Keynote Speakers

John Minahane, scholar and poet is the author of The Christian Druids: on the filid or philosopher-poets of Ireland, first published in 1993 (reprinted Howth Free Press, Dublin 2008). Since then, he has been involved in the arguments regarding the poets in the old Irish civilization. He has edited and translated The Poems of Geoffrey O’Donoghue / Dánta Shéafraidh Uí Dhonnchadha an Ghleanna (Aubane Historical Society, Millstreet, Ireland 2008), and more recently a selection of the work of a 14^th century master poet, Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, Poems to the English / Dán na nGall (Aubane 2020). Two of his translations appear in the ambitious recent anthology Bone and Marrow/ Cnámh agus Smior. An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern, ed. Samuel K. Fisher and Brian Ó Conchubhair (Wake Forest University Press, Winston-Salem 2022). Essays of his on Irish-language literature and history, published in Dublin Review of Books and elsewhere, are available online. In recent times he has focused on 19^th century poetry in Irish. John Minahane has lived in Bratislava for some time and has published translations of Slovak poetry, among them Krvavé sonety, a cycle of anti-war sonnets composed on the outbreak of the World War in 1914 by Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav (The Bloody Sonnets, Bratislava 2018).