Respected Canadian poet joins festival line-up

RESPECTED Canadian poet, essayist, critic and editor Carmine Starnino is to visit Waterford as part of this year’s Sean Dunne Literary Festival.

Mr Starnino will deliver workshops at Waterford Institute of Technology’s College Street campus where the institute’s School of Humanities is based.

Mr Starnino’s poetry has won the Canadian Authors Association Prize, the David McKeen Award, and the AM Klein Prize.

The latest work edited by Mr Starnino, The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry, will have its Irish launch during the forthcoming festival.

Dr John Ennis, Head of the School of Humanities at WIT, said: “Many of these poets will never have had work appear in so major an anthology. Indeed, this is the first collection of such ambition in over 20 years.”

He said WIT is pleased to be associated with the 10th Sean Dunne Literary Festival which, he said, helps ensure the legacy of a “truly wonderful Irish poet” lives on. Sean Dunne died in August 1995 and would have been 50 this year.