ILKLEY Literature Festival has announced the Forward Prize-winning poet Ian Duhig as the festival’s 2021 Poet in Residence. Ian will be making a mark on this year’s festival, programming an online poetry showcase, taking part in a reading, running a writing workshop for adults, producing a commissioned piece, and judging the annual Walter Swan Poetry Prize. Ian became a full-time writer after working with homeless people for 15 years and has since published seven books of poetry. He has won the Forward Best Poem Prize once, the National Poetry Competition twice, and has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize four times. He is a Cholmondeley Award recipient, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and this year is one of the judges for the Costa Poetry Prize. His next collection, ‘New and Selected Poems’, will be published by Picador in December 2021. Ian also continues to work on projects for disadvantaged groups, locally with Leeds Irish Health and Homes and th
Shocking legacy of Kilkenny County Home - Mother and Baby Home Commission Report
Poor conditions and high infant mortality in Thomastown facility revealed
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Shocking details of ‘a shameful chapter’ of Irish history reveal 177 babies died in just 38 years at the Kilkenny County Home.
Their individual graves are unmarked and many institutional records have been destroyed. It has also been revealed that many Kilkenny mothers were sent to the now infamous Bessborough home in Cork and Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary, from the County Home.
The heartbreaking figures reflecting the stories of mothers and their babies have been set out in the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission, published on Tuesday.