SoundEye

Project Partner: SoundEye
Trevor Joyce

Date: 4 – 10 July 2005
Venue: Christian Brothers School, Sullivan's Quay School

Project Description:
'SoundEye 2005' brought together one of the largest world-wide gatherings of poets anywhere in recent years. As language strikes both ear and eye, the SoundEye Festival, celebrating its ninth year, brought together poets, musicians, visual and video artists to note it and respond.

The Festival celebrated the opening up of language to disciplines and experiences beyond those familiar in Irish poetry, to enjoy the achievement of those who have remade their medium in Ireland and elsewhere, and, as always, to start over.

American participation in SoundEye included Charles Bernstein and Nathaniel Mackey, who are noted not only for the surprise and quality of their writing, but also for the power of their performance; Susan Howe, with David Grubbs on computer and piano, who performed a version of her poems ‘Thorow’ and ‘Melville's Marginalia’; and a host of other American poets

From further afield there was Yang Lian, in exile from China since 1989; Alison Croggon, poet, novelist and librettist from Australia; and Amir Or, Israeli coordinator of Poets for Peace, who read with English poet and translator Fiona Sampson.

The UK and Irish was also strong. Tom Leonard, Bill Griffiths, John Wilkinson, Kelvin Corcoran, Lee Harwood and Peter Riley represented the UK, each with a record of over thirty years exploration and achievement among the possibilities of language. Michael Smith, Geoffrey Squires, Augustus Young, Trevor Joyce, Maurice Scully, Catherine Walsh, Randolph Healy, Billy Mills and Hugh Maxton represented a number of generations of Irish poetry.

SoundEye 2005 overlapped with two other major events in the Cork 2005 programme, sharing a venue with Vinyl and with Cork Caucus a shared concern for where the arts, specifically the arts of language, stand in relation to society.