Compiled by
GILES NEWINGTON
Franco-Irish festival requests the pleasure . . .
Pleasure/Plaisir/Pléisiúr: whether you say it in English, French or Irish, the theme is clear for the 13th Franco-Irish Literary Festival, which recently announced an impressive programme of events, all of them free and open to the public over the weekend of April 20th-22nd at Dublin Castle Coach House and the Alliance Française.
The highlight, at 12.15pm on Saturday, April 21st, is an interview with the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (below) by his fellow poet Peter Sirr. Also at the Coach House are readings, debates and three pleasure-related discussions (What Is Pleasure?; Writing, Reading and Pleasure; and Forbidden Pleasures), featuring Irish writers such as Kevin Barry, Belinda McKeon and Claire Keegan, with counterparts from the French literary world. As is now traditional, the festival will close with a Sunday literary brunch at the Alliance Française on Kildare Street.
Simultaneous interpretation will be provided at all events, and the organisers say they hope the English-speaking audience will play a big part in the discussions. See francoirishliteraryfestival.com.
Smyth honoured with $5,000 poetry award
Gerard Smyth is this year’s recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry, worth $5,000 (€3,759), from the University of St Thomas’s Center for Irish Studies, in St Paul, Minnesota. Smyth will read from his work on campus on April 20th, at a free public event that will cap a week of classroom visits and public appearances by the poet. Until recently a managing editor of The Irish Times, Smyth was born in Dublin in 1951 and began publishing poetry in the late 1960s. His most recent collection, The Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems, was published by Dedalus last year.
Over the Edge open for entries
In Galway, the 2012 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition is accepting poetry and fiction entries. The winner in each of these categories will receive €300, and one or other will then be chosen as the overall winner, receiving an additional €400. The winning poems and story will be published in Over the Edge’s 10th-birthday anthology, and the New Writer of the Year will also feature at a reading at Galway City Library.
The competition is open to writers worldwide; three poems of up to 40 lines, one poem of 100 lines, or stories of up to 3,000 words may be entered. The fee for one entry is €10, and the closing date is August 8th. Email over-the-edge-openreadings @hotmail.com or see overtheedge literaryevents.blogspot.com.
Handmade by Dublin’s primary authors
This week saw the unveiling, in the Long Room at Trinity College Dublin, of an exhibition of books made by Dublin primary pupils. The works are the result of Bookmarks, a three-month writing, illustration and bookbinding project organised by Trinity with support from the Ireland Funds.
This year’s programme involved 70 fifth- and sixth-class children from St Laurence O’Toole junior boys’ school in Dublin 1, O’Connell primary school in Dublin 1 and Assumption Junior Girls’ school in Walkinstown, Dublin. They attended workshops by the artist Hannah Maguire and the author Emer Martin, and Trinity staff helped them develop their stories by introducing them to the Pollard Collection, a hoard of more than 10,000 children’s books spanning three centuries.
The exhibition will run in the Long Room until April 17th.
