How to Be Irish: Poetry, Identity & Fundraiser for Maud Gonne Statue
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In a month's time, on Wednesday 15 October 2025, I’ll be at the wonderful Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith for an event that ticks many of my favorite boxes–Ireland, Maud Gonne, poetry, open mics.
The event How to be Irish: An Open Mic Poetry Night has been organised by The Poetry Guide, Johannah Barrett, as fundraiser for the Maud Gonne Statue Project, and is is kindly hosted by the ICC.
As many of you know, Maud Gonne has been an inspiration to me in many ways—through her politics, her writings, and her sheer courage as she negotiated the complexities of her life and work, as a woman seeking independence and national libration for Ireland at the turn of the 20th century.
That's why I and others are working to see her honoured in the way she deserves, through the soon-to-launch Maud Gonne Society, which is leading a campaign to raise a statue in her memory.
I’ll be making a guest appearance at the ICC Open Mic to talk about the Society, the statue project, and why Gonne’s legacy matters so much today. I'll also do a reading from my forthcoming novel, A Life Before.
What Is Irishness?
Maud Gonne herself knew what it was to have her identity questioned. Though she gave her life’s work to Ireland—campaigning for the poor, founding organizations, enduring imprisonment, and inspiring a generation—she was often denigrated as ‘not really Irish’ because she was born in England.
She spent a lot of time trying to find ancestors who had lived in Ireland but ultimately came to understand, as most people appreciate now, that Irishness is not just a matter of birthplace.
Another great Irishwoman, President Mary Robinson, devoted her office to widening the concept as being a sense of belonging, rooted in values, vision, and contribution. Robinson's work opened up the concept of Irishness to include not only those born on the island but also the diaspora and all who feel a claim on Ireland in heart or spirit, as well as geography.
How To Be Irish: Patriotism and Poetry
Gonne was also a poetry lover and this will be an evening to celebrate poetry and Irishness.
This feels important in these days. Just this weekend in London we saw what happens when identity is whipped into a weapon—the awful violence on the London march, amplified further by the richest man in the work intruding in the most reckless way, with the most dangerous kind of simplifications.
Poetry can feel like a weak holding, compared to chest-beating, brutality, and aggression but I believe in its mysterious power. A poem can hold the contradictions a slogan cannot. It can sing of belonging without shutting others out, speak of pride without bluster, open us to a sense of nationhood that is generous, searching, and true.
If we think this is wooly, it is not. It has real practical application. Mary Robinson's inclusive definition of Irishness did more than widen the circle of belonging for the diaspora. It opened a way of thinking that helped shape the Good Friday Agreement.
A lasting peace in Northern Ireland was founded not on lines drawn across territory but on ideas about identity that everyone agreed to respect and allow.
Wars always have to end in peace and peace is always built on people's ability to live with complexity and ambiguity and uncertainty.
The agreement was, and remains, an achievement of the imagination.
To ask ‘how Irish do you feel?’ in verse is to engage just such an imaginative response. It's to ask with nuance, imagination, and heart.
On the topic of identity, which is causing such fraught arguments, we need poetry's nuance and heart more than ever.
How to Be Irish: Event Details
If you're anywhere near Hammersmith, come along. Bring a poem, a story, or even a comic turn to the mic and share your take on what it means to be Irish.
The theme is wide open, circling around these questions:
- What does it mean to be Irish?
- What makes a person identify as Irish?
- How Irish do you feel?
Sign up on the night and take your three minutes on stage (first come, first heard).
Or come along to listen and soak up the creativity, conversation, and community.
How To Be Irish: Open Mic Fundraiser
📍 Irish Cultural Centre, 5 Black’s Road, Hammersmith, London W6 9DT
🗓 Wednesday 15 October 2025, 7pm
🎟 £5 donation at the door
Join us as we raise funds and awareness for a woman who changed Ireland, and who still has so much to teach us about identity, belonging, and courage–and explore these important questions of identity through poetry.
