We are delighted to present ‘Sappho’s Daughter’, a poem by Theo Dorgan with lithographs by Liam O Broin. To be opened by the Ambassador of Greece to Ireland, Her Excellency, Mrs. Katia Georgiou.

This exhibition is the presentation of a 17 page poem by Theo Dorgan, illustrated with a suite of 23 lithographs by Liam O Broin.

The poem ‘Sappho’s Daughter’, is the culmination of Theo Dorgan’s collection ‘Greek’, that he started in Chios, then Levos and completed in Dublin.

To illustrate the work, Liam O Broin subsequently visited the Greek island of Lesvos, to work and absorb the culture and nuances of the home to the 6th century (BC) poet Sappho. He chose to experience at first hand a similar journey taken by Theo Dorgan over a decade previously and the conception of the epic poem, Sappho’s Daughter.

The exhibition is the culmination of an artist and a poet, fusing together an imaginative and vividly sensual epic.

Liam O Broin was born in 1944. His works are in the collections of The Office of Public Works, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Butler Collection, Kilkenny and Trinity College Dublin. He has worked in several media over the last forty years, starting in printmaking at Graphic Studio Dublin in 1970.

O Broin studied tapestry weaving at the National College of Art and Design and won the Scott- Tallon – Walker prize for a woven tapestry, St. Brendan, at the Oireachteas exhibition in 1980. He also worked with the artist Partick Pye on two woven pieces and for a time at the Dublin Art Foundry on several of his own bronze pieces in lost wax technique. In the 1970s he took up painting. O Broin exhibited regularly at the Oireachteas Art exhibitions in the 1980s and with the Independent Artists. He has regularly exhibited in group shows at Graphic Studio Gallery Dublin and throughout Ireland as well as Sweden and Australia.

Theo Dorgan was born in 1953. An Irish poet, novelist, non-fiction prose writer, editor, translator, broadcaster, librettist and documentary scriptwriter. He has published five books of poetry. His most recent collections are GREEK (2012) and NINE BRIGHT SHINERS (2014), both published by Dedalus Press. His work has been widely translated: two full collections have been published in Italian and a selected poems in French. In Spanish, LA HIJA DE SAFO was published by Ediciones Hiperion, Madrid, in 2001

He is the editor of, among other titles, FOUNDATION STONE, Notes Towards a Constitution for a 21st Century Republic (New Island Books 2013), IRISH POETRY SINCE KAVANAGH, A BOOK OF UNCOMMON PRAYER, WHAT WE FOUND THERE, WATCHING THE RIVER FLOW and, with Gene Lambert, LEABHAR MOR na hEIREANN/THE GREAT BOOK OF IRELAND, an unique manuscript volume on vellum. Awarded the O’Shaughnessy Prize for Poetry in 2010, he is the 2015 winner of the Irish Times Poetry Now Award for the best book of poetry published in 2014. He is a member of Aosdána.