative talent. The first series of Illuminations works can be viewed here. 

Artists featured on Illuminations include Sara Baume, Jane Clarke, Dermot Bolger, Pat Collins, Isabel Nolan, Enda Walsh, Niamh Campbell, Hazel Coonagh, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Paula Meehan, John Boyne, Leanne McDonagh, Jeanette Lowe, Stephen Heffernan, Natalya O'Flaherty, Daire Patel and Megan K. Fox.

Faber announces new poetry acquisitions for 2021

Faber announces two new urgent and masterly poetry collections for 2021: Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips (21 January 2021) and Auguries of a Minor God by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe (1 July 2021).

 Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe’s spellbinding debut poetry collection explores love and the wounds it makes. Its first half is composed of five sections, corresponding to the five arrows of Kama, the Hindu God of Love, Desire and Memory. The second is a long narrative poem, ‘A is for العرب [Arabs]’, which follows a different kind of journey: a family of refugees who have fled to the West from conflict in an unspecified Middle Eastern country. With an extraordinary structure, it is a skilful and intimate account of migration and exile, of home and belonging.

 Editors Matthew Hollis and Lavinia Singer say, ‘It is an honour for Faber to welcome to the list two poets of narrative force and lyrical grace, whose work responds to the political moment while drawing richly upon the heritage of the past. Distinctive in approach and subject, united in their rhythmic and intellectual power, Rowan and Nidhi offer voices for our times and pathways for our future.’

Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme 2020

Dublin City Libraries and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature are delighted to support Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe as she receives one of 23 one-to-one mentoring from professional writer-mentors over the coming year from Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme 2020.

We look forward to working with her over the next year. Congratulations!

Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology

The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust is delighted to announce the publication of a special commemorative anthology featuring original poems, essays and reflections by emerging poets in response to the work of creative mentors. 

Edited by the recipients of the 2019 Ireland Chair of Poetry Student Award — Mícheál McCann, Summer Meline, Marcella L.A. Prince, and Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe — with Frank Ormsby as advising editor, the anthology aims to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize win, as well as honour the contribution and legacy of the Chairs of Poetry and their peers, among a new generation of poets. Continuing their fine work, as seen in the Poet’s Chair series, UCD Press will publish the anthology in late 2020.

In an effort to celebrate the unique and formative relationships that exist between new writers and their creative mentors, the editors hope for this anthology to spark an intergenerational dialogue by bridging established, well-known names in Irish literature with newfound, diverse voices, and illuminate the literary heritage, traditions, themes and resonances unfolding in contemporary Irish poetry.