An Irish Goodbye – Fundraiser

An Irish Goodbye – Fundraiser

2 April 2023, The Academy Award winning short film, An Irish Goodbye, will be shown at ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne on Sunday 2 April 2023 from 4:00 - 5:30pm, to raise funds for the Inclusion Foundation. The film will be followed by a conversation with the lead actor, James Martin. Following the death of their mother, a young man with Down syndrome and his estranged brother discover her unfulfilled bucket list. What happens when a parent dies? Many parents worry about this. So do their children. Sometimes magic happens. Sometimes your relationship with your siblings can change in surprising ways. Join us for this half hour short movie followed by conversation with young people with Down syndrome about their acting and working lives. Ticket costs will be donated to Inclusion Foundation to support young people with Down syndrome preparing for the workforce.

Lament: Celebrating an Irish Tradition

Lament: Celebrating an Irish Tradition

3 May 2023. Lament: A one-day (hybrid) celebration of the tradition of Irish Keen featuring poetry, music, performance and new research, on the 250th Anniversary of the poem 'Lament for Art O’Leary'. Presented by The Cambridge Group for Irish Studies. The Irish Caoin or Keen was a vocal ritual performed at a wake or graveside. Highly stylised and yet capable of being intensely personal, it recognised the life of the deceased whilst also honouring grief of their loss. Performed (traditionally in Irish) by a group of women made up of professional ‘keeners’ and the female bereaved, its unique sound featured spontaneous utterance, repeated motifs, crying and elements of song. It has been described as ‘A very melancholy chant, rhythmic … Almost a spontaneous choir…’, and as ‘extremely beautiful’. The event will have two strands: in the morning, papers on Lament, its context, history and tradition will be presented by a range of respected Irish scholars, with ample time for discussion, questions and audience participation. The afternoon sessions will feature a poetry reading by Irish poets Martina Evans, Fran Lock and Mícheál McCann, who will consider the lasting impact of ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, and the theme of the public performance of mourning and grief. Poets Paul Muldoon and Vona Groarke will then discuss their translations of ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’.  The day will close with a premiere performance of an extract of Irene Buckley’s opera, ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, conducted by the composer, along with other settings of extracts of the poem composed by students of Cambridge University.

Irish Melbourne: Then and Now

Irish Melbourne: Then and Now

9 March 2023. Irish Melbourne: Then and Now. A night of conversation and music with HE Ambassador Tim Mawe, Irish Ambassador to Australia. In advance of St Patrick’s day, the Celtic Club has the honour of hosting Irish Ambassador to Australia HE Tim Mawe for an evening of conversation, music and fun at the prestigious Woodward Room, in Melbourne University. The evening will be centred around a lively 30-minute panel discussion on the Irish history of this great city and some reflection on the current relationship between Ireland and Australia.  The Ambassador will be joined by Professor Dianne Hall, and historian Val Noone. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Ronan McDonald.

Celtic Connections: “Successes of Failure”

Celtic Connections: “Successes of Failure”

23 February 2023. The Celtic Connections Series is a new monthly event where multi-generational Celts from all walks of life are invited to come together, to chat and laugh, to listen to some music and to maybe even learn something new! No Irish blood is required! All you need to bring is an interest in Ireland and Irish Australia and a willingness to enjoy yourself. Our first event is being held on Thursday 23rd February at the Oxford Scholar on Swanston Street, Melbourne CBD. The aim of the night is to create a fun environment where you can meet and connect with new people and discuss everything from culture to politics to business. We will also host a Q&A with Professor Ronan McDonald on the theme "Successes of Failure.” 

