It fails to actually connect to anything, it just sits there. What's the problem?

I'm not familiar with IRC nor POE, but since no one else answered, I would hazard a guess that the POE and Tk Mainloops are not working together properly. POE has an eventloop, as does Tk; one needs to be in control (probably POE), and the slave loop (Tk) needs to be updated frequently, for it to be responsive.

See POE Tk interfaces

Your code

if ( fork() ) {
    MainLoop;
}
else {
    POE::Kernel->run();
}
[download]

seems awfully suspicious, in that it separates the Tk and POE eventloops. How do the parent and child communicate after forking?