Louis de Paor has been involved with the contemporary renaissance of poetry in Irish since 1980 when he was first published in the poetry journal Innti, which he also subsequently edited for a time. A five-time winner of the Oireachtas prize for the best collection of poems in Irish, he lived in Australia from 1987 to 1996. Ag greadadh bas sa reilig/Clapping in the Cemetery was published by Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 2005 and reprinted in 2006. A second bilingual volume agus rud eile de/and another thing (2010) includes artwork by Kathleen Furey and a recording of poems with musical settings by Ronan Browne. A bilingual selection of his early work, The brindled cat and the nightingale’s tongue, was published by Bloodaxe in 2014.

His most recent works are Obair Bhaile (LeabhairComhar, 2021) and Grá fiar/Crooked love (Bloodaxe 2022) which includes a recording of his collaboration with Dana Lyn, One day/Lá dá raibh, a bilingual performance using poetry and music to present a day in the life of an imagined village in the West of Ireland. De Paor and Lyn are currently working on a chamber opera based on the story of Diarmuid and Gráinne. The first stage of their work-in-progress was showcased at the Baryshnikov Arts Centre in April 2017.

Brooklyn-based visual artist and composer Dana Lyn has collaborated with Tony Award-winning songwriters Stew and Heidi Rodewald, actor-directors Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio, 2017 MacArthur Fellow Taylor Mac and Irish poet Louis de Paor, among others. She has received commissions from the Brooklyn Rider, the National Arts Council of Ireland, the Apple Hill String Quartet, violinist Johnny Gandelsman, violist Nicholas Cords, A Far Cry, Palaver Strings and the New Orchestra of Washington. Her theater credits include the Public Theater’s production of Hamlet (Shakespeare in the Park, 2008); The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale (The Bridge Project at BAM, 2009), Clive, (The New Group, 2013); Family Album (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 2014).

Lyn has created album art for five of the eight albums under her name and has made stop-motion animations in support of her own music. She has also created animations for Taylor Mac, Slim Bone Head Volt (her spoken-word and music collaboration with Vincent D’Onofrio), children’s artist Elena Moon Park, poet Louis de Paor, her duo with guitarist Kyle Sanna, and acclaimed woodwind players Ben Goldberg and Mike McGinnis. She currently plays in the band of the Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical, Hadestown. She has written music for documentaries, audio stories and dance. Dana is also a well-versed fiddle player in the Irish tradition.

Her own musical projects include a sextet, “Mother Octopus“ and her respective collaborations with D’Onofrio, Sanna, and De Paor. She performs with Taylor Mac’s 24 Decades of Popular Music in 24 Hours and Holiday Sauce, with “Notes of a Native Song” by Stew and the Negro Problem and the Hank Roberts Sextet. Dana was an artist-in-residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in the Spring of 2017, a member of the Joe’s Pub Working Group in 2018, and an awardee of the American Composers Forum Create Commission, also in 2018. She was a recipient of a 2020 NYFA Women’s Fund Award for Media, Music and Theater and a Sundance Composer Lab Fellow in 2021. Upcoming releases include “A Point on a Slow Curve,” a suite of music for septet and four voices, inspired by visual artist Jay DeFeo’s monumental painting, “The Rose.”