Our Associate Artist programme is a means by which The Civic seeks to actively support the professional and personal development of an artist over the long term whilst also encouraging and empowering the artist to enrich the creative culture of The Civic.
Get to know each of our associates in a series of blogs over the coming weeks.
Meet Adam Wyeth
Adam Wyeth is an award-winning poet, playwright and essayist, with five books published with Salmon Press. In 2016, he was selected as one of Ireland’s Rising Generation by Poetry Ireland Review. In 2019, Adam received The Kavanagh Fellowship Award. In 2020, he was selected for an Abbey Theatre development programme, to adapt his next book about:blank into an audio-immersive piece, supported by The Civic Theatre. Following an Arts Council Literature Project Award, the work went on to premiere at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2021, with acclaimed actors Olwen Fouere, Owen Roe and Paula McGlinchey. Last year, Adam received an Arts Council Ireland Award to support the creation of my latest prose work, In Circles. This new work is a mythopoetic memoir and meditation on the form of a circle.
Adam’s poetry collections are Silent Music (2011), Highly Commended by the Forward Poetry Prize, The Art of Dying (2016), an Irish Times Book of the Year. In 2013 Salmon published his essays, The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic Mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry, Foreword by Paula Meehan. This book has had several reprints and is used as a teaching tool around the world and has been officially added to two university programmes in the USA. Adam’s plays have been performed across Ireland and also in New York and Berlin. His first two plays Hang Up and Lifedeath were produced by Brokencrow in 2013, the second of which was selected as the play of the Triskel Festival by the Irish Examiner. His play This Is What Happened was published in 2019. His hybrid book about:blank was published in 2021 to critical acclaim.
In June 2021, Adam received the Live Music & Performance Scheme grant for a collaborative project ‘there will be no silence,’ with Emmy-nominated composer David Downes. The work, featuring world-renowned pianist Rolf Hind and virtuoso cellist Adrian Mantu, was performed by leading Irish actors Aisling O’Sullivan and Owen Roe. It is scheduled for release with Diatribe records, and will be showcased at the Dublin New Music Festival in 2024. With the assistance and support of the Civic Theatre, Adam is currently in the process of working on a live and multimedia installation of about:blank using AI and VR technology.
Adam has over twenty years teaching Creative Writing and is a long-term member of Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools Scheme.
In 2023, with the support of the Civic Theatre, Adam has collaborated with celebrated classical musicians in a unique performance reading from his dreamtime cinematic poem about:blank. Using electric cello and violin, Freytag and Leman’s evocative soundscape beautifully captures the hallucinatory world of Wyeth’s most ambitious work to date.
Adam says: ‘I firmly believe that creativity and art must be accessible to everyone and that they are integral to the essence of our humanity. Imagination serves as a conduit to the profound facets of our deeper selves, fostering connections that transcend differences and bring us closer together. Creativity, as I see it, involves the transformative process of taking various ideas and components and shaping them into something entirely new—a genuine form of magic and alchemy. My passion for poetry and Irish myth emanates from these perspectives. As both a writer and a creative writing teacher, I am deeply committed to engaging with communities of all ages and backgrounds and aiding them in harnessing their inner gold.’
For More Info on our Associate Artists,
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