The Irish Arts Center’s inaugural Irish Poetry Festival was a standing room only event last Saturday in New York, proving that the demand for a forum for Irish verse is as strong as ever.

Sometimes when you get chatting to a person who has emigrated from Ireland, you can catch a glimpse of the country’s own evolution over the last thirty or so years. That’s very much the case with Buncrana, County Donegal man Turlough McConnell, whose writing and music took him first to Dublin and then on to New York.

The great review in The New York Times on Monday for "The New Electric Ballroom," the new play by Irish playwright Enda Walsh, further reinforces the remarkable story of Irish success in New York in recent years.

During his visit to the U.S. last week, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin announced the allocation of $2.68 million in grants for Irish organizations throughout the U.S. The Emigrant Support Program, managed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, provides the grants.

He’s American and Korean, but U.S. Army Sergeant Seamus O’Fianghusa considers himself an Irishman through and through. As the fluent Gaelic speaker prepares for a deployment to Afghanistan, he talks about his love for all things Irish.

The Irish Consulate has announced details of the first ever visit to Philadelphia of Ireland’s Naval Service flagship the Eithne, from July 14-17 in Philadelphia.

The Irish Arts Center of New York City has brought their hugely successful “Fighting Irishmen” exhibition overseas for the first time to Northern Ireland. Some of the biggest names in Irish boxing, including Barry McGuigan, Paul McCloskey and Charlie Nash, attended the launch.

A round up of Irish traditional music events in the New York area from Paul Keating

As usual, those road warriors from the old sod Teada, led by fiddler Oisin Mac Diarmada, have a busy schedule! Hartford to host fundraiser for P.V. O'Donnell, Boot camp at the Irish Arts Center and mark your cards for Cape Cod.

The rainy New York weather didn't keep the Irish from dancing the day away on the Hudson River at the Irish Arts Center’s annual New York City Irish Dance Festival.

Mark your calendars, tomorrow and Saturday Manhattan’s Irish Arts Center and Glucksman Ireland House at NYU will host a remarkable two day tribute to Brian Friel, the undisputed master of Irish drama, in honor of his 80th birthday.

The best of the best step-dancers in the northeast will once again come together at this year’s New York City Irish Dance Festival, presented by the Irish Arts Center.

Who said Gaelic was a dying language? Ta an teanga chomh faiseanta in Nua-Eabhrac go mbeidh la specialta chun é a cheiliúradh. In fact, Gaelic is so popular in New York that is has its own special day to celebrate all its good

O’Kelly’s subtle and moving play about the African-American ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ voyage to Ireland in 1845, co-starring Sorcha Fox, could easily have been a deadly dull sermon about the need to protect universal human rights. But in O’Kelly’s hands it instead becomes an absorbing meditation on what makes us human, what connects us to each other and what tears us apart.

The most requested song of the day by the couple and the guests alike, was the Pogues’ hit “Fairytale of New York.”

The 248th annual St. Patrick's Day Parade drew hundreds of thousands of people along Fifth Avenue, and the festive mood was heightened by great weather and the popularity of the man who led it. Michael J. Gibbons, son of an immigrant father from County Mayo and a mother from Nova Scotia of Scots Irish descent.

View the beautiful photos in our Natasha Richardson gallery Leave your thoughts on Liam and Natasha in our Tributes forum IrishCentral.com's own Father Tim on loss and death   Irish Americans have been paying tribute to tragic actress

IrishCentral publisher Niall O'Dowd says that Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson were the class act of the Irish American community in New York.

Irish Americans and Irishmen disagree on many things. From the proper way to serve Guinness (Warm? Chilled?) to foreign policy; however, one thing I have realized my friends in both communities agree on is mutual confusion on why I would want to learn

John Spinks' father wasn't an artist, but his life will live on in art. When Spinks' elderly English father began to write affectionate slice-of-life letters to his emigrant artist son in America in the 1980s, he never imagined for a minute that those private correspondences would one day end up on canvases, being viewed by strangers. The working class Newcastle man voted conservative all his life and would not have welcomed the scrutiny of a public gallery, but there's no denying the strange power of a letter between intimates - his son has just taken it a step further by making their private correspondence a subject for his art.

It takes 45 minutes to put on (and take off) the prosthetic green ogre costume. Then there's the weight of it. After that there's the challenge of making it look lifelike, and beyond that there's the task of trying to sing and dance in it. That Irish-American actor Brian d'Arcy James succeeds in every one of these challenges is a tribute to his skills as the go-to guy for new musicals and challenging new roles.

