City Library now open through lunch-time on Saturdays

We are pleased to announce that the City Library in Augustine Street now remains open during lunch-time on Saturdays.

The City Library, which up-to-now closed at lunch-time on Saturdays, will now be open on Saturdays continuously from 11.00am through to 5.00pm. The complete opening-times for the City Library are here.

Bealtaine Festival in Tuam Library

During the month of May, Tuam Library celebrates the Festival of Bealtaine, a celebration of creativity for older people, a festival designed to embrace life long learning.

On Tuesday 1st May: Author and Broadcaster John Quinn will read from his work in the library at 2.00. A session will also take place at 11.00 for the book club who are reading ‘Sea of Love, Sea of Loss’ for this month’s book.

John Quinn was a well-known broadcaster with RTE Radio for over twenty years, for which he won numerous awards. He is an established children's author whose work includes 'The Summer of Lily and Esme' (which won the Bisto award in 1992) and 'Duck and Swan'. His first adult novel 'Generations of the Moon' tells the story of a family saga of sectarian strife along the Border from 1926 to 1975, a powerful story of nurture working against nature. His non-fiction publications relate mostly to his radio work, 'My Education' interviews 39 people on their formative years. His gift as a maker of programmes...described as 'Interviews of rare clarity, sympathy and sophistication; doctumentaries of extraordinary atmosphere, perception and narrative grace...'

Following the untimely and tragic death of his wife Olive in 2001, he bared his soul to help others in his personal documenary on their lives together, 'A letter to Olive' . 'A letter to Olive' is published under the title 'Sea of Love, Sea of Loss'

Tuesday 15th, Tuesday 22nd and Tuesday 29th May: Seniors Tai Chi will take place at 11.00 and Beginners Meditation will take place at 12.00 in the library. For more details, please contact the library at 093 24287.

Age Action is running computer classes for beginners, every Tuesday from 10.00 11.00. To book a place, please contact Age Action at 091 527831.

All events are free to attend.

Japanese Artist exhibits his work in Spiddal Library

An exhibition by Hiroto Hakamada, a visual artist from Japan, is currently running in the Public Library in Spiddal

Born in 1968 in Okayama, Japan, Hiroto studied oil painting in Musashino Art University, Tokyo. Subsequently he studied photography and film making in Tokyo. He has held several solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in Japan. This exhibition in Spiddal is his first show in Ireland.

The grounds of his artworks are made of lead and red clay from Okayama - his hometown in the west of Japan. He printed black-and-white photographs taken in Ireland, Italy, Syria, Jordan, Singapore, China and Japan directly on the grounds. He also drew his inspiration from his childhood memories: an image of a small village deep in the mountains in Okayama where his father was born and bred, his relatives who still live there and their daily life in the mountains.

The exhibition runs until Sunday 29th of April. Spiddal library opening times are here.

THREE POETS IN A MUSEUM

Three Galway-based poets, Crannóg magazine's Sandra Bunting, playwright, poet and painter Patricia Burke Brogan, who is a member of Galway Writers' Workshop and poet and publisher Ciarán Parkes, Marram Press, will pay homage to the new Galway Civic Museum over the next couple of weeks by wandering around its exhibits and rooms and reacting to what they see through poetry.

The project, initiated by the Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scríbhneoir Chaitlín Maud - will culminate in a series of nine poems, three poems from each writer, to be framed in an exhibition in the new museum.

"My hat is off to Breandán Ó'Heaghra of the Museum, who took to the concept immediately, and to Sandra Bunting, who worked without hesitation to gather the poets," says Fred Johnston, the Centre's manager. "Without these elements, it couldn't have happened. It was a simple idea and therefore an attractive one." It is important, he continued, that Galway's contemporary literary world is commemorated as a living element in the new Museum.

The new Galway Museum was officially inaugurated in December 2006.

Exhibition of new works in Tuam Library

Artist who depicts the current tensions between Man and Nature exhibits in Tuam Library.

The Cows Beyond, an exhibition of new works by Eithna Joyce opens on Thursday 26th April at 6.30p.m. in Tuam Public Library and runs until May 5th.

Eithna is an emerging artist and Galway County Libraries are very pleased to host her first solo exhibition since her success in ev+a 2007, Ireland’s pre-eminent annual exhibition of contemporary art. She was selected from over 500 entries to be part of 32 Irish and International artists currently on show in Limerick until 24th June. She is one of only two Irish artists who received a curatorial award from Klaus Ottmann, this years adjudicator for the ev+a exhibition.

"What are we doing to the environment and what are we leaving for the next generation?" These are the issues which Eithna Joyce ponders.

Eithna draws on a blank canvas with pen and ink and then paints in oils mixing realistic and abstract images to create a tension within the picture, mirroring the current tensions we find between man and nature.

Flosca Short Story Competition
and
Flosca Irish Language Poetry Competition

This event will feature readings by poet Louis de Paor and novelist Mike McCormack, with an introduction by Caroline Walsh, Literary Editor of The Irish Times.
Flosca Teo is a new web-based publishing company, founded by writers, with the mission to provide outlets for new work by writers in Ireland and abroad. Our website, http://www.flosca.com/, offers forums for writers to post and discuss new work online.

The April 29th reading marks the opening for submissions to the Flosca Short Story Competition and the Flosca Irish Language Poetry Competition. We will be accepting short stories (3,500 word limit) as well as original poetry written in Irish language (100 line limit). Each first, second, and third place winner will receive cash awards, as well as publication in our Prize-Winners’ Chapbook, to be launched in 2008.


Flosca was founded by fifteen writers who met while attending NUI Galway's MA in Writing programme. Members of Flosca come from Alaska, Ontario, Mayo, Offaly, Nevada, Sussex, Cork, Sligo, New York, Illinois, Clare, California and of course, Galway. We joined forces to create Flosca Teoranta in 2006 with the support of dar s na Gaeltachta. Our aim is to support writing of literary merit and to promote the best international writing in different forms – poetry, fiction, non-fiction-- through whatever channels are available to us, whether through the website or print publishing, depending on what is most appropriate. Flosca also aims to identify gaps in the competition market including Irish language, debut writing and the longer short story.

*[fluh-ska] --noun: the Irish genetive singular for flux: a flowing or flow; the flowing in of the tide; continuous change, passage, or movement; the rate of flow of fluid, particles or energy; a quantity expressing the field of force in a given area

Death of Kurt Vonnegut : Libraries and Books

Influential author Kurt Vonnegut has died at the age of 84 after suffering brain injuries in a fall in New York.
During a career lasting more than 50 years, he wrote the classic anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse Five, detailing his experiences of the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.

Here he is writing in 2005 from his A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America, published by Bloomsbury.

'I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country (the United States), have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on.'

Vonnegut said he was often surprised to have lived for so long, having been a heavy smoker. He once joked: "I'm suing a cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and yet here I am."