How sorry is the state of the nation?
Things must be bad when a literary periodical devotes an issue to the state of the country. Ireland in crisis is the theme of the latest issue of Irish Pages,edited in Belfast by Chris Agee (vol 6, no 1; €14). "Our country has been undone. The national purpose is in a heap of fragments. We are living at the heart of a national catastrophe," writes the poet Thomas McCarthy (below) in his essay The Years of Forgetting 2006-2011. "The citizens of the Dáil are now the indentured servants of European capital. We must all work like dogs to pay for our passage through this great night of the Irish nationalist soul." Scholars worry, he says, and theatre directors fret and form citizens' assemblies, but poets also worry. "Yes, the poets of my generation really worry. Was it some single process of national thinking that brought this catastrophe to pass? Was it our careless way with words?" He writes of having mixed emotions about the late minister for finance Brian Lenihan, and of working on a poem for him. "I can see more wreckage far out to sea; / And receding still. The pilot boat, / With all its unused life-belts, / Has the mark on its prow where you / Were pushed, Brian. Black gulls return / To their feeding grounds: Paris, Berlin." The issue also publishes the lecture What Happened to Ireland?given by economist Morgan Kelly during the Kilkenny Arts Festival this summer.
A book fair by any other name . . .
It’s that season when the book trade descends on Germany for Frankfurt Book Fair, which starts on Wednesday and continues through the weekend, with Iceland in the spotlight this year. So fast is the pace of change to digital, it has been mooted that the “Book” in its title is becoming a misnomer. The new name Frankfurt Content Fair has even been floated: it might be technically more accurate, but it lacks the magic attached to that simple, age-old word “book”.
De Waal fans’ next porcelain pleasure
Readers who had withdrawal symptoms when they finished Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes, a family history told through the prism of his collection of tiny netsuke figurines, will rejoice at news that he has a new book in the pipeline. The White Book: A Journey Through Porcelainwill be published by Chatto&Windus. Well known as a ceramic artist long before he wrote his bestselling memoir, de Waal returns to this territory in The White Book, which is billed as the story of the porcelain trade and man's obsession with porcelain over the past 1,000 years. "Porcelain is light when most things are heavy. It rings clear when you tap it. You can see the sunlight shine through. It is in the category of materials that turn objects into something else. It is alchemy. Porcelain starts elsewhere, takes you elsewhere. Who could not be obsessed?" he asks. The only fly in the ointment is that it won't be out until 2015.
Heaney poetry prize shortlist announced
The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, at Queen's University Belfast, has announced the shortlist for its £1,000 Prize for Poetry. The annual award, now in its second year, is for the best first collection published in the UK or Ireland in the preceding year. The list comprises Tom Duddy's The Hiding Place(Arlen House), Valerie Duff's To the New World(Salmon Poetry), Anna Robinson's The Finders of London(Enitharmon Press), Victor Tapner's Flatlands(Salt Publishing) and Katherine Towers's The Floating Man(Picador). The chairman of the judging panel is Harry Clifton, Ireland professor of poetry; the winner will be announced on November 25th.
