Ó Bhéal
8th Winter Warmer Festival: Florencia Milito, Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird & Iman Mersal
Sunday 29th November
10.00pm – 11.30pm
Florencia Milito | Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird | Iman Mersal
Florencia Milito (Rosario, Argentina, 1972). Bilingual poet, essayist, memoirist, and translator whose work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Indiana Review, Catamaran, Entremares, Digging through the Fat, Diálogo, 92nd Street Y, Kenyon Review, Quiet Lightning, Ninth Letter, and Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA, among others. A Hedgebrook alumna, CantoMundo fellow, San Francisco Grotto fellow, and Community of Writers alumna, she has written extensively on themes of state terror and displacement, as well as imagination and language as counterpoint, influenced by her early experience fleeing Argentina’s 1976 coup, subsequent childhood years in Venezuela, and immigration to the United States at the age of nine.
In 2011, she read her poetry at the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Rosario. A resident of San Francisco for the past sixteen years, she reads in various literary series in the Bay Area, works as an educator, and translates the work of contemporary Latin American poets. Her bilingual book of poetry Ituzaingó: Exiles and Reveries is forthcoming from Nomadic Press in January 2021.
Is as Árainn Mhór i dTír Chonaill do Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird. Tá 3 chnuasach filíochta foilsithe aige, chomh maith le ceithre húrscéal agus leabhair do pháistí. Bhunaigh agus reáchtáil sé An Chúirt Filíochta le deich mbliana anuas agus bronnadh go leor duaiseanna ar a shaothar i gcomórtais éagsúla, ina measc: Comórtas Uí Néill, Comórtas Bhéal na mBuillí agus Reclaim the Vision of 1916. Bronnadh duais Leabhar na Bliana ar a úrscéal Tairngreacht (Cló Iar-Chonnacht) ag na An Post Irish Book Awards sa bhliain 2019. Foilseofar a ceathrú díolaim filíochta, Falscaí, níos moille i mbliana.
Proinsias Mac a’ Bhaird hails from Árainn Mhór in the Donegal Gaeltacht. He has published three poetry collections in addition to 4 novels and other books for children. He established and has run the annual Cúirt Filíochta gathering for the past 10 years and his work has been awarded prizes in many competitions, including The Colonel O’Neill competition, Strokestown Poetry and Reclaim the Vision of 1916. His novel Tairngreacht (Cló Iar-Chonnacht) was named Irish Language Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2019. His upcoming poetry collection, Falscaí, will be published later this year.
Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet, translator and literary scholar, and Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of five books of Arabic poetry, selections from which have been translated into numerous languages. In English translation, her poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Parnassus, Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review and Michigan Quarterly Review.
A selection of Mersal’s poetry, entitled These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published in 2008 (Sheep Meadow Press- New York). Her most recent publications include an Arabic translation of Charles Simic’s memoir, A Fly in the Soup (Al Kotob Khan, 2016), Kayfa Talta’im: ‘An al-Umuma wa Ashbahiha (Kayfa Ta and Mophradat, 2017), translated into English by Robin Moger as Motherhood and its Ghosts (Kayfa Ta and Sternberg Press – Berlin, 2018), and Fi Athar Enayat al- Zayyat (In pursuit of Enayat al-Zayyat) (Al Kotob Khan – Cairo, 2019).
