A pinch of Salt for Ireland’s poets
A new publishing horizon has opened up for poets in Ireland with the news that Salt, an independent literary press based in Cambridge, is launching an Irish imprint. Chris Agee, poet and editor of the journal of contemporary writing Irish Pages, will be Salt’s editor for Ireland, with an office in Belfast.
Agee, whose third collection, Next to Nothing, was published by Salt last year, will be responsible for developing a programme of four to six Irish titles a year from April 2011. Salt will also publish Agee's anthology The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Irelandin January.
Chris Hamilton-Emery, Salt’s publishing director, says Agee’s appointment marks its long-term commitment to new Irish writing. “We all look forward to developing a significant list of the highest quality,” he adds.
Born in 1956 in San Francisco, Agee has lived in Ireland since 1979, and he’s already open for business. Submissions from Irish poets, north and south, published and unpublished, or non-Irish poets living in Ireland, should be sent to Salt Ireland, Irish Pages Ltd, 129 Ormeau Road, Belfast, BT7 1SH, Northern Ireland.
Recession lines up an obsessive Christmas
The Hodges Figgis bookshop, on Dawson Street in Dublin, isn’t short on Irish sections. Right inside the front door are Irish History, Contemporary Ireland and Irish Biography. But lately it has started a new section, a heavily laden table called Recession Obsession. It’s piled high with books on the boom and the bust by Michael Clifford, Shane Coleman, Fintan O’Toole, Dearbhail McDonald, Matt Cooper, Shane Ross, Nick Webb, Ken Foxe et al.
And it's not just the political and economic scenario that's charted in this genre: Hodges Figgis has added offerings on the cultural, social and philosophical side of it all too. Beyond Consolation: How we Became Too Clever for God . . . and Our Own Good,by the Irish Times columnist John Waters, sits alongside T he Dubliner Diariesby Trevor White, described by its publisher, Lilliput Press, as an awkward history of the Celtic Tiger by a man who tried to capture it and ended up being mauled.
It seems a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas to think of a public already grappling with the gloom and doom rushing to scoop up books on the subject, but all the signs are that some of these will be big holiday-season books – Ross and Webb's Wasters: The People Who Squander Your Taxes on White-elephant Projects, International Junkets and Favours for Their Mates – and How They Get Away with Itis at No 1 in the Irish best-seller list this week. This made it part of a hat trick for Penguin Group, which has the top spot in all four categories in the Irish charts this week with different books.
Tóibín and Donoghue square off again
While the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards shortlists announced on Thursday saw Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín, Paul Murray, Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle and Emma Donoghue all in the ring for the Hughes Hughes Irish Novel of the Year award (you'll find coverage from yesterday's paper on irishtimes.com), across the water two of the contenders – Tóibín for Brooklyn and Donoghue for Room– also saw them selves pitted against each other in the British Galaxy National Book Awards. They're up for the International Author of the Year title alongside Jonathan Franzen, Stieg Larsson, Kathryn Stockett and Christos Tsiolkas. The winner will be announced on November 10th.
