About Me
My name is Remco Jacobs. I am a singer-songwriter with a deep love of literature, music, and history. Originally from the Netherlands, I moved to Ireland in 2024 and now live in the countryside of County Wexford, in Ireland’s Sunny South East. Once a week, I travel to Dublin to lead the Poetry Strolls, guided walking tours I have developed around the life and work of James Joyce.
WHY JAMES JOYCE?
What fascinates me about James Joyce is that he was not only a writer, but also a musician. Joyce possessed a fine tenor voice and, before his literary career took shape, harboured serious musical ambitions. He entered singing competitions and even imagined touring coastal towns with a lute, performing ballads and sea shanties.
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This musical sensibility permeates his writing. Music and song appear throughout Joyce’s work, often functioning like a cinematic soundtrack to a scene. His first published collection of poems, Chamber Music, was explicitly intended to be set to music, as Joyce himself noted in a letter to his brother. Approaching Joyce through sound, rhythm, and performance opens a distinctive way into his world.
Why the Poetry Strolls?
Ireland is a country where history is not confined to the past, but remains a lived and present experience. Time seems to operate differently here: past, present, and future often feel as though they are sharing the same space.
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Walking through a city or landscape, one moves through multiple layers of time simultaneously. Music, poetry, and storytelling heighten this experience, allowing those layers to come into focus. These three elements have long served as my compass for understanding the places I inhabit. Sharing that way of navigating the world is at the heart of the Poetry Strolls.
