Two days before his "month's mind", a special tribute was paid to the late author John McGahern at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway last night.
The Town Hall Theatre was packed for the occasion, which took place on the evening that McGahern was due to read at the festival. The occasion was opened by literary agent and member of the Cúirt advisory panel, Jonathan Williams, before poet Michael Gorman, a friend of McGahern's for 30 years, read a selection of his favourite poems by Philip Larkin, Patrick Kavanagh, WS Graham and William Logan, as well as some pieces of McGahern's own work.
The poet spoke of his late friend's love of Anton Chekov, F Scott Fitzgerald, Alastair McCloud and John Williams.
"John would never say something was good when it wasn't. But when asked: 'what did you think of that work?', he would say 'it had energy' when he was being kind to somebody," he said.
A previously unseen audio-visual sequence of a conversation between McGahern and Mike McCormack was shown, along with photographs by Colm Hogan taken of the writer during the filming of the Hummingbird documentary of his life.
Actress Bríd Ní Neachtain then read extracts from The Dark and That They May Face the Rising Sun, and a recording of the writer reading from his last work, Memoir, in Galway last year, was shown.
"It's somewhat poignant to hear his voice in an auditorium in his absence. He was a man who kept things simple so our intention was for this tribute to be simple," Tomas Hardiman of Cúirt and the Galway Arts Centre said.
A tribute was also paid by Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney on Thursday night, when he dedicated a reading of his work, Quitting Time, to McGahern.
At a Western Development Commission function in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim yesterday, former Irish Times western correspondent Michael Finlan recalled his affection for the writer and the support given by another press colleague, the late John Healy, to McGahern at a difficult time in his life.
Earlier yesterday, Heaney watched year-round swimmers take a dip in Galway Bay as he unveiled a cast bronze plaque opposite the Ladies Beach on the Salthill Promenade.
The "poem on the prom" bears an inscription of his evocative Girls Bathing, Galway, 1965.
Starting with Heaney's poem, Galway City Council, the chamber of commerce and Cúirt are initiating a series of plaques along the promenade and around the city featuring writing on and about Galway.
"In different cultures and different places and different times, poetry and writing have been inscribed on bronze or stone, but often this is as a result of tragedy, grief or loss. This poem celebrates the life of the girls in the water and the sun moving from east to west," Heaney said.
Girls Bathing, Galway, 1965 was written while Heaney was on honeymoon in Galway with his wife, Marie. The couple stayed in a house in Barna with six female friends of his new wife, he recalled.
"I had the privilege of walking into public houses in Spiddal and elsewhere with seven brides, as it was, for one brother. It was a heady time, a moment of change in my own life."
The Cúirt International Festival of Literature continues in Galway this weekend.