Writer Jack Harte's visit to Bulgaria
Jack Harte's visit to Bulgaria resulted in the delivery of two Embassy sponsored lectures and a talk at an Embassy sponsored University Literary Conference. The first of two talks took place at Europe House in Sofia on Friday 12th June before an audience of about 40 people and dealt with the influence of Co. Sligo on the poetry of Yeats. Along with the talk, Jack used a series of slides to illustrate the locations that the poetry referred to. The talks was attended by a number of literary scholars, translators and a number of published Bulgarian poets.
On Monday the 15th June Jack was the keynote speaker at a literary conference at Sofia University entitled 'Ireland and Europe, Cultural and literary encounters,' which listed the Embassy as one of the events sponsors. jack spoke on 'Unravelling the Spiral, Rehabilitating the Serpent: An Irish Writer in Search of Lost Meaning'. Also of interest were talks by Boryana Bratanova, University of Veliko Turnovo who spoke on 'Multilingualism in the EU: The Case of Irish and Bulgarian' and by Marina Snesareva a PhD student at Moscow University, employee at the Embassy of Ireland, Moscow and a speaker of Irish on 'Dublin Bilinguals: Languages and Challenges'. The conference organiser was Jonathan McCreedy, a young Derry man who works in the English and American Studies Department of Sofia University.
On Wednesday night the 17th June, Jack gave a second presentation for the Embassy, this time to celebrate Bloomsday. On this occasion the event was held at the British Council. The talk was on the difficulties Joyce experienced in having his work published. An audience of 35 people attended a number of whom were Joycean scholars and translators.