With work of rich metaphorical and writerly reach, Peter Sirr offers rare and multifarious insights across a variety of contexts: a hymn to bookshops and reading; a whale’s afterlife; atmospherics of a Covid summer; the impossibility of fitting language’s endless promise to perception’s unfolding inclusivity; the importance of invisible things; beautiful details of departed family life – amongst many others.
Shetlander Robert Alan Jamieson reads from his latest book, Plague Clothes, written as he recovered from Covid-19, an unforgettable record of the physical illness itself – as well as a revelatory, profound, and subtly moving series of existential reflections prompted by the first Lockdown.
Virtual Crossways 2021 followed on from the Crossways Festivals of 2018 and 2019, which were staged in Glasgow and which featured writers and performers in Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Scots and English. The particular aim of Crossways is to foster and expand literary links across the North Channel.
In 2021, it brought together Irish writers from across the island of Ireland, together with their Scottish peers, underscoring the longstanding contribution of Irish people, history, language, culture and writing to both Glasgow and the Scottish nation.
Virtual Crossways 2021 was sponsored and organised by Irish Pages/Duillí Éireann. It received financial support from the Government of Ireland Emigrant Support Programme, Foras na Gaeilge, Colmcille, and Bòrd na Gàidhlig.
For more, visit www.crosswaysfestival.org.
