Fifty-seven years after his death, is there no stopping James Joyce? First Ulysses gets chosen by the Modern Library as the greatest novel of the century, and now the man himself is nominated as most influential Irish person of all time.
This latest list, compiled for the Irish Post in Britain, puts him immediately ahead of St Columcille and Samuel Beckett, with the other seven places in the top ten (gosh, I love lists) going to Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, Robert Boyle, James Connolly and Oscar Wilde.
The all-male selecting panel, which included Labour MP Kevin McNamara, haven't explained what they mean by "influential", though whatever their definition, it doesn't embrace too many women - St Brigid being the only woman in the top fifty, and Mary Robinson just making the cut at 79, twenty-three places behind Michael Flatley.
However, no place at all is found for either Sean Lemass or John Hume. Nope, nothing influential about those two.
Is Seamus Heaney a major poet? Peter Porter has his doubts, but then he has his doubts about almost all other Irish poets, too, accusing them of living in "a Wordsworthian landscape" rather than engaging with the realities of modern life in a modern language.
Reviewing the Nobel laureate's Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (just published by Faber) in the Sunday Telegraph, the 69-year-old Australian-born poet confesses himself unhappy with "the unique exemption from the 20th-century dilemma of discovering a contemporary language for poetry that has been granted to Irish poets".
I'm not quite sure what he means by that, and I remain unsure even when he expands on it: "Ireland enjoys the luxury of retaining a diction derived from pre-industrial society, the privilege of seeing the world in pastoral, even agricultural terms."
So who does Peter Porter like? "Only Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson and Paul Durcan among contemporary Irish poets don't live in a Wordworthian landscape. Irish poetry, as exemplified by Heaney, has chosen to follow the feudal Yeats, not the urban and demotic Joyce." Has it really? And if it has, is that necessarily a bad thing?
Finally, does he have any advice for Seamus Heaney? Yes, he does. "I want to shout: Join Our Century before it's too late." What constitutes this century exactly, and what language is permissible in it? Alas, he doesn't say. All very confusing.
I don't know whether or not Michael Longley lives in a Wordsworthian landscape, but anyway the Belfast poet will be in The Winding Stair bookshop on Lower Ormond Quay next Friday night, along with Mark Roper.
The former will be reading from his latest book of poems, Broken Dishes, and the latter from his collection, The Home Fire, both of them published by Abbey Press. The launch-cumreading begins at 7.30pm.
This is the season of literary festivals, beginning next Friday with The Great Balloon Fire Literary Weekend in Tullamore - its title referring back to 1785 when most of the town was burnt to the ground after a hot-air balloon crashed into the army barracks. However, there'll be no hot air, I'm sure, from the impressive line-up of writers, which includes Roddy Doyle, Dermot Healy, Michael Coady and Rita Ann Higgins.
Michael Coady also turns up at Clifden Arts Week, which runs for nine days from Friday week and features such other distinguished writers as Seamus Heaney, John McGahern, Richard Murphy, Billy Roche, Moya Cannon and Paul Durcan.
Meanwhile, the fifth Scriobh literary festival runs for four days in Sligo from Thursday week next and includes such arresting non-Irish talents as Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, Dutch poet, novelist and travel writer Cees Nooteboom, London novelist Jenny Diski, Adrian Mole's creator Sue Townsend and fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey. Desmond O'Grady, Leland Bardwell and Gabriel Rosenstock are among the Irish contingent.
If you're interested in attending any of the above and want to know more, you can contact Offaly's arts officer, Sharon Mee, in Tullamore (0509-46800), Clifden at 095-21184, and Scriobh at 071-41405.
What qualities should contemporary writers possess? The programme note for a forthcoming London publishing seminar organised by the ICA suggests "youth, beauty and white teeth," pointing out that authors nowadays are required to be "young, stylish and sexy." But what, you may protest, about talent? Oh, don't be old-fashioned.