A literary roundup
New guidebook for targeted tours of Trinity
While the writer, satirist and Trinity College graduate Oliver Goldsmith is hard to miss on his plinth outside the main College Green entrance to TCD, the university has many other literati associated with it. Landmarks of many of them are listed in T rinity College Dublin: A Walking Guide,by Fergus Mulligan, which will be published on July 1st by Trinity College Library. Given that so many Dubliners take shortcuts through its city-centre campus via the various gates that link it to the city this little guidebook, complete with a particularly clear map, could enhance those journeys with all the nuggets of information packed into its 50 pages.
Many people will know the Samuel Beckett Centre, but less well-known is the fact that, past the thoroughfare wonderfully called the Narrows, House 39 on New Square is where Beckett lived while teaching in the college. Also on the trail is House 25 on the row known as the Rubrics, where John McGahern had rooms when he was a writing fellow, and House 22, where Goldsmith once lived. Mulligan also includes the tall redbrick building on Leinster Street by the Lincoln Place gate where Joyce’s future wife, Nora Barnacle, once worked as a chambermaid. Oscar Wilde and John Pentland Mahaffy are among writers referenced in the booklet.
As well as this new guidebook, the well-established student-led tours that last 30 minutes are in full swing for the summer, starting from Regent House, just inside Front Gate.
Kinsale Arts readings from ship to shore
A literary cruise around Kinsale Harbour on board the Spirit of Kinsale with the poet Thomas McCarthy is part of this year’s Kinsale Arts Week, which runs from July 10th to 18th. McCarthy will be reading from his collected works on this marine jaunt on July 12th, which departs from the quay opposite Actons Hotel at 4pm and lasts an hour. Tickets €16.
On the same day the winner of the 2009 Costa Book of the Year, the poet Christopher Reid (right), who was born in Hong Kong in 1949, will be at the festival – in the Trident Hotel at 6pm. Tickets €12. Two of his books appeared in 2009 in memory of his late wife Lucinda: A Scattering,which won the Costa, and The Song of Lunch.
MacCarthy’s ‘Limbo’ lands Fish poetry prize
Catherine Phil MacCarthy is the winner of the 2010 €1,000 Fish Poetry Prize. This year's judge, the poet Matthew Sweeney, read all the poems entered, which numbered just under 1,000. MacCarthy's poem Limbo, which deals with the theme of stillbirth in rural Ireland, is published in the 2010 Fish Anthology. In the introduction to the anthology Sweeney hails the way the poem deals with an old subject in a very sure-footed, contemporary manner – "understated, and because of that, packing a powerful emotional charge". MacCarthy will read Limboat the launch of the anthology at West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry on July 7th. Also there will be Jane Camens, the first Australian writer to win the Fish Short Story Prize since it started, in 1994. Judged by novelist Ronan Bennett, the winner receives €3,000.
Short course in short-story writing
A course in short-story writing, led by the Monaghan-born poet and fiction writer Mary O’Donnell, will run at the Patrick Kavanagh Centre in Inniskeen, Co Monaghan, on Saturday, July 31st and Sunday, August 1st. With the theme Earning Space on the Page, it is suitable for beginners as well as for people who have written or published poetry or short fiction. As well as analysing their own work, they will discuss contemporary writing to assess techniques. Call 042-9378560 or e-mail infoatpkc@eircom.net.
