The Irish Scottish Cultural & Literary Festival

Posted by Jim on March 28, 2018

The Irish Scottish Cultural & Literary Festival
9–15 April 2018 Merchant City, Glasgow 

Glasgow’s major new festival, Crossways 2018 (The Irish Scottish Cultural & Literary Festival), launches Monday 9 April and runs to 15 April in the lively Merchant City district.   Here is the full programme   The sponsor and organizer of the Festival is Irish Pages, with major funding provided by the Republic’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Foras na Gaeilge, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, The University of Strathclyde, Conradh na Gaeilge Glaschú and Gaels le Chéile, as well as Irish Pages itself.   The seven-day festival – featuring 24 events in Scots, Irish and Scottish Gaelic as well as English – will focus not only on Irish and Scottish literature, but also especially on the writing of the Irish diaspora in Scotland. Festival-goers will have the opportunity to enjoy a reading each afternoon, followed by another in Irish and Scottish Gaelic in the early evening, before a daily mid-evening event and a concluding late Saturday night Festival Party and Cabaret, featuring readings and music, including the celebrated Irish-language band Imlé.   There will also be screenings of four major Irish films in the early afternoon. The main festival venues will be the City Halls, the Tron Theatre and the famed public house, Babbity Bowster.   An Opening Reception at 4.00 pm on Monday, 9 April in the Candleriggs Bar, City Halls, will kick off the proceedings with words of welcome form Mike Russell MSP on behalf of the Scottish Government, along with Máirtín Ó Muilleoir MLA, former Lord Mayor of Belfast and former Minster of Finance in the Stormont Executive – this ministerial presence an important recognition of the evolving shared culture of the two nations.   The Opening Reception will then be followed by a concert by The Friel Sisters from East Kilbride and a reading by the leading Irish novelists David Park and Bernard MacLaverty – the first from the North, the second now residing in Glasgow.   The next day (Tuesday, April 10) marks the twentieth anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, and two major festival events will reflect this Irish milestone: “A Belfast Reading” in the late afternoon, and a panel discussion entitled “On Brexit and the Belfast Agreement” with leading writers and journalists from Ireland and Scotland. In between, “The Scottish Universities Reading” will feature two of Scotland’s foremost poets, David Kinloch and Kathleen Jamie.   Amongst the participants across the rest of the week are many other outstanding poets, fiction-writers and translators from Ireland and Scotland.   Speaking of these new Irish-Scottish literary relations, the Irish Pages Editors outlined the thinking behind the Festival:

The particular aim of Crossways is to foster and expand the rather weak literary links between Ireland and Scotland across the North Channel. It brings together notable Irish writers, musicians, filmmakers and cultural figures – from both North and South – together with their Scottish peers, in a well-planned and well-balanced festival focussing on the long-standing contribution of Irish people, history, language, culture and writing to both Glasgow and the Scottish nation. The overall balance will be about one-third Irish, one-third Diaspora Irish-Scottish, and one-third Scottish.   Such a forum for Irish, Irish-Scottish and Scottish cultural and literary interaction, dialogue and debate of real distinction and diversity is long overdue. The North of Ireland (especially) and Scotland are highly separated and self-contained on many levels, but especially in cultural and literary terms – divided, ironically, by the United Kingdom itself and a consequent devolved focus on London.   The two cultures and literatures have their backs to each other to a surprising degree. The Festival aims to lessen this contemporary cultural distance, and at a new historical moment – where relations between the two islands, no less than between the several parts of the United Kingdom, may change dramatically with Brexit.

All events are free across the three venues, but it is recommended that advance booking be made for those at the Tron Theatre (0141 552 4267  or Theatre Website.)  Admission will otherwise be on a first come, first served basis. Babbity Bowster, the Vic Bar at the Tron, and Blackfriars Basement have a seating capacity of around 50. Early arrival is therefore advised. Brochures will be distributed widely through the Merchant City and Glasgow, and can be requested at sales@irishpages.org .