Imagine Festival: Words as Weapons, Words as Medicine

This March, we are delighted to welcome Imagine Festival to The Crescent for a series of events.

Award-winning poet Erin Fornoff discusses the power and use of poetry to make a contribution towards tangible social change.

Poetry has profound uses and potential – this multimedia talk looks at this ancient art form and explores how it is being used to make genuine change. From the Hot Poets movement, which puts poets on the ground at top UN climate meetings, to youth programmes which use poetry to help kids take emotional risks, to viral campaigns, to testimony from the rubble of Gaza, poetry can speak – and allow people to listen – in ways normal language cannot.

Our Artivist in Residence Erin offers this look at the power of poetry.

Along with the talk, Erin will also be joining us for a Poetry Performance, a writing workshop and a workshop on storytelling methodology Story of Self.

Erin has published a poetry collection Hymn to the Reckless (Dedalus Press) shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award, as well as a chapbook Folk Heroes (Stewed Rhubarb Press). She has performed her poetry at hundreds of events including three times at Glastonbury Festival, RTE Culture Night at Dublin Castle, national Irish tours with Danez Smith and Hollie McNish, and performed at Hozier and James Taylor concerts.

She has featured on BBC3 and her poems have been included in Best New English and Irish Poets 2016. Her essays have been featured in The Journal, The Irish Times, Architecture Ireland and Winter Papers. Her filmpoem Home won the Beats and Rhymes category in the Berlin Underground Film Festival. She wrote and performed We Are An Archipelago in Dublin Fringe Fest 2022, a one-woman poetry show set to a live score, which told the semi-true story of a 99-year old man moving to the island of his birth, which received a four-star review in The Irish Times. The text of the play will be published as a poetry collection in late Spring 2025. She has served as the inaugural Writer in Residence for Ireland’s Inland Waterways. She is currently finishing her first novel, a satire based in the nonprofit sector.

Imagine Festival is Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics which takes place in Belfast every March and presents a unique way of imagining the future of this great city — and the wider world. They present high-quality showcases for the discussion of contemporary political and societal issues including new ideas on politics, culture and activism from some of the world’s leading contemporary thinkers.

But it’s not all brain-melting policy discussions: there’s something for everyone in the form of exhibitions, humour, family events, music, theatre, tours, workshops and film and whatever else they can find to fire your imagination. Visit ImagineBelfast.com to discover more.