BlueFire Street Fest is a free open-air intercultural arts festival with a mission to promote social integration and cohesion amongst young Dubliners across all cultural backgrounds.

This year, BlueFire will be taking place in Dublin’s Smithfield Square on International Day of Peace, Saturday 21 September. The UN have chosen Climate Action as the universal call to action on this day, and Channel Issue 1 contributors will be present to share that call through poetry.

We’ll also be celebrating the occasion with the first sales of Issue 1, which won’t be available elsewhere until its launch in October.

Find us in the performance tent from 15:38 – 16:30!

Our readers

Patrick Deeley is from Loughrea, County Galway.  His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies and been widely translated.  The End of the World is the latest of his seven collections with Dedalus Press.  His critically acclaimed, best-selling memoir, The Hurley Maker’s Son, published by Transworld, was shortlisted for the 2016 Irish Book of the Year Award.  His other awards include the Eilis Dillon Award, the Dermot Healy International Poetry Prize, and most recently the American-based Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for 2019.

DS Maolalai has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019).

Suzzanna Matthews recently completed a postgraduate degree in Creative Writing. While she considers California home, she spent a better part of her childhood in New England. She’s lived and studied abroad in Latin America, Europe and Asia. She lives in Dublin, where she is working on a collection of short stories.

Aoife Riach is a queer feminist witch with an MPhil in Gender & Women’s Studies. Her poetry has been published by College Green Journal, Impossible Archetype and other magazines. She was a 2019 Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate and her poem ‘Vancouver’ was selected for the Hungering curation of the Poetry Jukebox.