Enjoy a workshop for young poets with Heather Brett and a workhsop with Noel Monahan for Adults as well as results of the National Poetry Competition, readings from Tony Curtis and a performance by Cavan County Choir.

Launch of Witness by Heather Brett, a new collection of poetry.

'Witness by Heather Brett is a triumph.   Beautifully controlled, chisselled language yields poetry rich with breath-taking and instantly memorable lines.'    Philip Casey

Inside Brochure here

Outside Brochure here

Fourth book of poetry for Cavan Writer.

Heather Brett has lived in Cavan for the past 27 years. She considers herself a Cavan poet and certainly it is the place where she is most at home, where she has found a measure of peace and tolerance, and a community she has both embraced and enriched.

As an artist she studied in the University of Ulster, Belfast but it wasn’t until she lived in Dublin in the 80’s that she began taking writing seriously. Heather met poet Leland Bardwell in Tallaght and the two became great friends and literature flourished. They moved to the same locale in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig and Heather’s waltz with poetry began in earnest. Her first book ‘Abigail Brown’ was published by Salmon in 1991 and won the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize - which was awarded by Beatrice Behan.

Born in Newfoundland, Canada, Heather was brought up in Northern Ireland, in County Antrim. But the landscape she writes about repeatedly is centred here where she has found an idyll in places like the Cavan Burren Park, Shantoman and Sheelin. In her second and third books, ‘The TouchMaker’ & ‘Green Monkey, travelling’ respectively, although there are lots of poems about relationships and inner conflicts, her landscapes are purely southern.

Heather’s fourth collection is called ‘Witness’. Noel Monahan says of Witness - ‘Brett internalises life’s conflicts into deeply felt moments – this is poetry of resilience and endurance to outshine the darkness.’ Philip Casey adds 'In something approaching alchemy, her unflinching eye weaves personal tragedy with the intimacies and scale of nature in such a way that it brings a measure of peace and can be borne.'

Witness will be published in Cavan Crystal Hotel on Sunday 10th May at 4pm during the 23rd Windows National Student Poetry Awards. The book launch coincides with Windows Literary Weekend on the 9th & 10th May with poetry workshops by Noel Monahan & Heather Brett, a reading by Dublin poet Tony Curtis and music from the Cavan County Choir.

All events take place in Cavan crystal Hotel. For further details please ring the Cavan Arts Office on 049 4378548