'Fitting tribute': Large Longford crowd attends inaugural Jude Flynn Memorial Lecture

There was a large crowd in the Longford Arms Hotel on Monday, March 23 for the inaugural Jude Flynn Memorial Lecture.

The lecture, given by Vona Groarke, Ireland Professor of Poetry, was entitled ‘Filling in the Gaps – Writing Hereafter: the Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara’.

Soon after Jude’s death just over a year ago, the committee of County Longford Historical Society agreed that an annual lecture would be a fitting tribute to him.

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Jude was a founder member, long-serving honorary secretary and later, president of the society.

Vona Groarke has published fourteen books with The Gallery Press, including nine original poetry collections, and two translations from the Irish, most recently Woman of Winter (2023), a version of the ‘The Lament of the Hag of Beare’.

She published Hereafter: the Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara with New York University Press (2022).

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Vona was a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library 2018-19; former editor of Poetry Ireland Review; and selector for the UK’s Poetry Book Society.

She has taught at the University of Manchester since 2007 and was also Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge.