The Sunday Service: Reflections on Loss

supported by the Irish Hospice Foundation Seed Grants from Creative Ireland and delivered in partnership with Scotland House.

Sometimes art can express things in ways we as individuals cannot. Join us for a unique series of performances and reflections on grief and loss, where you can experience how these vastly different artists have made sense of personal and societal loss. 

After more than two years in development, this event will feature the World Premiere of Wait, a new work for string quartet composed by Irish contemporary classical composer Ailís Ní Ríain, co-commissioned by Galway Music Residency and Cúirt, funded by Arts Council Ireland.

This piece was conceived in response to a poem – ‘Wait’  by the American poet Galway Kinnell – and Ní Ríain has created a fascinating and layered aural experience from this inspiration.

The poem is a meditation on suicide and loss, and audiences will also have opportunity to hear it read by Kinnell in a video recording during the event. 

Following this, writers Michael Pedersen, William Keohane and Jay Bernard will guide us through their meditations on grief and loss, and the galaxy of feelings and memories sparked by those explorations. 

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning poet, having produced two highly-acclaimed collections of poetry with Polygon Books, with a prose debut Boy Friends is forthcoming with Faber & Faber in 2022. 

William Keohane is a writer and poet from Limerick. His work has appeared in Banshee, Queering the Green, Hennessy New Irish Writing and the RTÉ Radio 1 Sunday Miscellany. He recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

Jay Bernard is a British artist, writer, and poet from Croydon, London. Their multimedia performance work Surge: Side A received the 2017 Ted Hughes Award for new poetry. They co-authored Not Quite Right For Us, a volume of stories, essays, and poems by several writers edited by Sharmilla Beezmohun.

Ailís Ní Ríain is an Irish composer and writer who aims to produce work that challenges, provokes and engages. Her work has been performed across Europe, in Israel, Brazil, USA and Japan and broadcast on BBC and RTÉ.

Contempo Quartet has been Galway Music Residency’s Ensemble in Residence since 2003 and was RTÉ’s Resident Quartet from 2014 until 2019. 

Supported by the International Literature Showcase Collaboration Fund. The International Literature Showcase is a partnership between the National Centre for Writing and the British Council.