Supported by Dublin City Council and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature

Every Dubliner has their own story about James Joyce, and no one more so than our best-known Joycean, Senator David Norris. Senator Norris has been at the heart of Joyce’s Dublin for nearly sixty years. For our Bloomsday Interview, Senator Norris will sit down with Irish journalist, RTE presenter and former newsreader Anne Doyle to discuss all things Joyce. The interview will take place in Joyce’s alma mater, Belvedere College.

David Norris was Senior Lecturer in the Department of English in Trinity College Dublin for almost 30 years. Students from across faculties crammed into his stimulating lectures. He wrote Introducing Joyce: A Graphic Guide, edited the International James Joyce Symposium and helped organise the Joyce Centenary Celebrations in Dublin in 1982. He was instrumental in establishing the Bloomsday Festival which is now celebrated all over the world on the 16th of June each year.

David Norris is one of Ireland’s leading Joyce scholars, was Founding Chairman of the James Joyce Centre and the North Great Georges Street Preservation Society. He is also known for his work on national and international human and civil rights and equality issues as well as the conservation of Dublin’s architectural heritage. David Norris was a candidate in the Irish Presidential election 2011. His autobiography A Kick Against the Pricks has been nominated for several prizes. As the longest serving member of Seanad Eireann,  Senator David Norris became “Father of the House” in 2011.

Join us on Bloomsday Eve for what promises to be a magical evening. As part of the event, Senator Norris will present The David Norris Award for significant contribution to Joycean Dublin and Bloomsday to this year’s winner.

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Hop aboard the Bloomsday Bus this 16 June for a whistle-stop Joycean sightseeing tour around “Dear Dirty Dublin”. You’ll be whisked around for a two and a half hour tour of some of the city’s key Joycean landmarks in the company of our local guide, who will keep you informed and entertained as you explore the “Hibernian metropolis”.

You’ll pop by Eccles Street, the address of Molly and Leopold Bloom; Glasnevin Cemetery, the setting for the ‘Hades’ episode of Ulysses; the old ‘Monto’ area, where Bella Cohen’s brothel once stood; Westland Row, where the ‘Lotus Eaters’ episode sees Bloom drop into Sweny’s Chemist; Holles Street Maternity Hospital, where Bloom and Stephen cavort with Mulligan et al in ‘Oxen of the Sun’ and a whole lot of other Joycean hotspots along the way, including some of the author’s former addresses and many more locations from the novel. You will get a free copy of Romping through Ulysses, an illustrated pocket guide to the big book that will help you navigate your Bloomsday adventure.

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Prepare for Bloomsday with Dubliner and Joycean scholar Caroline Elbay and street carnival fan Maite López from At it Again! You’ll be taken on a whistle stop ride through the 18 episodes of Ulysses and learn about Joyce’s life and times. You’ll discover the origins of Bloomsday and hear stories about Dublin, its characters and buildings, that sit at the heart of Joyce’s writings. Joyce’s epic book has a reputation for being inaccessible and difficult, but Ulysses for All will show you that this perception is far from true. Ulysses is full of humour, insight and beauty.

Enjoy a glass of Prosecco while you are guided through Ulysses and the traditions that make the Bloomsday Festival so colourful. You will discover the significance of style and dress in Ulysses as well as meeting some of the colourful characters that pepper its pages. Be inspired to dress up as the zombie-like Paddy Dignam, the flamboyant Buck Mulligan or flirty Gerty MacDowell. Discover why people dress up as bars of lemon soap or cheese sandwiches.

Along the way, you will pick up ideas for hair and make-up that will have you cleaning up at the Bloomsday best-dressed competitions. Your complimentary goodie bag will be bursting with objects to help you celebrate Bloomsday, including a copy of Romping through Ulysses.

Join us on our Dublin odyssey and put the YOU into Ulysses this Bloomsday.

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A 75 minute romp through Joyce's famous novel. Written and performed by Robert Gogan, "Strolling Through Ulysses!" unlocks the great masterpiece, bringing the characters to life and unravelling its mysteries in an entertaining and light-hearted show.

Drawing on extracts from the novel which best illustrate the various aspects of Joyce's writing - the comical, the descriptive and the complex - this show helps make this iconic novel accessible to everyone, without compromising its integrity.

Bawdy, irreverent and great fun. Over 16s only!

14 June at The James Joyce Centre @ 1.05pm .

Joyce lived most of his life outside Dublin, but there is hardly a village or street in the city that doesn’t have some link to the author and his sprawling works. His unsettled family life meant that he moved address frequently in his adolescent years and his portrait of the city in works like Ulysses was so comprehensive that he once claimed that "if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of (his) book". Join us for this bus trip from Dublin’s epicentre to the stunning coastline, trace the steps of Joyce and his characters and learn all about the author’s links to the different areas of the city in the company of our local guide.

