As An Irish Literary Festival Turns Forty, There’s An ‘Explosion’ Of Irish Lit Worldwide

If life begins at 40, Cúirt International Festival of Literature has plenty of exciting times ahead. Born in the 1980s as a three-day poetry festival, the Galway event has grown into a six-day celebration of literature. This line-up for Cúirt 2025, which starts next week, includes the Booker winners Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright and, appearing together on opening night, Paul Muldoon and Sally Rooney.

The presence of Muldoon, whose relationship with Cúirt stretches back to the early years, is testament to poetry’s continued importance at the festival. The Pulitzer winner, Ireland professor of poetry and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature – whom the Times Literary supplement has described as the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War – says he’s delighted to be returning.

“Cúirt holds a special place in the heart, and for old codgers like myself it’s always a thrill to be asked,” Muldoon says.

Other poets taking part include Mary O’Malley, Kayo Chingonyi and Christodoulos Makris, who has written a seven-part birthday poem that will be installed across festival sites.

Donal Ryan also returns this year, as do his fellow novelists Kevin Barry and Eimear McBride. The Cúirt Lecture is also making a comeback. It will be given by the Palestinian author Ahmed Masoud on literature of resistance. Daily storytelling sessions will feature writers and audiences sharing memories of Cúirt.

A few weeks ago, looking through old boxes in my wardrobe, I found a festival programme for April 1993, my first Cúirt. Roddy Doyle hadn’t yet won the Booker; Anne Enright hadn’t published a novel; Sally Rooney was two years old.

I lived in Galway in the late 1980s and all through the 1990s, and Cúirt introduced me to writers I’ve continued a lifelong love affair with. As an impoverished student in the days before the internet, sustained less by literature than by Pot Noodles, would I have discovered the poetry of Glyn Maxwell, the novels of Louise Erdrich or the essays of Thomas Lynch without it?

I definitely wouldn’t have thrilled to the rhythms of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jean Binta Breeze, eaten breakfast beside Allen Ginsberg, heard Gerald Dawe recite at Thoor Ballylee or witnessed the first public reading of Martin McDonagh’s play The Pillowman, which went on to be nominated for six Tony awards and win the Laurence Olivier Award for best new play in 2004.

“This year’s theme is celebratory, celebrating the festival’s history, Irish writing and Galway,” says Cúirt’s director, Manuela Moser, who took over the role in 2022. “Although the festival has been running since the 1980s, the ethos has stayed the same: Cúirt is very much a festival of fun.”

Donal Ryan agrees. The author, who first appeared at Cúirt in 2013 after the publication of his award-winning debut, The Spinning Heart, pays tribute to its relaxed, friendly vibe.

“I’ve since been to festivals all over the world, and in some countries there’s a great seriousness about the whole thing. There can be a real expectation that you’re going to say something earth-shattering in any given sentence, and you tend to lean forward in your chair and look very serious,” he says.

“I’m not saying we’re more boozy in Ireland, because that’s a cliche, but there tends to be more of a party atmosphere at our literary festivals.”

It’s readers as much as writers who drive that agenda. “In many ways the festival has served as an exemplar to other literary festivals in Ireland and internationally,” says Maureen Kennelly, the head of the Arts Council. “It’s not driven by publishing schedules or commercial interests but by writing, writers and readers. It has evolved over the years while remaining true to its original vision.”

Kennelly’s relationship with the festival began when she was an arts administration student at Galway University in 1995, when she volunteered to run the festival bookshop.

“I got to meet all the writers, working beside them in the tent outside Nuns Island Theatre while they were doing their signings, so I saw first-hand the connection between writers and readers. I think that’s what is unique about Cúirt: it generates this enormous excitement about literature, but by the same token it demystifies it. It is the connection between reader and writer that makes it such a success and makes writers want to come back.”

Kennelly returned herself, as festival director, in 2009, while studying for a master’s degree in literature and publishing. She steered the following year’s programme through the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud, when Irish writers stepped up to fill the gaps left by international colleagues stranded at airports. “There was an incredible swell of support,” she says. “It shows just how important Cúirt is for writers.”

New writers have always featured prominently at Cúirt – I memorably encountered Mike McCormack and Mary Morrissey at a lunchtime reading in 1996 – and this year is no exception. There are readings from the debut authors Claire-Lise Kieffer, Garrett Carr, Roisín O’Donnell and Maurice J Casey, while first-time publications from Sam Furlong, Alanna Offield and Michael Dooley, among others, will be showcased at the Cúirt Poetry Sessions.

Kieffer’s Tenterhooks, a collection of “strikingly original” stories that make for “unique, intriguing and often darkly funny reading”, was conceived when the author was studying for an masters in creative writing at Galway University in 2020.

Originally from France, she moved to Galway in 2017, drawn by its upcoming turn as European capital of culture.

“I love Galway because it feels like everyone is an underground artist. Everyone does a little bit on the side,” she says. “Cúirt is the time when all of us grassroots people get to celebrate literature and writing in our own city, and since I’ve started going to Cúirt, every talk I’ve attended has been so valuable. Writers are very generous with what they share: they don’t hedge or hold anything back.”

“It’s always been a forum in which one could get a sense of what was happening not only in poetry in Ireland but actually, I think very significantly, what was happening beyond Ireland,” Paul Muldoon says. “Most poets you’ll find are fascinated by, interested in and engaged and influenced by poetry from all over the world. And while poetry festivals and magazines come and go, Cúirt has kept on going.”

Things have also evolved, of course. Today there’s probably less of a sense of a monolithic culture, he says. “I have a feeling that 40 years ago there could be only one king of the cats, to borrow a phrase Yeats used of himself. Those days are gone,” Muldoon says.

These days there is a sense of an Irish writing culture exploding around the world, fuelled – depending on who you read – by a booming network of literary magazines, publishers and festivals, by the supportive Irish writing community or by Sally Rooney.

The facts speak for themselves. In the 2000s alone, Irish writers won four Booker prizes, eight Costa/Nero awards and four International Dublin Literary Awards, as well as featuring prominently in annual book-of-the-year selections. And book sales in Ireland continue to grow: 2024 saw us spend a record amount on fiction.

While Irish writing may stem from a long line of local literary greats, its flavour is increasingly international. Think of Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits – winner of last year’s Waterstones Debut Fiction award and recently shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize – which is set in 412 BC, after the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily. Or the award-winning experimental fiction of McBride, Barry and McCormack.

“I do think that we’ve stopped being as backward looking and have started to engage in a more immediate way with contemporary issues as a nation of writers, which I think is quite healthy,” Ryan says. “An interrogation of our past is necessary and important, but there is definitely more of a contemporary feel about our literary adventures now.”

He disagrees with the idea that Irish writing is undergoing a renaissance: “I can’t recall a time when people didn’t say the Irish literary landscape was verdant and fertile. I know it’s an awful cliche, but in literary terms we do punch above our weight. We have one of the highest per-capita proportions of published writers, and we tend to feature strongly on the international scene. There’s a perception year on year that there’s a huge burgeoning, but as far as I can see it’s always been that way.”

Perception or not, it’s encouraging to see new generations of writers coming up in Ireland, Muldoon says. “It lifts the spirits at a time when, frankly, anything at all that lifts the spirits is a good thing.”

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I left Galway in 1999, which was also the last time I attended Cúirt. I’m looking forward to finally going back next week. I remember the excitement of my first year, seeing John McGahern and Beryl Bainbridge, Seamus Heaney and Wendy Cope. I think about what Maureen Kennelly describes as the “solidarity, community, warmth and fun” – the magic stuff that goes into making it so good.

“I saw Andrei Voznesensky in 1995, the Russian poet who famously used to read to stadiums of 14,000 people,” Kennelly says. “To think of hearing him in Nuns Island with 90 like-minded souls is incredible. There’s just something extraordinary about sitting in the dark, listening to somebody reading their work honestly and powerfully. It’s not hyperbole to say these are life-changing moments.”

Cúirt International Festival of Literature runs from Tuesday, April 8th, until Sunday, April 13th