Lime Square Poets Featuring: Threa Almontaser

Join us on Zoom this Poetry Day Ireland for a poetry reading by Threa Almontaser followed by Open Mic! Open Mic poems on the theme of 'Message in a Bottle' are encouraged but not required! See more information on Poetry Day Ireland and the Message in a Bottle theme below. 

7:45pm - Sign up for Open Mic on Zoom chat

8:00pm - Threa Almontaser reading

8:15pm - Open Mic begins

9:10pm - Announcements and Farewells

Threa Almontaser is the author of the debut poetry collection The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press 2021), nominated for the National Book Awards, the Pen/Voelcker Award, and the NAACP, and winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American poets, the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and the Arab American Book Award. She is a recipient of writing fellowships from Duke University and the Fulbright Program. She earned her MFA from North Carolina State University and teaches English to immigrants and refugees in her area.

More about Poetry Day Ireland 2023:

Poetry Ireland is thrilled to announce Poetry Day Ireland 2023 will take place on Thursday 27 April. Now in its ninth year, Poetry Day Ireland is an annual island-wide celebration of poetry which invites the nation to read, write, and share a poem on the day. All are welcome to get involved, with participation encouraged from artists, venues, schools, hospitals, community groups, poetry-lovers, and more.

Poetry Day Ireland welcomes acclaimed poet Martina Evans on board as this year’s curator. Martina chose‘Message in a Bottle’ as the theme for Poetry Day Ireland 2023, reminding us, in the words of Paul Celan, that “a poem can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the – not always greatly hopeful – belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making towards something.”

People are invited to draw inspiration from the theme in a myriad of ways. The creative potential of glass might provide a jumping off point for eco-poets and canal clean-up crews, while those with experience of migration and emigration might be drawn towards the drift of words and people across oceans.

Martina Evans said of the theme: “Paul Celan’s idea of a poem as message in a bottle reminds us that no poem is an island, it needs a reader to complete the process. Poems are waiting for the reader to uncork the bottle and rediscover the poem, experience that intimate connection across oceans real and metaphorical. No special equipment is needed, only a willingness to participate and connect. A poem must be compact to float within the walls of its container, yet the possibilities are miraculously endless, it’s a song but it can also tell a story or a joke, paint a picture, bring news, pass on wisdom, give shelter, advice or knowledge, travel time, praise, lament or incant – the reader just needs to open that bottle!”

Participation is limited to the first 100 guests to join.