Paul Durcan’s talking pictures

LOOSE LEAVES:Only a brave actor would take on reading Paul Durcan's work – the poet's own readings are always sell-outs – but the 70-minute show Give me Your Hand, devised by two of our finest actors Dermot Crowley and Derbhla Molloy, has already proved a critical and popular success in New York, Chicago, Washington and London.

Now it’s Leitrim’s turn. The show features a collection of Durcan’s poems that he wrote in response to paintings in the National Gallery in London – with musings on why Cardinal Richelieu finds it “a hard old station staying off the drink”; why van Gogh’s mother “is so hot under the bra” and why the Arnolfinis’ “brains spill out on to the floor”. The New York Times said of the show: “Mr Crowley and Ms Molloy are fine company . . . It’s all too easy to give them that requested hand.”

Give Me Your Hand is on tonight at 8.30pm at The Dock, Carrick on Shannon, Co Leitrim. Tickets at the door, €15/€12.

A short week in Listowel

Details of this year’s Writers’ Week at Listowel, Co Kerry, were announced this week with an interesting line-up of speakers that includes Patrick deWitt, Germaine Greer and Peter Taylor. The festival runs from Wednesday, May 30th to Sunday, June 3rd.

The shortlist for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award, which has a prize fund of €20,000, was also announced. It’s a list of familiar names, all well used to the literary prize circuit: City of Bohane by Kevin Barry; The Cold Eye of Heaven by Christine Dwyer Hickey; The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright; The Dead Eight by Carlo Gébler; and Solace by Belinda McKeon.

Boyd on Bond

William Boyd, author of Restless and Any Human Heart, is to write the next James Bond novel. Finding the pitch-perfect heir to Ian Fleming is obviously proving a difficult task – Boyd is the third author in recent years to be invited by the Ian Fleming estate to write an official Bond novel, following the American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver, who wrote Carte Blanche in 2011, and Sebastian Faulks, whose Devil May Care was published – with great hoopla – to mark Fleming’s centenary in 2008. Boyd’s novel, as yet untitled, will be published in autumn 2013 by Jonathan Cape on this side of the Atlantic and by HarperCollins in the US.

Short story, big prize

Entry for the Powers Short Story competition is open for just a few more days: the exact closing date is April 17th at 11.59pm. In money terms it's a major prize with the winner bagging €10,000. The short story must be between 400 and 450 words on the theme "Celebrating What Truly Matters". The winning story will be announced and published on May 26th in The Irish Times Magazine. See irishtimes.com/life

David and Goliath

In what sounds like an interesting win-win venture, Dublin publisher Lilliput Press and globally linked Doubleday Ireland will be jointly publishing first-time novelist Donal Ryan. The Tipperary-born writer currently works at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and lives in Limerick. The idea is that the combined heft of the publishing houses will maximise exposure for the new author.