Seán Dunne literary WEEKEND

THE WAXED LEMON
Magazine Launch

Friday 13th June
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens
Tickets : FREE EVENT
(Open to Public).
Please arrive at 6.15pm

The launch of The Waxed Lemon Issue 9 will take place on June 13 as part of the Sean Dunne Literary Weekend. Since its founding in 2020, The Waxed Lemon has swiftly grown to become one of Ireland’s premier print literary magazines, known for championing bold new voices and showcasing the finest in contemporary poetry, fiction, and visual art.

Edited by Joanne McCarthy and Derek Flynn – and supported by the Arts Office, Waterford City & County Council – this bi-annual print journal publishes work in Irish and English. Now in its ninth issue, the magazine continues its tradition of curating diverse, thought-provoking work from both emerging and established writers. The launch event promises an evening of live readings from a selection of this issue’s contributors, as well as live music performances.

Join us in the Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens on Friday June 13 for an evening that celebrates creativity, connection, and the enduring power of the written word.

INTRODUCTION
TO HAIKU & GARDEN WALK
with Gilles Fabre

Saturday 14th June
Time: 11.30 am – 12.45pm.
Venue: Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens- Meeting Point –
Transition Garden .
Tickets : Haiku Introduction and Garden Walk FREE with normal Garden Entry Ticket (Adults €7).
BUY GARDEN ENTRY TICKET
PRE REGISTRATION REQUIRED TO JOIN HAIKU INTRO & WALK.
(To Register Email us with your name and name of event – HAIKU WALK spaces limited). Email: seandunneaward@gmail.com
For updates please check back here or visit our Facebook Page.

Haiku & Garden Walk: during this interactive walk in the Garden, participants will learn more about haiku’s origins, poetics, principles and practice as well as hear many classic and contemporary haiku especially selected in comparison with the Garden. Some haiku may even be written on the spot! 

GILLES FABRE
Gilles Fabre is a French national, living in Ireland. His haiku have won awards and been published in various journals and anthologies in Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, India, Japan, the USA and Canada in English, and France and Canada in French. He has also been published in Japanese and Portuguese. His second haiku collection along the way, a search for the spirit of the world, published by ALBA, was selected by The Haiku Foundation for the Touchstone Award Short List (2020).

For Gilles, the way and practice of haiku, with its power to connect us to nature and reality, has a role to play in poetry and in our life in general. Haiku can help us having a better relation to the world we need to respect and protect. Gilles is the founder of seashores, an international journal to share the spirit of haiku and its French-speaking counterpart l’estran in 2023. His third publication is EARLY MORNING FIREFLY, a translation and adaptation of the Japanese Saijiki, featuring hundreds of season-words (kigo) and haiku as well as an explanatory introduction on this Japanese Poetry Almanach, which is a unique creation in the history of world literature. For more information, visit haikuspirit.org

IT ALL COMES DOWN IN THE END TO THESE… objects in Seán Dunne’s Poetry.

Talk with
Poet Mark Roper

Saturday 14th June
Early Afternoon
Time: 2.00pm
Venue: Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens
Tickets : FREE to Pre Registered Writers and Writers Groups….arriving in advance of the ‘Gathering’. (If attending this talk Email us with your name and reference MARK ROPER). Email: seandunneaward@gmail.com
ALSO OPEN TO GENERAL PUBLIC (Normal Garden Entry Applies – Adults €7). BUY GARDEN ENTRY TICKET
Please check back again or see
updates on our Facebook Page.

Sean Dunne wrote poems about many different objects – in his first collection, Against The Storm (1985), for instance, dried beans, a quilt, a reed basket, bread, and cake. His two later collections, The Sheltered Nest (1992) and Time And The Island (1996), include poems about a pair of glasses, apples, rosary beads, tea-making, a leaf-bookmark and eggs. This talk will look at how these simple objects were used to convey complex emotional concerns.

MARK ROPER
Mark Roper has published 8 collections of poetry. With photographer Paddy Dwan, he has published 4 books about the natural history of County Waterford. In 2025 he published a book of short poems entitled From The Japanese Gardens which was written in collaboration with photographer Margaret O’Brien-Moran. This book is part of an Exhibition of Photographs which was created and inspired by their time in the Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens.

GATHERING OF WRITERS –
OPEN MIC

Saturday 14th June
Early Afternoon
Time: 2.30pm
Venue: Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens
Tickets : FREE to Pre Registered Writers and Writers Groups (To Register for GATHERING Email us with your name and reference GATHERING). Email: seandunneaward@gmail.com
ALSO OPEN TO GENERAL PUBLIC (Normal Garden Entry Applies – Adults €7). BUY GARDEN ENTRY TICKET
Please check back again or see
updates on our Facebook Page.

Following the success of previous Literary Gatherings in honour of Seán Dunne here at the Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens, we warmly invite the writers and writers’ groups of the south-east back to the Gardens for an even bigger and better Gathering, on Saturday 14th June.

We’ll kick off our gathering at 2.30pm with an introduction/information session for writers’ groups. If you are a writer or part of a writers’ group, you will have a chance to share the activities of your group, so other people can find out what you’re up to. This will help writers beat isolation and open up the possibility of collaboration and cooperation between groups or a chance for individual writers to join one. You’re welcome to come along whether you’re in a writers’ group or not.

We will then lead into an ‘Open Mic’ session, where writers can share their work. The format of this will be updated here closer to the time. However you can REGISTER TO READ IN ADVANCE (Spaces Limited). (To Register to Read Email us with reference: REQUEST TO READ).

The Gathering will once again be MC’d by local writers Mary Howlett and Derbhile Graham.

KUKAI WITH
GILLES FABRES

Saturday, 14th June
Late Afternoon
Time: Approx 5.30pm
Venue: TBD (Local Bar in Tramore)
Tickets : PRE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
(To Register Email us with your name and name of event – KUKAI
spaces limited, you can also send one haiku to feature in the Kukai and be workshopped, send in Haiku with Registration). Email: seandunneaward@gmail.com
For updates please check back here or visit our Facebook Page.

Gilles Fabres will lead a Kukai (haiku workshop). Participants may bring their own haiku to be discussed and workshopped, or just turn up without any haiku as the format of this practical session is open to all and all levels. Please send in one HAIKU to be worked on when you register for the Kukai (Deadline for sending in Haiku is June 6th).

Poetry Lounge
PANEL DISCUSSION –
Sean Dunne’s Legacy

Sunday, 15th June
Time: 2.30pm – 3.30pm
Venue: Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens
Tickets : LIMITED FREE AUDIENCE SEATS CAN BE BOOKED IN ADVANCE (To Book a Free Limited Audience Seat) Email us

Email: seandunneaward@gmail.com

This event will also be open to the General Public (Adults €7) those with General Garden Tickets can also attend (however seating not guaranteed).

BUY GARDEN ENTRY TICKET

THE POETRY LOUNGE WILL CO ORDINATE A PANEL DISCUSSION ON SEAN DUNNE’S LEGACY.
with those who knew Seán Dunne and will include Thomas McCarthy,
Jim Nolan, Aidan Dunne, Sean Crowe, Frank Farrelly and others…
Co ordinated by Ger Duffy ‘The Poetry Lounge’.