Kildare Library Service to host first Climate Readers’ Day

Kildare Library Service will host its first Climate Readers’ Day on Saturday 28 September from 10am–4pm at the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge.

Eco Lines will bring together writers, thinkers, makers and feelers to explore what it means to make art in a bruised, burning, beautiful world. From the soil to the sea; seeds to stories; from the feminine to fiction; restoration to rainforests – the festival will hold space for the many various factors that play a part in how, and why we create.

What does it mean to create at a time like this? How do we navigate the myriad crises our planetary home is facing in fair, sustainable, creative ways?

Eco Lines is curated by Kerri ní Dochartaigh and hosted by the Kildare Co Council Library Service in partnership with The Irish Writers Centre. The festival line up at the Riverbank Arts Centre is as follows:

10.15-11am; Sea See // Whale Wail: women on water, grief, ancestry and hope. Join Alice Kinsella and Eleanor Hooker in conversation, chaired by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh, as they discuss women and water, in all their melancholy, mystery and magic.

11.20am-12.20pm, RESTORE, REPAIR, REMEMBER: on finding the way back.

Eoghan Daltun, Samuel Arnold and Aoife Hammond in conversation discuss the land and how we might write a new story of relation to our planetary home. Chaired by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh.

1-2pm, HEAD, HEART, HANDS: healing through one-anotherness. Kerri Ní Dochartaigh joins Jennie Moran and Jesse Gilbert in conversation on interconnectedness; community and ecologies of care. Chaired by Nidhi Zak Aria Eipe.

2.30-3.30pm, Invisible, imagined, Illuminating: fiction, non-fiction and all that lies between. Sinéad Gleeson and Molly Hennigan in conversation, exploring creative choice and the navigation of lived experience. What does it mean to write at these times? Chaired by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh.

To book tickets for any of the events taking place in the Riverbank, visit https://www.riverbank.ie/events.

A series of creative writing workshops will take place in Newbridge Community Library as part of the festival. The line-up includes:

11am-1pm, Poetry of Irish Biodiversity in a Time of Crisis with Jane Robinson. To survive shifting climatic and seasonal changes, wild animals and plants need robust and bio-diverse populations. Human and industrial activities have caused them to decline. If insects are down by 70%, what happens to insectivores such as swallows, bats and blue tits? If the pollinators decline, will there be enough berries for the fruit-eaters?

Each participant will write and hone a new poem to celebrate their favourite species of native plant or animal. As writing prompts you will use: first-hand experience, photos, natural prompts (pine cones, feathers, flowers, leaves etc.) and field guides. Discussions and feedback are tailored to suit the experience of participating writers. 

Places are limited – applications via MS Form by Friday 20 September.

2-4pm, The Environment as Metaphor in Creative Nonfiction with Ryan Dennis. At its core, climate writing is about bringing the challenges of global warming to the forefront of the reader’s imaginative consciousness. While cli-fi is an emergent and fast growing field, opportunities to invoke climates concerns – explicitly and implicitly – are often overlooked in creative nonfiction. This workshop will consider techniques to draw thematic meaning from environmental issues in personal essays and memoirs, as well as how to approach the subject as a topic in creative nonfiction. With prompts and writing exercises, participants will leave prepared to write a creative essay that seamlessly promotes awareness of climate change.

Places are limited. Applications via MS Form by Friday 20 September