The Migrant Writers Association Ireland (MWAI) is a new highly professional not- for-profit network bringing together both established and budding migrant writers in Ireland to provide another voice to contemporary Irish literary landscape. The association provides a forum for migrant writers to articulate their experiences by encouraging high-rate creative productions in a positive and dynamic environment.
Through various modes of expression: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, drama criticisms, visual art, critical and reflective essays, reviews, reminiscences, interviews, letters and editorials, MWAI members and contributors capture the realities and changes brought about by the recent inward migrations to Ireland as well as moments, experiences and cultural sensibilities indicative and reminiscent of their native societies. The inauguration of MWAI marks a new turn and resurgence of minority creative capacity in a highly differentiated twenty-first century Irish society. The association gives a new vigour and orientation to modern Irish artistic and intellectual setting at a time when diversity and difference mark a shift from a creative culture that has long been dominated by a majority voice that has failed to find expression for new minority experiences. Generally, the association gives migrant writers in Ireland
an opportunity to achieve fulfilment as creative artists and commentators on events past and present.
In Ireland, the artistic landscape is currently dominated by majority artists. Only very few new migrant writers are admitted into the existing creative space, and this admission is either by invitation or co-optation. The result is that a very great majority of highly talented migrant artists who fervently wish to be heard and appreciated have found themselves in the wilderness of artistic abandonment. Given this situation, MWAI seeks to provide a complementary voice to Irish art and letters and encourage new works by gifted migrant artists and critics by making their ideas and thoughts visible to various audiences through words, the oil with which feelings and thoughts are formed and expressed, aware that feelings bottled up and lived experiences not externalised are like an over-ripe boil under severe pressure waiting to rupture. Thus the association wishes to give new migrant artists an opportunity to recreate their
dreams, articulate their present and reconstruct their past by giving vent to the internal perturbations raging within the deep recesses of their creative mind.