It was certainly a tale of two countries over this past weekend as the Culture Ireland task force hit the ground running for their second year of participation at the largest gathering of arts presenters in the world in New York City. Again traditional musicians played a major role in their contingent of almost 80 people in the theater, dance and music world coming over to strategically display their wares in the Big Apple at the 52nd annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) Conference at the New York Hilton held over the weekend. The gathering is said to attract 4,000 people from all 50 states and 25 countries that are seriously involved in the business of promoting and delivering the arts through the U.

A the Green Fields of America Ensemble finished the Banquet entertainment program at the recent Ireland in Dixie Weekend in Atlanta, the capacity crowd rose to their feet with spontaneous joy at the marvelous music they had just witnessed.

It was a highlight of the Comhaltas annual gathering in North America, whose mission statement proscribes the preservation and promotion of Irish traditional music.

There can be no contesting CCE importance in Ireland itself since 1951.

QUESTION - what's worse than being a militant Irish Republican with a chip on your shoulder in 1975? Answer being a militant Irish Republican with a chip on your shoulder and shudder discovering you're secretly English.

That's the dilemma faced by young Liam at the heart of Tim McGillicuddy's The Irish Play, a pleasingly jaundiced cultural identity caper that's currently playing at the Irish Arts Center in New York. Staged by the accomplished Hamm & Clov Stage Company, the group has successfully produced over seven new plays within the Irish immigrant community since 2001, and they can add this current production to their list of unqualified successes.

THIS week the Irish Arts Center in New York presents Rock Doves, the new play by Belfast-based Marie Jones, author of the Broadway smash hit Stones in His Pockets. Set in her home city, a place thriving now that the Troubles are over, Rock Doves centers around four wild and colorful characters as they try to navigate the "new" Northern Ireland.

There are few contemporary playwrights who have such a shrewd grasp of the countless privations (and all the private dreams) of the Irish working class as Jones.

2007 was a banner year filled with extraordinary new Irish plays, films, concerts and novels, and a sack full of Tony and Oscar nods lie ahead for many new and seasoned Irish artists. CAHIR O'DOHERTY takes a look back at some of the year's highlights (and inevitable lowlights).

FILMS starring Irish actors will dominate the awards season this year.

BILL Ochs has organized another intriguing master class called "Ornamentation Bootcamp" at the Irish Arts Center on Sunday, February 10 from 1-5 p.m.

For students who have a working command of the tin or low whistle or the flute, they can learn more about how to ornament their tunes from the veteran musician who will also share his expertise about the various styles of playing those instruments.

FOR the first seven years of his life Irish actor Paul Ronan, father of current Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan, lived in Dublin's infamous Ballymun flats. Across town his wife Monica grew up in Crumlin, another working class suburb on the south side of the city.

Since both communities fostered a surprising level of local pride, it's no surprise they share the outlook and sensibility of people whose experiences have kept them grounded all their lives.

THIS week the public toilets at Central Park's Bethesda Fountain will perform a role they were hardly intended for - they've become a full scale theater for the dynamic new Irish play Ladies and Gents, presented by the Irish Arts Center.

Written and directed by Dubliner Paul Walker, Ladies and Gents is based on a particularly nasty 1950s Dublin tabloid scandal that is certain to surprise audiences with its adult themes and shocking denouement.

Walker originally conceived of the play as a kind of film noir style thriller set in a public restroom in 1957 Dublin, and the setting could hardly be more apt.

Irish photographer John Minihan's portraits of the famous, including Samuel Beckett, Edna O'Brien, and Francis Bacon, have established him as one of the finest portrait photographers of his generation. This week the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Brian Cowen will open a new exhibition of Minihan's work chronicling the golden years of America's most elderly Irish immigrants at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan. CAHIR O'DOHERTY talks to the celebrated portrait artist about his legendary work.

This week New York's first ever Irish theater festival will take to the stage, featuring nine exciting new plays by Ireland's most celebrated playwrights. CAHIR O'DOHERTY talks to the festival's artistic director George Heslin about how and why he made this extraordinary new festival happen.

THIS weekend New York's first ever Irish theater festival, called 1st Irish 2008, will begin at the Theaters.

MOTHER Nature has been very cruel to the Gulf and Caribbean areas this hurricane season, and so very devastating in the short and long term for the people who live there.

Complaining about the damp weather that beset the ICONS Festival in Canton, Massachusetts this past weekend would pale in comparison, even though the itinerant event that has moved from June to August to September this year in an attempt to seek the perfect conditions that would allow the weekend event to properly exploit its many assets.

No doubt, the heavy rain on Friday night and its softer showers on Sunday sandwiched Saturday's day of comfortable reprieve dampened the attendance - and the grounds - for the ambitious festival and the bottom line.

THERE are some true-life adventure stories that will be told centuries from now. Thanks to the work of passionate writers and performers like Dublin's Donal O'Kelly, the epic Irish rescue story of the Catalpa will surely rank amongst them.

