Poet Catherine Ann Cullen gives a talk on “Full of Frolics and Fiddle-De-Dees”: Songs as children’s books

DCU's School of English in conjunction with Catherine Ann Cullen (Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland 2019-2021) will host a talk on “Full of Frolics and Fiddle-De-Dees”: Songs as children’s books and vice versa.

Date and Time: Tuesday, 15 February 2022 - 18.00-18:50 

Location: AHC.SG05 - All Hallows' Campus, Senior House, Ground Floor, Room 5

This talk with the Centre for Research in Children’s and Young Adult Literature and through the MA in Children’s and Young Adult Literature Degree programme takes its title from Julia Donaldson's first children's book, A Squash and a Squeeze, which started life as a song.

Cullen's fourth children's book, due in autumn 2022 from Veritas, is based on one of her contributions to the nationwide  traditional Songs for Our Children project. In this talk, Cullen will look at songs that have become picture books, songs that have influenced picture books, and a few books that have become songs. She will interrogate why they work and what they can teach children, through features that render the texts memorable such as compact storytelling, incremental repetition, rhyming, choruses and alliteration. She will draw on her experience of writing for and reading to children for over twenty years. 

Catherine Ann Cullen is the inaugural Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland 2019-2021. She is an award-winning poet, children’s author and songwriter, and recipient of a prestigious Kavanagh Fellowship in 2018. She has published three poetry collections including The Other Now: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus 2016), and her three children’s books are The Magical, Mystical, Marvellous Coat (Little, Brown, 2001) which won a gold award for poetry and folklore from the American Parents Association, Thirsty Baby (Little, Brown 2003) and All Better: Poems on illness and recovery (Little Island 2019). She has two children’s books forthcoming in 2022, including one based on her song about the legend of St Brigid’s cloak from Veritas.

She has presented her research into Irish broadside ballads at many conferences and some of her academic work is published by The Ballad Partners in London. She has twice won the Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award, won best song in Dublin City Council’s Camac Competition 2018 and was joint winner of the Joyce-Cycle Poetry Award 2019. Her new lyrics to Ode to Joy were sung by choirs, families and individuals across Ireland on World Music Day 2020 as a tribute to front line staff. Her poem ‘Triskele’ was shortlisted for Irish Poem of the Year 2020.

Please email Susan Byrne (susan.byrne@dcu.ie) if you wish to attend.