Truly Irish

If you are local, I hope you will attend Truly Irish: A Poetry Reading with guest poet Eamonn Wall, at the McLean County Museum of History this coming Tuesday, August 28, at 7:30 p.m. It's free! Come early to see the Greening of the Prairie exhibit on Irish immigration, or see it right after the reading, as the museum is open till nine and the reading will only be an hour.

Read more about it here, on the museum's events page, or here, in Julie Kistler's theatre & events blog, A Follow Spot!

And this guy is guest poet Eamonn Wall! Eamonn is truly Irish and will read from among his poems that address the Irish immigrant experience.

And some of the Kirkshop the Workshop poets--who are the "pre-show" for the guest poet!--are truly Irish, too, including my mom and me and Judy Boudreaux. My mom's side of the family--the Sidleys--have Irish heritage, and my dad's side is Scotch Irish, and "kirk" means "church." We will be reading poems inspired by objects in the museum's exhibit.

I will read "Whole Cloth," written in the spring, when the exhibit first opened, under the influence of the huge loom in the exhibit and the actual greening of "that loom of grasses" in my back yard. As a preview, you can read it here, in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.

And I just told my workshop poets about a perfect place to send their American-museum-inspired poems: the museum of americana, a brand spanking new online journal that has a call for submissions right now--August 20-September 20--for their very first issue.