After devastating blows earlier this year, Poetry Ireland has a lovely new premises to celebrate its 25th anniversary, writes Arminta Wallace

'Poetry," so the poet says, "has always attracted more than its fair share of the seriously unhinged." The poet in question is Dennis O'Driscoll, and he will be expressing this insouciant opinion in the autumn issue of Poetry Ireland Review.

For much of this year, however, the director of Poetry Ireland, Joseph Woods, would have been forgiven for feeling that he and his colleagues had somehow been signed up - without consultation or explanation - to the ranks of the hingeless. "This is the 25th anniversary of the founding of Poetry Ireland, and it might have been our last," he says. "We had a bad start to the year, that's for sure. Our funding was cut by a total of 25 per cent from the Arts Council, and then, on top of that, the sponsor pulled out of the poetry competition. Then we got a reminder that we were about to be evicted from our offices in Dublin Castle - which, admittedly, we had known was in the pipeline. This was all in the space of a couple of weeks back in January. Every day we came in, it was all bad news."

So why is he grinning all over? Because those dark days of January are a long way off, that's why. And on one of the sunniest days of the sunniest August in years, Woods has just been told that, come September, the way is clear for Poetry Ireland to move into an elegant Georgian house on St Stephen's Green.

In addition, plans are well under way to give Poetry Ireland Review a fresh new look and relaunch the journal at the beginning of October under new editor Peter Sirr. An Indian summer for Poetry Ireland? "A good year out of a bad year," is how Woods prefers to put it. But the trauma has taken its toll. "Hopefully," he adds, with an eloquent crossing of fingers.

Poetry Ireland was founded by John F. Deane in 1978, though the review had two incarnations before that, first as a journal edited by David Marcus in the late 1940s, then for a couple of issues in the 1960s. It has been appearing on a quarterly basis since 1981, which means the autumn edition will carry the number 77 on its spanking new-look cover.

Woods has been with the organisation for three years, taking over from Theo Dorgan, who had been at the helm for over a decade.

It was Dorgan who negotiated the office space in Dublin Castle's Bermingham Tower which has, for the past eight years, been home to Poetry Ireland. "Our old address was a basement in Upper Mount Street," says Woods. "I'm not quite sure how the Dublin Castle deal was done, but it was on a grace-and-favour basis, under the auspices of the Office of Public Works. They were very good to have us here for eight years, and we're very grateful for that - and I suppose they felt that maybe it wasn't their responsibility any more, but once they affirmed we were leaving, I have to say that not a single positive suggestion came from their direction. We even went and researched other properties owned by the OPW and said, well, what about this or this - but nothing came of that either. Their main priority was to get us moving along," he says.

For a bleak couple of months it looked as if Poetry Ireland might be on its way back to a basement - or worse - as the organisation searched in vain for a suitable, and affordable, premises in the centre of Dublin. "We felt that ArtHouse would have been a suitable venue, so we put in a very comprehensive application to Temple Bar Properties, but we didn't succeed. We were offered what was essentially shop space in Temple Bar, but the rent was way too high."

Grimly, they carried on. "We were in close negotiations with UCD. They were very, very helpful. They kept getting back to us, and kept trying to accommodate us. They were by far the most supportive organisation we had contact with." Just as the situation approached disaster point, in stepped the Royal College of Surgeons with the offer of a 1,000-square-foot premises at 120 Stephen's Green, sub-let to Poetry Ireland for well below the going commercial rate.

"It's perfect," says Woods. "And it's not just the building, which is brilliant in itself - it's the access to the facilities of a large organisation. We were told today, for instance, that the Royal College of Surgeons will provide an electrician whenever we want to move in, that an architect is on stand-by, all that sort of thing. It's fantastic."

The redesign of Poetry Ireland Review is a project which, Woods says, has been close to his heart for some time. "In many ways, the review is the flagship of the organisation, and this redesign is very exciting. The new editor, Peter Sirr, has a proven track record as both poet and critic, and the new review will have a more contemporary look, with more essays and more reviews. If you hop on a train at Heuston and you buy a copy of this, by the time you get to Galway you should have a good idea of what's happening in poetry in Ireland - and also internationally."

Poetry Ireland will also launch fund-raising "Friends" packages, details of which are still being finalised. Fund-raising, much of it in the US, will also be a major priority for the future. Apart from that, it will be business as usual for the organisation. It produces a bi-monthly newsletter, Poetry Ireland News - "it used to be a photocopied sheet, known hereabouts the "samizdat" sheet; now it's six glossy pages" - and, in conjunction with the Department of Education, organises a writers-in-schools project which reaches about 40,000 students a year at both primary and secondary level. It also houses the Austin Clarke book collection.

"Then there's 'information and resources'. I call it 'births, deaths and marriages'," says Woods. "We might get an e-mail which says, 'My father is being buried tomorrow, and he used to recite the following poem . . .' And they only remember one word or one line and we source the poem. We get loads of those. Or if somebody's getting married, they might want a poem that incorporates this, that and the other. We also get people who are writing about a particular poet, US universities sourcing journals or essays; in total, about 60 to 70 e-mail inquiries a day."

Readings are a vital part of Poetry Ireland's work. "We organise and co-fund about 120 poetry readings on a 32-county basis, and I think they're a very important vehicle for spreading the word about poetry. And, of course, you can build on the success of people like Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon - that makes people wake up and listen, you know? But then I believe that, alongside music, poetry is Ireland's most exportable art form, and I'd like to see Poetry Ireland having more of a role, long-term, in books succeeding out there."

However, Woods says that at the moment - new premises notwithstanding - there are no plans to open a drop-in centre or a shop. "It was an aspiration at one stage to have a national poetry centre - but for that, you need a librarian and reception staff and/or an archivist and in the current climate, that's not really practical. Security-wise, the problem with the Austin Clarke Collection is that there are individual books there which are worth €2,000 or €3,000 - early Yeats, and so on. The collection is open to the public, but unfortunately not on an ad hoc basis. The best thing is to phone or e-mail in advance. Of course, if somebody wants to come in and collect a newsletter - or buy a copy of the review - that's not a problem. But to have people parachuting in? No. I'd need a steel door." No jokes about surgical steel, please . . .

•  You can contact the Poetry Ireland website is at www.poetryireland.ie