White House Poetry Revival
Wed 13th Feb 2008 9.00pm

The White House Poets in association with Poetry Ireland present a reading with Anne Le Marquand Hartigan and Maeve Kelly.

Anne Le Marquand Hartigan turned her hand to writing when she saw one of her own paintings being used to block a hole in a trailer on the farm.
Born and reared in England to a Catholic Irish mother and a Jersey father, Anne trained in Fine Art before moving to her mother's family farm in Ireland with five small children and her farmer husband. Anne continued to paint, even with a sixth addition to the family, but rural Ireland wasn't the most supportive place to be an artist nearly thirty years ago. But for Anne, despite spending much of the time on childrearing and routine domestic chores, it was definitely a time of change.
A progressive Catholic, she welcomed the new ideas of the Dutch church and the progressive elements of the liturgical movement in Ireland. That is until her two small daughters were expelled from the local convent for not making their confession along with First Holy communion. Anne and her husband didn't want to instill guilt complexes in their children. The local clergy didn't see it that way, and for Anne that was the beginning of the end of organised religion. Anne continued to teach her three youngest children at home.
In the 1970's she abdicated from ironing her children's clothes and much of the family cooking, deciding they were all big enough to do it themselves, thereby allowing herself a bit more time for her own work. From this time onward while still painting and exhibiting in shows RHA, as well as solo exhibitions, writing became an increasingly important part of her life. Writing was an outlet for creativity and passion and a link with an artistic world that she knew was out there somewhere.
Her first big breakthrough was having a poem published in The Irish Times in 1975, and then winning the Listowel Writer's Week Open Poetry award in 1978. This was to be the first of many awards.
Now Anne lives in Dublin. She is a founder member of UCD Women's Studies Forum and is an active campaigner on women's rights issues.
Anne has published five collections of Poetry and a personal meditation on the "Why of Writing". She has had several plays performed professionally, and in 1995 won the Irish section of the Mobil International Playwrights competition. Her play La Corbiere is published in the collection Seen and Heard (Carysfort Press). She has had short stories and poems published in many anthologies in America, Britain and Ireland, and has given poetry readings and workshops in the States, UK, New Zealand, Hungary, Romania and Ireland.

Maeve Kelly writes in several genres, and all of her work is informed by clear feminist principles. Born in 1930, Kelly has lived through significant changes in Irish society's attitudes toward women, but her literary works suggest some of the ways in which the changes have been insufficient. Her fictional representation of what life is like for Irish women is both emotionally and intellectually convincing.

The White House Poets gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts Council, Foras na Gaeilge and Poetry Ireland. info: Dominic Taylor 087 2996409 or Barney Sheehan 086 8657494 Blog http//:whitehousepoets.blogspot.com