Robyn Rowland & Lynda Tavakoli with MC Jessica Traynor

Join us for an afternoon of poetry and conversation with Robyn Rowland and Lynda Tavakoli, with special guest MC Jessica Traynor. The event starts at 2pm on Sunday 12th October and all are welcome to attend.

 

ABOUT THE POETS AND THEIR WORK

ROBYN ROWLAND, Irish-Australian, lived between Ireland, Turkey, and Australia until the end of 2019, when she returned to Australia as her father’s companion then carer. He died at home at 102, 2022. Her book Steep Curve (2024) is that shared journey together in narrative poetry, heartbreaking and tender: ‘a book of remarkable moments and enduring love’ (Kevin Brophy). 

LYNDA TAVAKOLI lives in County Down, Northern Ireland, where she facilitates adult creative writing classes and has worked as a tutor for the Seamus Heaney Award for schools. Lynda’s debut poetry collection The Boiling Point for Jam received wide acclaim for its raw honesty and authenticity, while her second collection A Unison of Breaths has been recently published by Arlen House. In this new collection is a short series of 10 stand-alone Gaza poems, in which words are offered up as a means of expressing emotional reactions to war and its consequences but also acting as a catharsis. A Unison of Breaths is Tavakoli’s attempt to face truth, as she sees it, ‘warts and all’.

JESSICA TRAYNOR is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry: Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014 ), The Quick (Dedalus Press, 2019), Pit Lullabies, (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), and most recently New Arcana (Bloodaxe Books, 2025). She is poetry editor at Banshee Press.