From Volunteer to Speaker with Ruth Ennis

This year’s schools’ programme was packed with lively and engaging events, bringing hundreds of students together with an array of Ireland’s wonderful children’s writers and illustrators. The events included everything from hearing readings from new books, to discussions about themes covered, and workshop sessions involving writing, drawing, crafting and translation. One of these events was ‘Make Your Own Shaped Poetry’ with poet and verse-novelist Ruth Ennis. In today’s guest blog post, we loved hearing more from Ruth about the event, and how it was a bit of a full circle moment…

I was chatting with a volunteer at the Dublin Book Festival this year. I was working the children’s area book stall, as part of Gutter Bookshop. A point of conversation that came up was how hard it is to know what to do after you finish an undergraduate degree in college. You’re stepping into the world where career prospects suddenly become all-encompassing. When I finished my B.A. in English and Drama, I had absolutely no idea what to do with my life.

So, I volunteered at the Dublin Book Festival.

It was the autumn of 2017, I was 21 years old, and I was throwing my CV to everywhere and anywhere to see where it stuck. The Dublin Book Festival was one of the few that replied. The volunteer co-ordinator of the festival, the wonderful Paul Donnelly, led me and fifty-odd other volunteers to help with the running of the events, all of us fuelled by caffeine and pure thrill alone. Back then, Smock Alley was the sole venue for the festival, and it quickly became my favourite building in Dublin. I’ve lots of fond memories volunteering for the festival that year. It was when I was first introduced to Bob Johnson and the Gutter Bookshop. I remember sitting in the green room with Patrick McCabe, who was incredibly generous with his time, giving writing advice to a wide-eyed Ruth who didn’t know what an ISBN was at that stage. I got to sit in on my very first ProperBook event by Sarah Webb, which led to a lifelong love of children’s literature. It genuinely was the first time I ever felt a part of a community.

Of course, I went back for more. In 2018 I applied to be a marketing and administrative assistant and worked as part of a trio led by the festival director, Julianne Mooney Siron. I loved working the festival this year. Julianne catered my tasks to my interests, which was in children’s literature, as I just started my M.Phil. in the subject in the same term. I got to work and design the new children’s treasure hunt, which was such a joy. I met talented authors and illustrators in Ireland who would later become peers. I helped run launches, workshops, walking tours. I learned so much in just a few months, and it gave me a skillset that informed my career in the Irish literature sector for years to come.

For years after, I became a regular attendee at the Dublin Book Festival. Sometimes I was a casual, amateur (emphasis on amateur!) photographer and videographer for the festival. You can still see my end-of-festival video on the DBF YouTube channel, complete with shaky camera footage and terrible editing (there’s a reason I didn’t pursue filmmaking). But it’s still so lovely to have a part of me always woven into the fabric of the festival’s history in a small way, and rewatching those clips when writing this blog was a lovely way to revisit fond memories.

More recently I turned my attention to writing. In 2023, I had a poem published in I Am the Wind: Irish Poems for Children Everywhere, edited by Sarah Webb and Lucinda Jacob, illustrated by Ashwin Chacko, published by Little Island. It was a shaped poem (meaning it was formatted in the shape of the topic) called “Umbrella” and was the first time I had been published in a children’s book. This year, I saw the call out for artists to apply for the 2025 Dublin Book Festival, and sent in my application. I was so thrilled to learn it was accepted and I was officially going to be on the 2025 programme. My festival event was on the school’s programme: a workshop for children, teaching them about shaped poetry and getting them to write their own poems. While I’ve attended and co-hosted workshops in the past, this was due to be the first time I was going solo. I was terrified. I was seeking advice from fellow children’s literature artists who never fail to be endlessly reassuring and supportive, and that fear turned to excitement just in time for the event. It was held in the Chester Beatty and attended by the 5th class students of St David’s National school.

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It was one of the best days of my life. I did a quick survey to gauge the student’s interest in poetry. There were a few hands up for the question “who hates poetry” which is expected and a welcome challenge! I showed them some examples of shaped poetry I love and then let them create their own poems. It’s not an exaggeration to say their work blew me away. We had poems about beloved pets in the shape of dogs, about the changing seasons in the shape of trees, we had poems about community in the shape of a football. Their writing was creative, inspired, and often profound. When they finished their work, I asked for a show of hands who loved poetry now–I’m so delighted to say plenty of minds were changed that day.

The highlight of the day was when some students asked to take worksheets home so they could write more poems later on, my heart just swelled at the sight of future poets in that moment. I spent the rest of the weekend on the bookstall for Gutter Bookshop, where I work part-time. I chatted with friendly faces, caught up with old friends, reunited with folks who I haven’t seen in a long time. I attended a meet-up as part of the Discover Irish Kids’ Books campaign, and met lots of talented new voices entering the children’s literary scene. One child had me sign their copy of I Am the Wind while I was working; it made my day. I couldn’t help but beam at the excitement and drive of this year’s festival volunteers, knowing that this was the start of a whole new world for them, just like how it was for me. It was something of a homecoming, doing my first author event at Dublin Book Festival this year.

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I’m beginning a new chapter in my life as a writer; I have my debut novel Shorelines out in February 2026 with Little Island, and I’m two months into my run as Emerging Writer in Residence at dlr LexIcon. All of this, much of who I am today, stems from that first day as a volunteer at Dublin Book Festival. I’ll forever be grateful for the festival being my first real community, and that we will continue being a part of each other’s stories for years to come.