**Please note - all these events are now booked out. We hope you enjoy ** Join us this December as we explore sustainable Christmas decorations and learn how to make a foam-free Winter arrangement from Irish grown & foraged material. We are delighted to welcome Anna Browne of Big Sky Flowers to our libraries for […]
Westmeath County Council, as part of its Decade of Centenaries programme, welcomes a new exhibition of photos from the Irish Civil War. Titled ‘Civil I Am’, the exhibition showcases around 40 images from the conflict, all collected from various archives and libraries. Curated by Galway-based historian Damien Quinn, the exhibition was recently displayed in Galway’s […]
Interested in joining a book club? We have plenty of options for you in Westmeath with book clubs for Adults and Children in different libraries around the county. Athlone Library host a children's book club "A Novel Idea" once a month. This group is full at the moment but if your child is interested in […]
It’s the week before Christmas, I have very little organized for the big day- there is shopping to be done, presents to be wrapped, and a house to make presentable. So, with one day’s leave left, I decided to do the sensible thing and ignore my responsibilities for another while and to head for the […]
Leanne O’Sullivan is a young poet who hails from Cork. Her Collection entitled “Waiting for my Clothes”, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2004. Her full Works come across as brutally honest, and poignant, and a personal journey of the physical is mapped in detail. I hope that these snippets below portray the richness of […]
The following Patchwork Poem comprises Lines from the work of Fintan O’Toole, a lover of music and of words, and frequent visitor to Athlone Library in his time. The poems in full can be read in the fourth Collection by the local Poetry Collective called “Poetry in the Park”, and this was published in 2018 […]
Orfhlaith Foyle is an intriguing Wordsmith – a Poet, Novelist, Playwright and Short Story writer. Orfhlaith was born in Nigeria to Irish parents. Around 1976 she came St. Peter’s N.S., Athlone. She made a gentle entrance, not knowing how to us she was quite exotic. Her life and career took her to numerous countries, ensuring […]
Kathleen from Athlone Library reviews The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This is a memoir of a successful journalist's journey from the deserted mining towns of the American Southwest. Jeanette’s father was an intelligent man, but was an alcoholic unable to support his family. Her mother was an Artist, in her own world, and was […]
This could have been a non-fiction title, and have become heavy with data, instead it is a work of fiction enriched by all the research it must have required. The book has three intertwinning stories, with beginnings in England in 1852, the United States in 2007, and China in 2098. And all this is what […]
In the year 2000, Irish Times journalist and poet Rosita Boland set herself the task of reading the 13th edition of the Chambers Dictionary from cover to cover, collecting words which delighted her in a notebook. She uses some of these unusual and evocative words as chapter headings in this beautifully written book which documents […]