After 11 years of waiting, volumes IV and V of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing are finally being launched by Mary Robinson in Dublin next Monday, in what is the biggest publishing event in Ireland in recent years.
Concentrating on Irish women's writing and traditions from 600 AD to the end of the 20th century, the new volumes are intended to balance the low representation of women's writing in the original Field Day Anthology volumes, published in 1991.
Shortly after the publication of the original three volumes, a debate raged about the absence of work by women writers, with poet Eavan Boland and critic Edna Longley spearheading criticisms of what Longley termed the prevailing "Boy's Club ethos of Field Day". Boland went as far as saying that she was "sorry to be included" in the original volumes.
The two new volumes have been welcomed by Seamus Heaney as a valuable redefinition of the curriculum of studies, while leading American feminist critic Elaine Showalter describes this new addition to the Field Day Anthology as "a monumental and heroic work of collective scholarship".
Containing the work of 750 individual writers, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volumes IV and V: Irish Women's Writing and Traditions, stretches to 3,200 pages and retails at €250 in an original cloth-bound edition.
Full details of all the writers and extracts from the anthology are available from www.corkuniversitypress.com
INTERVIEWS are taking place at the moment for the position of Irish Film Censor. In all, there were 79 applications to the Department of Justice for the post, which carries a salary of in or around €60,000, excluding other allowances and entitlements.
The position became available with the news last April that Irish Film Censor Sheamus Smith is soon to retire. Smith, who was appointed Film Censor in 1986, succeeded Frank Hall, who exercised the function between 1978 and 1986. Some of Smith's noted decisions included the lifting of the 33-year-old ban on Joseph Sack's film of James Joyce's Ulysses and the overturning of the ban on Stanley Kubrick's classic film A Clockwork Orange.
Of the 79 that applied for the job, in all 23 were called to interview, of which one declined. It is believed that Smith is not to vacate his position until the new appointment is made, which The Irish Times understands will be in the next few weeks.
THE Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, does not appear to have any further plans to meet the arts constituency or to have an open seminar with interested parties that might shape the final Arts Bill.
"There are no plans that I know of," said a spokeperson for the Department this week, when The Irish Times asked whether Minister O'Donoghue planned to meet the wider arts constituency to listen to their concerns over the shape of the Bill, which will be put before the Dáil when it returns from its summer recess.
While there was an extensive process of consultation before the Arts Bill was drafted, there has been no open forum with interested parties since, although, according to the Department, the Minister has listened carefully to comments "made by Deputies in the Dáil at Second Stage and by others" (e.g. the Arts Council has had specific comments to make).
This lack of a formal forum for feedback since the publication of the Bill is in marked contrast to Fine Gael's approach, whose spokesman for arts, sports and tourism, Jimmy Deenihan, held a seminar to discuss the Bill at the Irish Writers' Museum Dublin this week.
The Bill, which will replace the Arts Acts of 1951 and 1973, will shape arts policy for years to come.
THE recent departure of Michael Poyner, chief executive of Derry's Millennium Forum theatre, marks the latest dramatic development in a series of ongoing sagas concerning the troubled venue, opened - at a cost of some £14 million sterling - barely a year ago.
Indeed, writes Derek O'Connor, recent revelations concerning the extent of the 1,000-seat venue's debts showed that the Forum currently has operating debts of close to £1 million sterling, with a projected further loss of some £700,000 sterling over the next six months.
Intended as Derry's flagship Millennium project, the Millennium Forum has been the source of controversy since its conception; even at the planning stages there was vociferous opposition from numerous local groups concerning the intended location of the building, in the heart of Derry's historical East Wall area.
Since its opening, the venue has managed to consistently fail fire safety inspections, while Michael Poyner himself garnered considerable flak in the local press.
An Irish Times interview earlier this year, in which Poyner claimed that Derry audiences possessed a "parochial" attitude to culture, raised further ire, as did a perceived conflict of interest concerning his involvement with the Ulster Theatre Company, producers of the Forum's 2001 pantomime, which Poyner directed.