The Metropole Hotel in MacCurtain Street is the venue for this year's Cork Spring Festival which runs from 17th to 20th February 2010. The theme for this year's festival is sense of place. Sense of place and the business of place-naming holds such an integral position in Irish literature that the theme warrants its own specialist term: Dinnseanchas.

Headline authors this year include an array of poets, novelists and story writers: Jennifer Johnstone, Martín Espada, Paula Meehan, Bernard O'Donoghue, Mary O'Malley, Michael Coady, Thomas McCarthy, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and many others.

There will be a slam competition with a prize of 300 euro, workshops with distinguished American authors, the launch party for Theo Dorgan's new poetry collection, the presentation of the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize as well as all the wonderful readings. Audience and authors alike are encouraged to socialise afterwards at the festival club in the Boqueria on Bridge Street.

All readings are free (no one will be turned away for lack of funds) but we will be encouraging people to donate what they can. €5 being the suggested amount.

Oh, and be sure to look out for the world-famous Itinerant Poetry Librarian who will be offering her very eccentric services around the city during the course of the festival.

Further details of the festival: http://www.munsterlit.ie/Spring_Literary_Festival.html