Racker Donnelly
Racker Donnelly
Former UK Slam Champion Poet, Irish Times Speaker of the Year & Grand Marshal of the Dublin Riviera, Racker Donnelly has performed for many music, comedy, arts, folk & story clubs & festivals, with the Chieftains in Bray, with Christy Moore at the Frank Harte Festival & with Dara O Briain & Ardal O'Hanlon at Bloomsbury Theatre.
He has featured three times for Liverpool Irish Festival, five times for Sidmouth Folk Week, four times for Whitby Folk Week, & for the Frank Harte festival in Dublin & for many Burns Nights, Bloomsdays & Mylesdays (for Flann O'Brien).
He was a guest at Sidmouth for the 5th time in 2022.
Racker has performed his one-man show in Ireland, Melbourne, Sheffield, London, Liverpool, New York & for the Edinburgh Festival & sometimes performs with Jacquelyn Hynes (as RackerJacq) or Carol Anderson or Emma Scarr or Thomas McCarthy (Ireland's Folk Singer of the Year 2019).
Racker Donnelly has MCd & performed in concerts at London’s City Hall & the Musical Traditions Club (where he's a resident performer), the Royal Festival Hall & the Purcell Room, London Arts & Community Festivals, Irish Centres & the Irish Embassy, in Trafalgar Square, the Bray Mermaid & the Ashmolean Museum & has been the featured poet on BBC Radio 4’s SATURDAY LIVE & for Poet in the City & on lots of Irish radio shows. Many of his poems were commissioned for Irish National Radio & replayed on pick-of-the-week Playback.
Having posted over 2,175 of his Rackerhymes on Facebook, Racker also sings & babbles in Irish/Scottish/Music-Hall Nights & Story/Poetry/Comedy events, usually in English.
SEAMUS HEANEY
Wow!
CHRISTY MOORE
It's always good to hear you. What you do is very musical.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE
James Joyce himself would have loved this. Clever, humorous, articulate, marvellous.
BBC RADIO 4
Brilliant. Genius. Lovely stuff.
KINGSTON GUARDIAN
Roaringly funny, left the audience crying with laughter.
MARTIN CARTHY
A wonderful performer.
ELIZA CARTHY
Awesome.
WICKLOW PEOPLE
The spellbound audience never took their eyes off Donnelly.
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT
Radio as it should be!
FOLK LONDON
The hilarious poet and raconteur.
PADDY MOLONEY of THE CHIEFTAINS
I'd like to bring him to all the gigs.
IRISH WORLD
Getting to the end of his CD, I played it all again. I have grown to love it. Fabulous.
KEN HALL
Never less than brilliant. The best performance poet I've ever heard:
a breath of fresh air on the London folk scene. Racker for Poet Laureate!
ARDAL O'HANLON
This guy blew me away!
IRISH POST
The man is a genius with words. Brilliant material.
SIDMOUTH HERALD
One of Folk's most respected living performers.
Sheffield-bred, Dublin-buttered, a former journalist, teacher, lexicotomist and council group leader, Racker [as Peter] Donnelly also wrote an acclaimed musical play A WOMAN'S WARTIME, which toured for years, and the epic drama WOKKA-DOODLE-DANDY or Woking,
You Must be Joking!
email: rackerdonnelly@talktalk.net