The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) & Poetry Ireland are delighted to announce a new series of music and poetry events: “Soul Clap its Hands and Sing”

Channel 4 viewers will, we hope, forgive us for calling Colette and Bronagh the other “Derry Girls”. Both artists have earned the highest international acclaim: Colette received the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Award in memory of Seamus Heaney and her recent Selected Poems was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, while Bronagh’s star has risen as a singer/songwriter and as an actor – from her first big break in The Commitments, right up to her recent role in The National Theatre’s production War Horse. Yet the voice of their hometown is unmistakably vivid in the direct soulfulness of their work.

There’s a well-known maxim that says all art aspires to the condition of music. If true, then poetry surely comes very close to meeting it. Indeed, Irish poets and musicians have always cast a particular spell on each other. “Soul Clap its Hands and Sing”, a new series of music and poetry events presented by Poetry Ireland in partnership with the Irish Traditional Music Archive, will offer audiences a chance to enjoy some of the finest artists in both forms as they weave in and out of each other's work.