Plugd Records & Café (3 Cornmarket St.)

Musician Paul Dunlea & Poet Billy Ramsell. With Australia’s Damen O’Brien (winner of the 2025 The Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize). MC for the night: Dean Browne.

Exclusive to Cork World Book Fest, Book Fest by Night showcases a new collaboration between Jazz trombonist Paul Dunlea (‘a thoughtful and sensitive composer, with a gift for blending instruments to paint pictures in sound’) and poet Billy Ramsell, no stranger to the sound a poem makes: ‘To the chin-fingering, studiedly attentive pews/ the piano says: There are channels in the city of Autumn/ where the river’s epidermis shows such poise/ the fireflies will clone themselves in soundless ebony water.’

The evening will be opened by multi-award-winning Australian poet Damen O’Brien, the 2025 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize Winner, with MC Dean Browne.

All taking place in Cork’s Plugd Records, the intimate home of vinyl and poems.

Although at home in a variety of musical styles, Cork Trombonist/Composer/Arranger, Paul Dunlea concentrates primarily on Jazz and Improvisation. This has furthered his reputation as one of Irelands most in demand musicians.

Dunlea has performed/toured/recorded with the likes of Michael Bublé, Cassandra Wilson, Frankie Valli, Liam O’Maonlaoi, Mick Flannery, Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire), Bryce Dressner (The National), Lewis Nash, Peter Washington, Billy Drummond, David O’ Rourke’s O’ Rourkestra, Sachal Vadsandani, John Clayton, RTE Concert Orchestra, The Dublin City Jazz Orchestra, The New Irish Jazz Orchestra, The Syd Lawrence Orchestra, Hot House Big Band, Freezeroom & Brian Deady.

Dunlea is a graduate of the CIT Cork School of music holding both a bathelors degree in trombone performance and a masters degree in composition. He has held the chair of principle trombone with the Band 1 Brigade – Irish Defence Forces since 2001.

2011 saw the released his debut album ‘Bi-polAr’ to critical acclaim – reaching #1 in the iTunes chart. 2016 saw the release of his second album ‘Fraternal’ recorded at the renowned Bunker Studios, Brooklyn, NY featuring bassist Peter Washington, drummer Billy Drummond, guitarist David O’ Rourke (co-leader) & Cork’s Cormac McCarthy. Paul’s third album is due out in early 2019.

In 2013 Dunlea established his own big band as a creative outlet for his own compositions. To date, the band has performed sell out shows across the country in venues such as The Opera House, Cork, The Grand Opera House, Belfast & The Everyman Theatre – Cork along with headlining the 2015 Cork & Limerick Jazz Festivals. Entire concerts have also been broadcast nationally on both RTE and BBC radio. Dunlea is also musical director of the New Irish Jazz Orchestra.

Billy Ramsell was born in Cork in 1977 and educated at the North Monastery and UCC. He has published two collections with Dedalus Press, Complicated Pleasures in 2007 and The Architect’s Dream of Winter in 2013, which was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award and has appeared in Italian translation.

He was awarded the Chair of Ireland Bursary for 2013 and the Poetry Ireland Residency Bursary for 2015. He has been invited to read his work at many festivals and literary events around the world, most recently in Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, Italy, Albania and Kosovo. He lives in Cork where he co-runs an educational publishing company.

Damen O’Brien is a multi-award-winning Australian poet. His prizes include the Moth Poetry Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. In 2024, Damen won the Fingal Poetry Competition, the Ware Poets International Poetry Competition, the Ros Spencer Award, the Val Vallis Award and the Hunter Writers Centre Grieve Award. His poems have been published in seven countries, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net and Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. You can find Damen’s poems in Aesthetica Literary Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, New Ohio Review, Poetry Wales, London Magazine, Meanjin, Cordite and other journals. Damen’s latest book of poetry is Walking the Boundary (Pitt Street Poetry, 2024). In 2024, Damen was a juror on the Montreal International Poetry Prize and in 2025, Damen will travel to Ireland as part of the Vincent Buckley Poetry grant.
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Dean Browne received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. Recent poems have appeared in London Magazine and New York Review of Books. His first collection After Party will be published by Picador this year.