Dublin Book Festival Event: An Emotional Impact

It’s rare that I get a chance to attend literary events these days so I was really glad that I was able to attend Irish PEN/Pen na hÉireann and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, in association with Dublin City Council event “Culture in a Time of War”.

Three women spoke – individually then together in conversation – about holding culture, identity, literature and art close and tight, and preserving and rebuilding during a time of war. Tetyana Teren and Olha Mukha spoke of volunteers working hard to rebuild libraries, salvage cultural artefacts and preserve a culture that is under attack.

Poet, essayist, and Professor of Cultural Studies Iryna Starovoyt spoke powerfully of how culture is a sensory system which helps us tell evil from good. Culture in and of itself is all-inclusive. Writers not only mirror and tell stories but they preserve the human face of humanity during a time of war, “living on the edge of pain”. Culture, in short, helps build bridges and brings people together.

It struck me, as these writers spoke, that it is not just a time of war, it is war that was and continues to be waged. This event – and the act of attending events like these – feels part of the preservation and restoration of culture and enacted what Iryna spoke about: it brought people together.

What stays with me is the memory of the empty chair on the Royal Irish Academy stage (you can see the chair in the photograph above, on the right of the stage). This empty chair was in memory of writer and Ukrainian rights activist Victoria Amelina, who had accepted an invitation to speak at this very event but who died from injuries suffered in a Russian missile attack in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on 27 June 2023.

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