For too long Bloomsday in Dublin has meant little more than a few readings from Joyce over a fried breakfast or a gorgonzola sandwich. This year, however, the growing numbers of tourists who arrive in Dublin for Bloomsday - not to mention literary-minded natives - will at last be treated to a full-blown writers' festival, with readings by Seamus Heaney, John Banville, Edna O'Brien, Paul Muldoon and many more. It is also cheering to note that many of the events are free.
Organised by Dublin Corporation, the Irish Writers' Centre and Poetry Ireland, and sponsored by AIB, the festival begins today at 3 p.m. with a reading by three of Ireland's most successful popular novelists, Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes and Deirdre Purcell. The venue is the Andrews Lane Theatre. The festival concludes on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. in St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, with readings by novelists Roddy Doyle and Dermot Healy; poets Rita Ann Higgins, Tony Curtis and Catherine Phil MacCarthy; and balladeer and writer, Frank Harte.
In between, there is an impressive array of readings by the best of contemporary writers, both from Ireland and abroad. This evening there will be readings by two Scots writers, James Kelman and Tom Leonard, followed by a lively Poetry Slam at the River Club in Merchant's Arch, Temple Bar.
Tomorrow afternoon there will be a celebration of Federico Garcia Lorca with soprano Judith Mok, guitarist Hernan Ruiz and poetry read by Colm Toibin; also a reading by poets Cathal O Searcaigh and Peter Fallon with the English novelist and critic, Marina Warner.
Tomorrow night there will be a reading by John Banville, Edna O'Brien, Paul Muldoon, and the recent winner of the IMPAC award, Romanian novelist Herta Muller (with her translator, Michael Hofmann). On Monday there are still more readings from novelist John MacKenna, English poet Helen Dunmore, Scots poet Carol Ann Duffy, our own Nobel winner, Seamus Heaney and others.
Meanwhile in libraries all over Dublin there will be readings, exhibitions and storytelling sessions for children. Tel 016799860/8722014.