Date: Sunday 5th August
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: The Helicon
Price: £8
A lifetime, then the deathtime: reticence Keeping us together when together, All declaration deemed outspokeness. Seamus Heaney, ‘The Lift’
For decades Kevin Toolis hunted death in Ireland‘s Troubles and across the Middle East before finding the answer to his quest in the ancient funereal rites of the Irish wake at his father Sonny’s wake on the island of his forefathers Achill Island, Co Mayo.
Toolis’ talk based on his critically acclaimed book My Father’s Wake, explores how Western society has lost its way with death and what lessons the wake can still give us in how to live, love and die.
Kevin Toolis is a BAFTA-winning filmmaker and author. He is the writer of an acclaimed chronicle of the Troubles, Rebel Hearts, and has written and reported on conflicts for the New York Times and The Guardian. He is the founder of Many Rivers Filmsand made a number of Emmy-nominated documentaries in the Middle East. He won a Single Drama BAFTA in 2014 for Complicit. His family has lived in the same ocean side village on Achill Island off the coast of Mayo for the last 200 years.
Find more information at: Seamus Heaney Home