Galway's Great Read in Tuam Library

Galway's Great Read

On Tuesday March 8 at 7pm, as part of Galway’s Great Read 2016, the library will be hosting Gerard Hanberry and Kirry O’Brien for an evening of talk, poetry and music. 

Gerry Hanberry is an award-winning poet, musician, teacher and most recently, biographer of the Wilde family. He will be talking about ‘Grace Gifford – Rebel Wife, Rebel Widow'.

Grace Gifford’s midnight marriage to Joseph Plunkett, in Kilmainham Gaol only hours before his execution for his leading role in the Easter Rising, has inspired songwriters and storytellers down through the decades since that terrible night. It is a story of romance and sacrifice, idealism and heartbreak, courage and resolution. 

Gerry’s illustrated talk will set out in detail the macabre events of that most unusual wedding and explore the lives of these two idealistic rebels who were willing to sacrifice their life together for a cause.

Kirry O’Brien is from Mervue and now teaches English literature in NUIG. She is a scholar of the poets of the Great War. In the centenary of the Easter Rising it is only right that all parts of its history are explores.

Many of the leaders of the Rising were poets whose work had been published in their short lifetimes, and whose actions in turn inspired much new poetry. The talk that Kirry will give will be an introduction to some of the poetry of Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett and Padraig Pearse.  It will also look at a small selection of the poetic responses to the Rising itself and to the execution of the leaders. 

All Great Read events are free and all are most welcome. A brochure with the listing for all events in the Great Read 2016 that are taking place throughout the county is available at the library, or on the Galway Decade of Commemoration website.