Brigid’s Book

Link to nomination form – nominate a person or institution that you think should be gifted one of these books.

11th December 2023 – UPDATE

A Chairde,

We (Angelina Foster & Emily Rainsford) are halfway through printing Brigid’s Book. We still have alot to do in terms of completing illustrations, making & screenprinting the covers and stitching the bindings. We received 160 submissions, including several As Gaeilge, and were completely overwhelmed with the standard of responses. An independent panel selected the poems, all writers’ names were removed so the selection was on the merit of the writing alone.

It was incredibly hard to choose 20 poems, in fact, we have included 28. As professional artists we know what it’s like when you love a project and are not selected, we want to thank every single person who responded to our Open Call. We have learnt alot, and hope to be in a position to host another open call in the future. Many of you will know we needed to edit alot of poems to ensure a flow to the book and to accommodate the letterpress process. It was really important to us as artists to protect the integrity of the writers’ work so we feel indebted to these writers for working with us on this, sometimes in different time zones! This consumed a huge amount of time so we apologise for the delay in communication.

The writers with poems selected for publication in Brigid’s Book are:

Ailish de Búrca, Autumn Newman, Liam Regan, Anne Casey, Michael Farrell, Patrick OSullivan, Chris Jones, Lisa Gannon, Lauren Lawler, Dee McKiernan, Caroline Bracken, Dylan Brennan, J.D.Luttrell, Bernadette Gallagher, Siobhán Mac Mahon, Mary Burke, Séighin Ó Ceallaigh, Martina Kearney, M.A. Waskow, Neville Sexton, Aisling Ní Choibheanaigh Nic Eoin, Erin Darcy, Lara Coady, Mary Mc Carthy, Máire Sinclair, Mae Leonard, Dolores Martin, Éire Ní Fhaoláin

We are honoured to include the following artists who have helped illustrate the book, making it truly special!

Clare Hartigan, Lucina Russell, Claire Murphy, Rachel Fountain, Pamela de Brí, Ciara O’Keeffe & Ann McKenna.

We still have a huge amount of work to do and are grateful to Brigid 1500 Committee and Kildare County Council for their continued support.

We have received alot of calls asking where the book will be sold so we would like to draw attention again to the purpose of this project and the book. This book is not for sale, as per the original intention listed below, Brigid’s book is part of the Brigid 1500 Program and aims to acknowledge women. It will be gifted to 100 women who have campaigned for women’s rights or supported women in their communities.

Merging two of St. Brigid’s patronages’ (poetry & printers), Blueway Art Studio will produce A Little Book of Brigid celebrating Brigid as the female force in ordinary lives, in our past and living present, created using texts selected from this Open Call for submissions. The book will be entirely handprinted through letterpress and printmaking. Each letter is composed upside down and backwards and set by hand using vintage metal type. Each poem or verse is accompanied by hand-printed illustrations.

With support from Kildare County Council’s Brigid 1500 programme, Blueway Art Studio is announcing an open call from 10^th July to 10^th September 2023  inviting submissions of writing for inclusion in the Little Book of Brigid 1500.