2022 Library Lecture Series

Jim Rogers – 2 Day Literacy Residency

March 24th and 25th 2022

James Silas Rogers, a native of Minnesota, has spent most of his adult life working directly in Irish Studies.  From 1996 – 2021 he was Director of the University of St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies. He assumed the Editorship of  New Hibernia Review in 2006. (NHR is  a peer-reviewed quarterly that also publishes essays, memoirs, and new poems.) Rogers was President of the American Conference for Irish Studies from 2009 to 2011.

His scholarly publications focus on Irish-American literature, with a particular interest in memoir.  His Publications inlcude: COLLECTOR OF SHADOWS: Poems  (2019),  Irish-American Autobiography: The Divided Hearts of Athletes, Priests, Pilgrims, and More (Catholic University of America Press, 2016). With Matthew J. O’Brien, he edited the contributed volume After the Flood: Irish America, 1945-1960 (Irish Academic Press, 2009),  and he also edited and introduced Extended Family: Essays on Being Irish American from New Hibernia Review (Dufour Editions, 2013).  His articles have appeared in such places as Studies: An Irish Quarterly, the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, U. S. Catholic Historian and in New Perspectives on the Irish Diaspora (Carbondale: SIU Press, 2001.  

Irish Cultural Center Remembers Belfast Poet Ciaran Carson

Postponed until Fall 2022

The Irish Cultural Center will host an evening of remembrance for Belfast poet Ciaran Carson, who died in October 2019.  Beginning at 7PM, the program will include a lecture on Carson’s life and poetry, readings of his poems, and traditional Irish music.

Carson’s poetry provides witness to the conflict in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, known as “The Troubles.” He grew up in a bilingual household and attended Queen’s University, where one of his tutors was Seamus Heaney (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995).  From 2003 to 2015, he directed the Seamus Heaney Center for Poetry at Queen’s. Best known for his poetry, Carson also translated literature, played traditional Irish music, and served as arts officer on the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Collections of Carson’s poetry will be for sale, as well as raffle drawing for a basket of books and other gifts.  There is no entry fee, but donations are appreciated.  Co-sponsors include McClelland Library, Changing Hands Bookstore, ASU-New College, Kennys Bookstore-Galway, Wake Forest University Press, Reading Ireland, and the Irish Culture Center Book Discussions.