Experiments in Empathy: Ellen Bass & Tom Moore

But sometimes it’s too much to ask a person to inhabit the strange region of a foreign heart – ‘Experiment in Empathy’ by Ellen Bass, from Indigo (2020)

Later that afternoon, lonely and bored, you thought you’d found the sweetness in humankind – ‘Lab Rat’ by Tom Moore, from Brother Adam (2020)

Poetry has long been the bedfellow of beauty, but how do the author and reader enter the world of the rat, the tumour, the criminal? In a society that has kept acutely separate this past year, how does poetry narrow the gap between what we know and what we don’t? What does death feel like to the oyster, desire to the celibate, teeth to the apple?

Join us for this exploration of empathy, nature and science with poets Ellen Bass, Tom Moore and editor and criminologist, Sarah Byrne. Ellen and Tom will read from their respective 2020 collections, Indigo (Copper Canyon Press) and Brother Adam (Well Review Editions).

The Well Review was founded in Sunday’s Well, Cork in 2016 by Sarah Byrne and Christian Carley. It has received funding from the Arts Council since 2018. As a publisher, it has produced three eclectic anthologies featuring world-acclaimed writers, and two pamphlets: Ghost Q & A by Anne Carson and Brother Adam by debut poet, Tom Moore. It will publish a translation of Marina Tsvetaeva (trans. Sasha Dugdale) in 2021, as well as a pamphlet by an Irish debut poet. The Well Review regularly works in partnership with festivals and arts organisations to produce events, workshops and readings.