Belfast Book Festival 2016 | Page 19

Twinsome Minds
Fulbright Scholars

Twinsome Minds

Richard Kearney & Sheila Gallagher
Linen Hall Library Friday 10 June – 1-2pm Tickets : £ 6

Fulbright Scholars

With Connie Voisine and James Arthur
Crescent Arts Centre Friday 10 June – 5.30-6.30pm Tickets : £ 6 /£ 4
Twinsome Minds ( a phrase from Finnegans Wake ) is a multimedia performed talk with text by Richard Kearney and moving images by Sheila Gallagher . The original music score is by Dana Lyn .
The performance re-imagines a series of micro-narratives surrounding 1916 in Dublin and the WWI battlefields of Belgium . The stories and images of eclipsed history concentrate on ‘ twinned ’ pairs – family members , neighbours , school friends , lovers – who ended up on opposite sides during this time of great upheaval in British-Irish relations .
The various scenes explore crossings of memory and imagination , anecdote and legend , history and myth – as well as loyalty and love .
Through an interplay of storytelling , animations , music and poetry , Twinsome Minds : Recovering 1916 mines what is often lost behind official historical accounts and acts of commemoration , and proposes a transformative work of interpreting the
Rising for a new generation .
Connie Voisine is the author of , Calle Florista . Her previous book , Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream , was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award . Her first book , Cathedral of the
North , won the Associated Writing Program ’ s Award in Poetry . Educated at Yale University , University of California , and University of Utah , Voisine teaches the creative writing programme at New Mexico State University and also coordinates the outreach organisation .
James Arthur was born in Connecticut and grew up in Canada . His first book , Charms Against Lightning , was published by Copper Canyon Press ( 2012 ), and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker , The New Republic , and The American Poetry Review . He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship , a Hodder Fellowship , a Stegner Fellowship , and a Discovery / The Nation Prize . James is an Assistant Professor of Poetry at Johns Hopkins University .
10 In partnership with Creative Centenaries