MISS: Life & Work of Count Strzelecki

MISS: Life & Work of Count Strzelecki

7 February 2023. This talk will give an introduction to the life and work of the Polish count Paul (Paweł) Edmund Strzelecki, a figure significant in the 19th century history of Australia and Ireland. As a global traveller, in Australia Strzelecki is best-known as the one of the earliest European explorers and mappers of Gippsland, which he named, along with Australia’s highest peak, Mount Kościuszko. In Ireland, Strzelecki played a major role in humanitarian aid during the Great Famine of the 1840s, as one of the primary agents of the British Relief Association. Strzelecki was the subject of an exhibition produced by Professor Peter Gray (Queen’s University Belfast) and Associate Professor Emily Mark-FitzGerald (University College Dublin), in collaboration with the Polish Embassy of Ireland and launched at the Royal Academy of Ireland, which has toured in both Ireland and Australia.

Rethinking Transnational Ireland

Rethinking Transnational Ireland

25 November 2022. The node of multi-disciplinary activities known as ‘Irish studies’ has been transformed over the last generation and not just by the social and cultural revolution that has taken place in Ireland itself over the last 30 years. Any contemporary scholarly reckoning with the state of the field needs to engage with the so-called ‘transnational turn’ in historical studies, with the rise of global frames for understanding national culture (as in ‘world literature’), with the sheer size, cultural impact and diffuse nature of the Irish diaspora, with the impact of new technologies on the sorts of questions that can be asked and answered. This symposium will take stock and reflect on how a field of study with a national identifier might think beyond the nation, with an emphasis on the Australasian and Pacific regions.

Ghosts of Catholic Ireland

Ghosts of Catholic Ireland

24 November 2022, 6:00pm, University of Melbourne. For much of the twentieth century Ireland was seen as a bastion of Catholic belief and teaching in a secularising world. In the past thirty years, however, that image has imploded, and the role of the Catholic Church in almost every aspect of Irish life has receded, to the point at which we can now speak of a post-Catholic Ireland. It has been well established that almost every Irish writer of the twentieth century registered, (if only in opposition), the earlier dominance of the Church in Irish life, with Joyce providing perhaps the most famous instance. But what of Irish writers of the current century? In this lecture Chris Morash, Professor of Irish Writing at TCD will look at some of the ways in which the ghosts of Catholic Ireland continue to haunt Irish writing, asking if, in some cases, those ghosts might now even be benign, and capable of being turned to creative uses.

End(s) of National Literatures

End(s) of National Literatures

19th October 2022, 1:00pm - 2:15pm. In-Person, Melbourne University. When the Dublin diarist Joseph Holloway ventured out on his morning walk on Easter Monday, 1916, he came across a posted notice which he first took to be an advertisement for a play – with good reason, for four of the seven names blazoned at the bottom were published poets or dramatists. In fact, he was looking at the Proclamation of an Irish Republic, posted around the city announcing a nationalist military insurrection, led largely by writers. This vignette can remind us that there are few countries in which literature and politics are more closely intertwined, and hence where the idea of a ‘national literature’ has a deeper hold, than in Ireland. “Art and scholarship”, claimed W.B. Yeats in 1901, “make love of country more fruitful in the mind, more a part of daily life.”

IFF 2022 Online

IFF 2022 Online

30 Sep - 15 Oct 2022. The Irish Film Festival is Australia’s finest source of innovative, quality film that showcases the culture, traditions, history and character of Ireland and the Irish people. Since 2015 IFF has gone from strength to strength and now with Palace Cinemas in 2022 goes national to premiere moving dramas, inspiring documentaries, eerie horror, darkly funny comedies and captivating family films to become the country’s biggest celebration of Irish culture, language, music and history alongside St Patrick’s Day. Following the nationally-touring cinema festival in August and September, the IFF is proud to present a different and expanded selection of films that will stream online in October 2022.

Hēmi Kelly on “Translations”

Hēmi Kelly on “Translations”

4 October 2022, 7:30pm NZDT. Hēmi Kelly discusses his new translation of Brian Friel's famous play "Translations", and explores what both it and his work on the translation can teach us about questions that are as real today as in 1833 when the play is set. What importance do languages have to us and our self-identity? How should indigenous tongues interact with new colonial languages?