Death’s Duel with Chris Fitzpatrick & Liz Quirke

We invite you to join us by the fireside for poetry and chat with a theme of health and illness. We are delighted to feature two poets: Chris Fitzpatrick and Liz Quirke.

Mortality and human frailty have always inspired poets and can give an appreciation for beauty and life. John Donne wrote, ‘We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and a regular work: but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay, undeserved…’

If you have a short poem that fits the theme, bring it along. We may have time to include it. If you wish to drink a pint while listening, we’ll tell no one.

Chris Fitzpatrick’s first collection of poetry, Poetic Licence in a Time of Corona, was published by 21st Century Renaissance in 2022. He is a clinical professor in UCD’s School of Medicine and is involved in UCD’s Ukraine Trauma Project. During the pandemic, he was the HSE’s Clinical Lead for Covid-19 Vaccinations in the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group. He is the clinical lead for the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland’s collaboration with the Abbey Theatre in relation to bereavement in the maternity services. He is also a former master of the Coombe Hospital, Dublin.

Liz Quirke is a poet and scholar from Kerry. She has a PhD from the University of Galway on the subject of Queer Kinship in Contemporary Poetry. She was a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Holder. She lives in Tralee and works at UCC. She has published two collections with Salmon Poetry: her debut The Road, Slowly appeared in 2018 followed by How We Arrive In Winter in 2021.

Thanks to Dr Mary McCaffrey and Dr Conor Brosnan for their kind sponsorship of this event.