In Conversation with Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Niamh McCann, and Gerard Smyth
Join poet and journalist Gerard Smyth as he sits in conversation with poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin and visual artist Niamh McCann to celebrate the opening of their exhibition Boy Dancer.
A Solstice-commissioned project, Boy Dancer is a new exhibition emerging from the first collaboration between the two artists, interweaving a series of poems by Ní Churreáin with line drawings and installation by McCann, exploring grief, ritual, and transformation.
Together with Smyth, the trio will discuss both the exhibition and publication of these tender poems and images honouring the life of Ní Churreáin's beloved foster brother, Darry, diving into questions about what binds sibling relationships, how we can witness and shape loss, and the ways in which ritual and memory are connected.
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her poetry collections are published by Doire Press, The Salvage Press and The Gallery Press. She is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award, the Markievicz Award and the Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship. Ní Churreáin was the 2025 Arts Council/University College Dublin Writer in Residence. She is currently serving the 2026-27 Poet in Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo. Ní Churreáin is the poetry editor at The Stinging Fly Magazine.
Photo by Barry McCall.
Niamh McCann makes materially intricate and seductive works in multi mediums, most often expressing a precarious optimism and seeking to find communal tenderness and connection within divisions. Through sculptures, drawings, moving image and performance works McCann looks to personal specificity from an Ireland based perspective that meshes with broader brushstrokes of context.
Currently showing work in ‘ReMemory: Sydney Biennale 2026’, McCann has exhibited extensively in Ireland and internationally. McCann was recipient of the inaugural Norman Houston Commissioning Award, Washington DC 2023 and is recipient of various Arts Council of Ireland Awards, most recently with ‘Decade of Centenaries’ support for the multi-sited exhibition ‘someone decides, hawk or dove’.
Photo by Aisling McCoy.
Gerard Smyth is a poet and journalist. The Turn for Ithaca (Dedalus Press, 2026) is his eleventh collection. His poetry has been published widely since the late 1960s. Other books from Dedalus include The Sundays of Eternity (2020) and The Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems (2010). Solstice Arts Centre published The Yellow River (a collaboration with artist Seán McSweeney) in 2016. He was the 2012 recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota and is co-editor, with Pat Boran, of If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (Dedalus Press) which was Dublin’s One City One Book in 2014. He is a member of Aosdána.