Tag: Creativity

Collaboration, Exhibitions, Writing Festival, Writing Life, Writing Workshops

John Hewitt International Summer School 2026: Words and Heart

It was wonderful to be able to do two firsts this year: attend some of the John Hewitt International Summer School and visit beautiful Armagh.

View of Armagh from the Armagh City Hotel showing trees and on a hill in the distance city spires including those of the Cathedral.

I attended various readings which were, without exception, moderated beautifully, and provided moving explorations of our human experience. Sarah Gilmartin interviewed Éilís Ní Dhuibhne; Paul Maddern introduced readings by Moyra Donaldson and Connie Voisine, Jessica Traynor and Abeer Ameer; Wendy Erskine interviewed Jan Carson. Everyone was generous with their words and time.

The Freedom to Write Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann event on Wednesday 29th featured an incredible presentation from International Human Rights Lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC followed by an in-depth interview with Irish PEN’s Lia Mills. The audience was invited to write postcards of support for imprisoned journalist Mzia Amaglobeli – represented on stage by an empty chair – who has been imprisoned in Georgia since January 2025. How powerful are words and heart when we come together.

Photograph of two black-and-white images from Brigid O’Brien’s exhibition “Home” showing people at home, talking and smiling and in the second image in their garden

I also attended a beautiful exhibition “Home” by Brigid O’Brien – a taste above. And lastly, how could anyone visit a literary festival without coming home with a book haul of signed books? In the photograph below, just some of the books:

  • Connie Voisine “And God Created Women”
  • Wendy Erskine “The Benefactors”
  • Abeer Ameer “Inhale/Exile”
  • Moyra Donaldson “the thirteenth moon”
  • Susannah Dickey “Into the wreck”
  • Sinéad Morrissey “Among Communists”
  • Jan Carson “Few and Far Between”

Congratulations to Niamh McNally and all the John Hewitt International Summer School for a brilliant and friendly festival. I look forward to returning, and hopefully attending the whole Summer School. Brava!

Contemplation

Spring light for hope

Close up of purple crocuses with bright spring sunlight shining on the flowers

One wishes that with the spring light comes hope – of life, of new starts, of peace. And, perhaps, humbly, one hopes for creation.

Creation is, as Rita Ann Higgins says in Hurting God (Salmon Poetry, 2010), “a combination of the gut, the heart, the mind, the notebook – then the hard work starts.”

Let the combination, and the work start, or rather, make a start within a sliver of light.

Film, Writers Read

Fighting your way through the process…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the hard work of creativity, of life. How the best always seems the most simple and the clearest. How behind this clarity is years and years of graft and inspiration and struggle.

Ira Glass says “You just have to fight your way through that….”
This short video encapsulates all of this – take 2 minutes, 18 seconds out of your day and enjoy!

THE GAP by Ira Glass from Daniel Sax on Vimeo.