Bloomsday Festival 2025
Saturday, 14 June 2025 at 2pm
Join us as at The James Joyce Centre on Satuday, June 14th at 2pm for an afternoon of poetry featuring two contemporary Irish authors from Macha Press, a new publisher dedicated to marginal, experimental and interdisciplinary works.
Eilish Martin’s third collection, ! All’arme / ? And what… if not, is an experimental head-to-toe double book which can be read from either end. It investigates human frailty and the minutiae of the natural world.
Crowd Work is Sam Furlong’s debut poetry collection. It explores experiences of a body’s qualities of pain, the complexities and contradictions of intimacy, and an interrogation of the performative side of identity in stand-up’s public setting.
Macha Press was recently founded by seven poets, each with manifold areas of practice. All the founders are currently based on the island of Ireland but each has a visionary reach that is integral to the international and trans-generational character of Macha. The name resounds with the eponymous (and pregnant) goddess who runs through the Ulster Cycle; Scottish makar (poet); as well as the Irish and Scottish Gaelic for a geographic “plain”. The word “macha” has different meanings across cultures and languages that play on tropes of both fertility and power.
The event will feature readings by Martin and Furlong and a Q&A.
Tickets are €10.
The Bloomsday Festival is organised by The James Joyce Centre in partnership with Fáilte Ireland, Olhausen’s Sausages, and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.