Chapter and verse at the Cork International Poetry Festival

PAUL CASEY, who will be reading from his new poetry collection at the Cork International Poetry Festival, says that while poetry in Cork is thriving, the weekly Ó Bhéal poetry-reading series he founded at the Long Valley may have to fold in 2017 on its tenth anniversary.

Casey’s second collection, Virtual Tides, published by Salmon, deals with society’s increasing reliance on the virtual world. He is dealing with the reality of the lack of support for poetry in this country.

Casey established Ó Bhéal at the height of the boom, having run a successful multilingual poetry venue in South Africa. This widely travelled Cork-born poet and filmmaker wanted to create something permanent for poetry in Cork.