THE Western Writers’ Centre is again appealing to the public for support for the third annual Forge at Gort festival.

The group, which organises the festival, is appealing to local residents and business people to support the event, which is due to take place at the end of the month. The festival celebrates the presence of WB Yeats, the forge from which he drew materials to reconstruct Thoor Ballylee and the significance of this town in the Irish literary renaissance.
“We are appealing to people to help us to keep this two-day festival going and to make it a prominent and consistent feature of the literary calendar,” said Fred Johnston of the Western Writers’ Centre.
The preliminary line-up for the festival features novelist John Arden with poet Patrick Early, on Friday, March 26 at 8pm in Gort Library and Marty Mulligan’s performance poetry on the same night in the Gallery Café at 10.30pm. The programme includes a poetry workshop with Pete Mullineaux at 11am in Sullivan’s Hotel on Saturday, March 27, after which ,Rosemarie Rowley will perform at 1pm at O’Grady’s Restaurant in The Square. At the same venue, the Clare Three-Legged Stool Writers’ Group and violinist Yuki Nishioka will perform at 4.30pm.
Kate Thompson will also perform that Saturday at 3pm in the town’s library, followed in the same venue by Pádraig Ó Moráin and Paul Dooley at 7pm. Stephanie Allen-Early will also perform.
More information is available on www.twwc.ie.