Thursday 28th September 2017 @ 7.30 pm
Armagh Robinson Library
Jonathan Swift's Poetry for National Poetry Day

The City Chapter is delighted to celebrate this year’s National Poetry Day by hosting a talk on the poetry of Jonathan Swift. The event will be held on Thursday 28 September 2017 at 7.30pm in Armagh Robinson Library, one of the Armagh libraries which work together in the City Chapter partnership.

The guest speaker will be Dr Andrew Carpenter who is Emeritus Professor of English at University College Dublin and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has published many books and articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Irish poetry in English, particularly on the work of Jonathan Swift.
He is best known for two anthologies, Verse in English from Tudor and Stuart Ireland (2003) and Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland (1997). His most recent publications are The Irish Poet and the Natural World: an anthology of Verse in English from the Tudors to the Romantics,
co-edited with Lucy Collins, 2014 and his edition of The Poems of
Olivia Elder (2016).

Speaking in advance of his talk, Professor Carpenter said, “I shall talk about poems in which Swift adopts the voice of someone other than himself and consider why he does this. I shall discuss passages from: 'The Grand Question debated: whether Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a Barrack or a Malt-house', which is a poem written in Markethill and specifically about a site in County Armagh; and 'Mary the Cook-Maid's Letter to Dr Sheridan', one of the liveliest of the poems in which Swift uses demotic language to reflect character”.

The City Chapter would like to thank Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and The John Hewitt Society publicly for their support for this event. Carol Conlin, Chairperson for the City Chapter, said, “This event helps us three times over and we are grateful to Andrew Carpenter and our sponsors for making that possible. We invite people to mark the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift, celebrate National Poetry Day, and be reminded, through his poetry, of Swift’s many visits to this county.”

The event has free admission with donations warmly welcome for the City Chapter.
For further information, please telephone 028 37523142.