You'll take in Portobello and the city's former Jewish quarter, stop by Joyce's birthplace in Rathgar, Clifton House and North Richmond Street, enjoy your lunch in the beautiful village of Glasthule and head to the James Joyce Tower & Museum before returning to the city via Sandymount Strand.

Please Note: Tour does not include cost of lunch.

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In the final chapter of Ulysses, Molly Bloom reflects “I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something”.

Joyce’s work has long served as an inspiration not only for writers, but for artists working across the disciplines, from music and dance to visual art and theatre. This Bloomsday Festival, we’ll be celebrating Joyce’s effect on the non-literary arts by bringing together actor Janet Moran, filmmaker Tommy Creagh and illustrator Niall Laverty from At it Again! They will discuss Joyce’s impact on their practice.

Actor Janet Moran played Molly Bloom in the Abbey Theatre Production of Ulysses. Known for her roles in Trivia (2011), Breakfast on Pluto (2005) and The Butcher Boy (1997), Moran recently co-hosted the Irish Times Theatre Awards. Her play-writing credentials include ‘A Holy Show’ and ‘Swing’, an international hit about dancing and music and love, in which she also performed.

Niall Laverty is an illustrator and gesture drawing teacher. He is currently a part-time lecturer on the Animation course at the National Film School. At it Again! bring Irish literature to life. They celebrate Irish writers and their works with fun pocket books and other literary gifts.

Tommy Creagh is an award winning Filmmaker & Playwright. He has a passion for poetry and how it can be brought into the cinema. His film ‘Land of Winter’ is inspired by Joyce’s short story ‘The Dead’ and follows a troubled young man between pubs, whilst snow clouds loom over Dublin. The short film will be shown at the event.

Extra screening: ‘Land of Winter’ will have a Bloomsday screening as part of the Elevation Indie Film Awards. Book tickets here. Screening of ‘Land of Winter’ on 16th June from 6.45 - 8pm at the Sugar Club, 8 Leeson Street Lower, Dublin 2.

Enjoy an informal rehearsed reading of the one-act play ‘Of Thyme and Rosemary’, a conversation between James Joyce and Marcel Proust. The authors first met on 18 May 1922 at a private dinner party at the Hotel Majestic in Paris.  Among the guests were fellow icons of Modernism Diaghilev, Stravinsky and Picasso. The conversation between Proust and Joyce was variously reported. According to one account, Joyce complained about his eyes and Proust his stomach. Written by Boston-based playwright Debbie Wiess, ‘Of Thyme and Rosemary’ depicts an imagined second meeting, in which the iconic writers had a true meeting of minds over some white wine.  

A founding member of Boston-based Here Comes Everybody Players, Cathal Stephens has been performing work related to James Joyce and his work for over twenty-five years.  He has performed at literary conferences and festivals throughout North America and Europe.

Jack Walsh studied mime and Theatre in Paris and has played on almost every stage in Ireland. He volunteers at Sweny’s Joycean Pharmacy and will play Leopold Bloom in ‘A Play on Ulysses’ in Blackrock on 16th June. He is currently working on a one man show called ‘Welcome To Ireland’ at the Axis Theatre, Ballymun.

Debbie Wiess is a Boston-based writer, director and producer. She is a published author and her work has been presented throughout the US and abroad. ‘Of Thyme and Rosemary’ is her second play about iconic authors James Joyce and Marcel Proust.

In association with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Dublin

James Joyce is known for writing about life’s intimate moments. When Ulysses was published, it was considered obscene and unreadable by some critics. Joyce responded “if Ulysses isn’t fit to read, then life isn’t fit to live”.

Join Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth and Dublin-based author June Caldwell for an intimate panel discussion. They will confront the challenges and pleasures of shedding light on dark and complex aspects of modern life. Actor Janet Moran, who played Molly Bloom in the Abbey Theatre Production of Ulysses, will illustrate the discussion with readings from Joyce’s works and letters.

Vigdis Hjorth is a celebrated Norwegian author with a keen eye for current issues. She is known for writing existentialist books that address people’s life choices and living conditions. Her new novel Wills and Testament starts as a classic story of inheritance and sibling dynamics. But during the inheritance discussions another story emerges which brings violent forces into play. It's all about family history.

