The current artist-in-residence in Laois is the ebullient singer Noirin Ni Riain, who is working through the medium of song to promote community involvement in the arts. Laois has obviously made a deep impression on Ni Riain's sensibilities, which she likens to being "the womb of Ireland" - should we be watching hospital statistics there to compare the birthrate of Laois with other midland counties? Anyway, body parts are the bon mot, since this is definitely the year of the singing heart for Laois. After a recent session in Abbeyleix, one of the participants, Joe Murphy, suggested that the wordless march, The King of Laois, should have words set to it. Why so? So that the loyal followers can sing it on the pitches in the event of Laois winning the All-Ireland, or whenever Laois folk are gathered together in celebration of themselves and/or their county.
Ni Riain helped the idea along by approaching the county Arts Officer, Muireann Ni Chonaill, who promptly allocated £500 to the project as a commissioning fee. They are looking for three or four verses of an original poem, which will be set to the traditional tune. Application forms, plus written and taped versions of the tune are available free of charge from the Arts Office, Laois County Council, Portlaoise, Co Laois. Closing date for entries is March 16th. Then Joe Murphy will be halfway towards his dream scenario: the other half might be a bit more difficult to achieve - seeing Laois bag the All-Ireland.
SADBH didn't realise this was going to be such a fruitful season for veteran US writer Saul Bellow. Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976, has become a daddy again at the age of 84. His fifth wife, Janis Freedman (41), gave birth to their first child - and Bellow's first daughter - on December 23rd in Boston, although the news only seems to have broken this week. Bellow also has a new novel, Ravelstein, out this April from Viking, and is the subject of Saul Bellow, A Biography, due shortly from Faber and written by James Atlas who, depending on what stage his ms is at, may now have to do a bit of updating to include the arrival of baba. Hopefully age will have mellowed Bellow: his three grown-up sons have commented that he was a "cold father" to them.
With all the brouhaha about RTE's other millennium celebrations, the forthcoming selection of the RTE Poet of the Future sneaked up on us very quietly indeed. This is a new competition, run in conjunction with its Millennium Musician of the Future, with the idea that the selected poet will go on to write lyrics for the Composer of the Future. Entrants have to be between 19 and 27, and submit poems with a musical subject matter in either Irish or English. Sounds like coming up with the words for The King of Laois would be right up these young poets' alleys. Judges were Ciaran Carty and Aidan Matthews, with Micheal O Siadhail in the chair. The two finalists are Kenneth Clarke (22) from Leitrim, and John McAuliffe (26) from Roscommon, who coincidentally is one of the reviewers here on today's books pages.
The young poets will each be reading two poems on February 11th, the day on which the eventual winner will be announced. There is one prize of £1,000. With Seamus Heaney winning the Whitbread Book of the Year again this week for his re-working of Beowulf, poets are definitely "It" at the moment.
As the late Molly Keane proved to us all with her novel, Good Behaviour, you're never too advanced in years to produce an extraordinary work of fiction. She died in 1996, in Ardmore, Co Waterford, where she had made her home for many years. To commemorate her connections with Waterford, the County Arts Office set up a short story competition, the Molly Keane Memorial Creative Writing Award, which is now in its third year. They are looking for previously unpublished stories of not longer than 2,000 words. And when they say not longer than 2,000 words they mean it: in fact, they insist that all entries must have the exact word count noted at the end of the story. Fine if you have a computer which will do an automatic word count for you, guaranteed to drive you mad if you don't have that useful facility.
After all, Molly Keane wrote most, if not all, of her many books without the aid of computers, so the competition rules don't seem quite in keeping with the style of Waterford's famously eccentric writer. One entry only per writer. The closing date is February 25th. More details available from 05841416, and entries to be sent to the Arts Officer, Waterford Co Council, Dungarvan, Co Waterford.
Peter Fallon of Gallery Press tells us that he has resigned as literary agent to the estate of Patrick Kavanagh "by mutual agreement" between the trustees of the estate and himself . Taking over will be literary agent Jonathan Williams. Payments for permissions for use of any of Kavanagh's work, and all queries about same, should be now addressed to Williams at Ferrybank House, 6 Park Road, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
After all those exciting highs and lows as the country's first woman dealer, writer Sheila O'Flanagan is packing in her career in the financial services area to write full-time. The announcement came on Wednesday on foot of a deal with the British publisher Headline, which has paid a six-figure sum for three new novels by O'Flanagan, whose recent bestseller Suddenly Single has achieved sales of more than a quarter of a million pounds so far. Her next book, Far from Over, will be out in May. Now she will write full-time, although Sadbh was pleased to hear that she's keeping up her column on the Irish Times Friday business pages. The first of the three novels in the new deal will come from Headline in May 2001.
Sadbh