The President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, visited UCD Library Special Collections on Wednesday to record a selection of his poems for the Irish Poetry Reading Archive. This digital repository of contemporary poetic voices records and preserves Irish poets reading their own work and makes their poetry accessible to a worldwide audience. President Higgins also provided handwritten transcriptions of his recorded poems. This complementary collection of manuscripts allows the audience to interact with the poem and poet in a unique way.
Built up over the last seven years, this archive now holds the work of over 150 poets, including writers born in Ireland but resident elsewhere and those newly arrived here. It has been viewed over 230,000 times from countries all around the world.
The Irish Poetry Reading Archive, hosted by UCD Library within the UCD Digital Library, is supported by a team of highly skilled staff. It is co-ordinated by Ursula Byrne and Evelyn Flanagan, in collaboration with Dr Lucy Collins of the UCD School of English, Drama and Film.
It can be accessed via the UCD Special Collections YouTube channel and at https://libguides.ucd.ie/ipra.