Evento

Annual Evening of Irish Music & Poetry

HoCoPoLitSo's guest for this year's Irish Evening is the award-winning poet Vona Groarke, recipient of the 2017 Hennessy Hall of Fame Award for Lifetime Achievement. Groarke's reading will be followed by a concert of Irish music and championship step dancing

Groarke's most recent collection, Selected Poems, won the 2017 Pigott Prize for the best collection of poetry by an Irish poet. Noted as "brilliant and original" by the Irish Times, she writes haunting and candidly sensual poems. At the Irish Arts Center's annual PoetryFest, organizer and author Nick Laird extolled "a voice always modulated beautifully, assured and daring, often wry, (that) in the end keeps faith with the world."

Currently a Cullman Fellow at New York Public Library, Groarke joins the long list of illustrious Irish authors HoCoPoLitSo has brought to Howard County (MD) audiences, including Frank McCourt, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Colum McCann, and Emma Donoghue. For more than 40 years, HoCoPoLitSo's Irish Evening has celebrated the substantial impact of Irish-born writers on the world of contemporary literature.

During intermission, complimentary snacks and non-alcoholic beverages will be available.