June Caldwell worked for many years as a journalist before becoming a writer of fiction and has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast. Her short story collection Room Little Darker was published In 2017. The Times described it as “an unflinching collection which thuds with life and kicks with horror” and the Independent wrote “Caldwell’s stories are ferocious beasts, kicking and screaming in rabid, frothing rage.” Caldwell has won the Moth International Short Story Prize and been shortlisted for many other awards, including the Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction. Her debut novel Little Town Moone is due in 2020.

The evening will be chaired by Dimitra Xidous, author of Keeping Bees. Her work has been published in gorse, The Stinging Fly, and Room Magazine.

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Who was Lucia Joyce and how might we imagine her?

Lucia has been portrayed in a number of ways: as Joyce’s muse, Samuel Beckett’s lover, an ill-fated dancer, and as clinically insane.

Join us for an evening discussion that explores the merits and pitfalls of imagining who Lucia was, and how to balance creative responsibility while shedding light on an underdeveloped subject. The panel features playwright Caoileann Curry-Thompson and award-winning actress Úna Kavanagh who will perform an excerpt from Curry-Thompson’s play about Lucia, titled Rosefrail and Fair. Film-maker and dancer Áine Stapleton will show research footage from her new film Horrible Creature that is based on Lucia. The panel will be chaired by Genevieve Sartor, who is completing a PhD on Lucia Joyce and psychoanalysis at Trinity College Dublin.

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An exhibition of work by second-year students at Ballyfermot College of Further Education. Students studying both Classical & Computer Animation and Illustration at Higher National Diploma level used James Joyce and his modernist masterpiece Ulysses as a starting point.

The Animation students retraced the steps of Leopold Bloom, producing visual research at locations associated with Ulysses. The work produced at these locations was then developed as background art for a proposed animated film based on the life and works of James Joyce. Working with both traditional and digital illustration techniques the students engaged with both the history and the environment associated with James Joyce and his most famous novel, Ulysses.

The students’ own historical research influenced the style and content of the work they produced. In some cases the students re-imagined places as they may have appeared in the early 20th Century. They attempted to capture the special atmosphere of iconic Joycean locations like The National Library, the Martello Tower at Sandycove, Sweny’s Chemist, Davy Byrne’s Pub, Bewley’s Café, and The James Joyce Centre.

Parallel to this, the Illustration students at Ballyfermot College of Further Education engaged with the text of Ulysses, and were tasked with producing work for a proposed new illustrated edition of the book. Ulysses was divided into forty-seven sections, each student producing four illustrations, experimenting with both media and style. The students’ own critical interpretation of the text influenced their approaches to both concept and form.

Ballyfermot College of Further Education would like to acknowledge the warm welcome and generous support received at all the above locations.

Join us on 10th June for the exhibition opening with the principal of Principal Ballyfermot College of Further Education Cecilia Munro. The exhibition can be visited throughout the Bloomsday Festival and will continue until December 2019.

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The Ulysses Haiku Project sees poets and people expressing their experience of James Joyce’s Ulysses and Bloomsday through Haiku. In the words of the curator, Nickie Hayden:

“Ulysses was written in such a way that the classically educated person could relish every coded morsel. However, Joyce gave equal weight to the Dublin vernacular. The book delivers a multitude of voices to be interpreted on many levels. I created the Ulysses Haiku Project to collect poems from people from every walk of life. I chose Haiku because every line in Ulysses has the same kind of richness that is carried in each line of a Haiku.”

Print maker Robert Russell was struck by Joyce’s portrayal of Dublin City in Ulysses, with all the diversity and colour of everyday living. He sees parallels in today’s Dublin and the issues that Dubliners face. Working with Stephen Fry, Paula Meehan, Rachael Hegarty, Theo Dorgan and Patricia Ross, Russell has combined his personal response with theirs by imprinting their Haiku on five etched images on copper plates.                       

When visiting the exhibition, you are invited to write your own Ulysses, Joyce or Bloomsday inspired Haiku to become part of the exhibition. You can also email your Haiku to info@jamesjoyce.ie with “Haiku” in the subject heading or tweet @JamesJoyceCentr. Haiku is a short Japanese poetic form usually consisting of three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each, but you don’t have to be that strict.

Nickie Hayden has been a practising artist for 30 years and works in oil painting, sculpture and installation. In recent exhibitions she has worked with groups like the SAOL Project, Fighting Words and The Dyslexia Association of Ireland. Robert Russell attended IADT Dun Laoghaire, specialising in Sculpture, but also working with paint and print. Robert is Studio Director and Master Printer at Graphic Studio Dublin.

Join us at the exhibition opening with poet Rachael Hegarty on 10th June. The exhibition can be visited throughout the Bloomsday Festival and will continue until December 2019.

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