Welcome to the Munster

Literature Centre

Founded in 1993, the Munster Literature Centre (Ionad Litríochta an Deiscirt) is a non-profit arts organisation dedicated to the promotion and celebration of literature, especially that of Munster. To this end, we organise festivals, workshops, readings and competitions. Our publishing section, Southword Editions, publishes a biannual journal, poetry collections and short stories. We actively seek to support new and emerging writers and are assisted in our efforts through funding from Cork City Council, Cork County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland.

Originally located in Sullivan's Quay, the centre moved to its current premises in the Frank O'Connor House (the author's birthplace) at 84 Douglas Street, in 2003.

In 2000, the Munster Literature Centre organised the first Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival, an event dedicated to the celebration of the short story and named for one of Cork's most beloved authors. The festival showcases readings, literary forums and workshops. Following continued growth and additional funding, the Cork City - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award was introduced in 2005, coinciding with Cork's designation as that year's European Capital of Culture. The award is now recognised as the single biggest prize for a short story collection in the world and is presented at the end of the festival.

In 2002, the Munster Literature Centre introduced the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize, an annual short story competition dedicated to one of Ireland's most accomplished story writers and theorists. This too is presented during the FOC festival. The centre also hosts the Cork Spring Literary Festival each year.

Workshops are held by featured authors in both autumn and spring, allowing the general public to receive creative guidance in an intimate setting for a minimal fee. In addition, the centre sponsors a Writer in Residence each year.

We invite you to browse our website for further information regarding our events, Munster literature, and other literary information. Should you have any queries, we would be happy to hear from you.

TRANSLATIONS

A Boat to Heaven
Southword Editions, 2010. Hardback.
Poems by Zhao Lihon, translations by Xu Qin.

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Ireland (free postage) €12.00 Outside Ireland €14.00

"A Boat to Heaven represents a Shanghai poetic career that has stretched over forty years. The poet Zhao Lihong has worked quietly but determinedly for more than half a lifetime to create a body of work that makes the Chinese landscape sing. His is a very long-term conversation; he has listened for signals, not from the rhetoric of the present moment but from the movement of tectonic plates. His conversation is with the enduring centuries, with what is permanent in Chinese landscape, art and memory. There is a Yeatsean ambition in this perspective, and a ferocious political stubbornness in the silences. There are no County Galway tower houses here but the Asia-centred perspective of the great Bengali, and hero f Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore. History and landscape create a massive brickwork and this Chinese poet speaks to us from atop these battlements. Here is a poet of Shanghai who is part of the great circle of Tagore enthusiasts in Asia, organising lectures and conversations, participating in film projects. In structure, tone, assumptions and loyalties, Zhao Lhong stands confident with Tagore to face the West and speak."

--Thomas McCarthy from his introduction.

Poem from A Boat to Heaven

from Dreamland

My mother is lying on the bed, spitting blood
Her lips are a flower of red
Oh, Mother,
What would you like to say to me?
I am standing in the field
My shoulders are covered with snow
I want to walk towards you, Mother,
But my feet are frozen
Mother gazes at me, smiling
Her eyes are a flower blooming
She spits into the sky
Petals dancing and scattering
All over me
The snow on my body is melting
Taking me together
Into a river that is flowing
Across the river,
Red petals are whirling

Copyright ©2010 Zhao Lihong

__________

Zhao Lihong, one of China’s most gifted poets and authors, was born in Shanghai in 1952. He started writing in 1970 and graduated in Chinese literature from the East
China Normal University. Zhao currently holds several positions, namely – director of
the China Writers Association, vice-president of the Shanghai Writers Association, the
publisher of Shanghai Literature a monthly magazine, and editor-in-chief of Shanghai
Poets a bi-monthly journal. He is also a guest professor with East China Normal University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. So far, Zhao has published more than 70 works in poetry, prose and report literature. His writings have influenced many new writers and he has won several literary awards. A number of his works are part of the Chinese primary and secondary schools and college syllabus. His works have been translated into several foreign languages.

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Read Southword Journal Online

Issue 19 now online.

Poetry International.org

The Munster Literature Centre produces the Irish section of this prestigious poetry site. Current featured poets are Bernard O'Donoghue and Ailbhe Darcy. For further information, please visit the site at www.poetryinternational.org.

Best Irish Poetry in English 2010

Visit our bookstore here.

Festivals

The Munster Literature Centre hosts two annual festivals. The larger Cork City - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival takes place each September, while the Cork Spring Literary Festival, with varying themes, is presented each spring. Further information is available on our drop down menus.

MLC Workshops

Workshops run in spring & autumn. Check back in January 2011 for more details!

Munster Literature Centre

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Frank O'Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland.

Tel. (353) 021 4312955, Email: munsterlit(AT)eircom(DOT)net