O'Kelly's play Catalpa - which opens this week at the Irish Arts Center in New York - tells the relatively little known story of a daring Irish rescue attempt that actually changed world history.

THE economic experts seem to be having trouble deciding whether or not we are officially in a recession for some reason, but you can be sure that a whole lot of big ticket items will not purchased this holiday season because everyone's spending power is reduced.

One alternative is a wide selection of "little ticket" offerings for seasonal concerts which are in abundance if Irish music is what you pine for the year long. Gathering with family and friends and enjoying a live Christmas show, Celtic style, has that old-fashioned appeal that could help overcome the economic doldrums and remind us that it is a season of hope after all.

Darrah Carr Dance celebrated its tenth anniversary with a weekend of performances at the Irish Arts Center in New York on October 25-26.

Drawing from Irish music, step dance footwork, modern dance and tap, Carr's choreographies blur the boundaries between different dance disciplines. Carr calls this style ModErin, encapsulating the modern and Irish Elements.

He would be 49 now, close to Barack Obama in age and sharing this moment with him. Maybe he'd be in elective politics, perhaps as Hillary's replacement in the Senate. Or he might even have been thinking to run for the job his father once held. We will never know.

Award winning film director Terry George and celebrated Irish singer Susan McKeown have been selected as the grand marshals for this year's inclusive Sunnyside Woodside St. Patrick's Day Parade in Queens on March 1 at 1:30 p.m.

THE Affinia Hotel in Manhattan was home to nearly 100 Irish language speakers last weekend who attended an Irish language conference organized by Glr na nGael in an effort to promote the language in North America and Canada. The conference titled "Fs Ghaeilge Mheirice Thuaidh" (Irish Language Vision for North America) was attended by Irish speakers from all over the country. Numerous people addressed the conference from various organizations associated with promoting and teaching the language, including Padraig O Siadhail from St.

During his visit to the U.S. last week, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheal Martin, announced more than $1.

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin says he will travel to Washington, D.C. after the presidential election to continue lobbying efforts on behalf of the undocumented Irish, and to push for creation of a new E-3 visa program that would allow for a more extensive exchange of workers between Ireland and the U.

Aisling Irish Community Center in Yonkers launched a new documentary, "Memory Brings Us Back: Irish Stories Of Farewells and Fortunes," at the Irish Consulate in New York on Thursday, November 20.

The documentary features 10 Irish immigrants who arrived in the U.S.

Quinn Mighty Irish

NEW York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is an interesting candidate for mayor two years hence. She has been polishing her Irish credentials carefully in the past few months, leaving few in doubt about her ambitions.

She attended the Irish Arts Center star-studded awards dinner on Friday night where she was presented with an award amidst shots of her with Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Flatley and others.

The Irish Arts Center hosted its annual Spirit of Ireland gala at the New York Athletic Club on October 3, and special guest Bono showed up to collect an award on behalf of the late, great Irish singer Ronnie Drew.

The former Dubliners frontman succumbed to cancer earlier this year, and a star-studded list of actors, politicians and artists turned up to pay homage to one of the finest vocalists to ever come out of Ireland.

Among those present were actors Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne, boxer John Duddy and the AIF's Loretta Brennan Glucksman.

Christmas is almost upon us, and what better way to get yourself into a cheerful holiday mood than with Dylan Thomas' dreamlike reverie, "A Child's Christmas in Wales," now playing at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York?

Directed by Charlotte Moore, and featuring traditional music and songs, the show runs through January 4, and will send you home glowing with good will toward all.

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep..

When the annual cultural conclave known as APAP rolls into New York on a wintry weekend in a city that prides itself on being the cultural capital of the world, it sets in motion a tsunami of much needed work for artists and presenters and all those who rely on them. So fertile and multicultural is this yearly confluence of artistry that it continues to interest me weeks after it ends. And rather than weigh in with the downward trends all around us, there should be room for optimism and nourishment of our everyday lives if we turn to local arts venues to enrich us, rather than all the financial vehicles that have gone off course.

At the Irish Arts Center (www.irishartscenter.org) where adult classes for the winter semester have just opened up this week comes another in a series of master classes with visiting musicians.

New York-based Celtic chanteuse will be taking a break from recording in Ireland to be part of the Irish Arts Center's New Voices series on April 10 and 11. "I chose to do my album in Ireland because the people I wanted to work with are based there," she explains.

"Moya Brennan's band leader and producer, Fionan De Barra, is someone I wanted to work when two years ago.

Pierce Turner will be offering what he calls a “classy St. Paddy’s Day” at Joe’s Pub in New York by promising to learn a few classy Irish

During his time on Long Island, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern also opened the John Minihan photographic exhibit "To Love Two Countries: Ireland’s Greatest Generation in America" at the Irish American Society of Nassau, Suffolk and Queens in Mineola.