With at least 130,000 Poles now living here, a cultural foundation, initially devoted to Polish literature, has just been established. Rosita Boland reports
When it comes to literature, in Ireland we like to think that we're pretty savvy. Four Nobel winners, for a start. We buy a lot of books - 10 per cent of all books sold in Britain and Ireland are sold in this State. Yet how widely read are we really? This country is now home to at least 130,000 Poles, many thousands of other Eastern European citizens, a large Chinese population and many other nationalities, but how much do we know of their literatures?
The Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation may make us more knowledgable about Polish literature at least. On Monday, Seamus Heaney, the foundation's patron, will introduce Andrzej Szczeklik at its inaugural event in the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. Szczeklik is a cardiologist and holds the department of medicine's chair at the Jagiellonina University in Cracow. The English translation of his highly acclaimed book, Catharsis: On The Art of Medicine, was published last year (University of Chicago Press). Part memoir, it is an exploration of how medicine and art share similar roots and of the symbiotic relationship between patient and physician .
Cathal McCabe, director of the Irish Writers' Centre, lived in Poland for several years and met his wife there. Prior to returning to Ireland in 2003, he worked at the British Council in Lodz, lecturing in English and cultural studies.
"I had no idea so many people were following me to Ireland," he jokes, referring to the large Polish community.
Given his own links with the country, McCabe was particularly interested in facilitating some kind of Polish-focused cultural programme, Polish now being the second most spoken language after English in Ireland .
With the help of some other people, including members of the Irish-Polish Society, the Polish Embassy and the University of Ulster, McCabe has now set up the Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation and is its chair. They have been helped by a modest start-up grant from the Ireland Funds, and hope in time to attract sponsors with deep pockets.
"We're not going to be just about literature," he explains. "But at this stage, it's cheaper to bring writers over than it would be to bring over orchestras and art exhibitions."
Among the events that the foundation is running this summer is a reading with poet and critic Piotr Sommer, who is one of Poland's foremost translators of contemporary Irish and American poets. The Irish poets he has translated include Heaney, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley.
There will also be an evening with Jerzy Illg, editor-in-chief of Znak, a Polish publishing company specalising in poetry, whose talk, My Nobel Laureates, will focus on Wislawa Szymborska, Czeslaw Milosz and Heaney.
However, the longest-running aspect of the programme will be the presence of poet, translator and critic Jerzy Jarniewicz as writer-in-residence at Farmleigh in the Phoenix Park during August and September. Jarniewicz, who lectures at the universities of Lodz and Warsaw, will be running two workshops over several weeks. One of these will be for English-language writers interested in translation, the other will be conducted in Polish and aimed at developing writers and translators from the Polish community here.
What emerges from those workshops is bound to be telling. It is surely only a matter of time before we begin seeing literature written by people from the new EU states who are now living in Ireland. Literature does reflect the context in which the writer lives: it's informed not only by sensibility, but to some extent by the society the writer lives in. We haven't yet had a chance to hear, through literature, many of the voices of the new communities now in our midst.
Farmleigh, like some other organisations associated with the foundation, is providing services in kind. Jarniewicz will be accommodated in one of the the estate's annex buildings. "They are running a five-year programme of summer residencies for writers," McCabe explains. "Jarniewicz is the first one."
McCabe sees the foundation as developing into "a two-pronged series of events - if funding is not an issue". He hopes that at some point, there will be an office in Ireland and one in Poland, each one promoting and hosting cultural events of the other country, these events to include classical and traditional music, visual art and dance.
So who does he think will attend the events being held in Dublin this summer? "We hope to see an audience drawn from both the Irish and Polish communities." There will be a publicity campaign in the Polish-language newspaper Polska, plus promotion through the embassy and the Irish-Polish Society to draw in the Polish community.
Poland, like many other former Communist countries, has a population which is extremely culturally sophisticated. Opera, theatre, ballet and classical music were mostly State-run and State-funded. This meant tickets were cheap and people attended cultural events frequently, as a matter of routine. In Ireland, we still regard an evening at the opera or ballet as an occasion, partly due to pricing.
Some rock bands have come over to play for the Polish ex-pat community here in bars. McCabe believes there is a hunger for cultural events among Poles here.
"It's a transitional period in Ireland. Now is the time to start presenting events like this, which are aimed at both the Polish community and the Irish community - we have a lot to learn from each other."
Seamus Heaney introduces Andrzej Szczeklik's talk, On the Art of Medicine, at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, on Monday at 7pm; Jerzy Illg speaks on My Nobel Laureates at Farmleigh House, Phoenix Park, Dublin, on Tuesday at 3pm. To book places phone 086-2295688 or e-mail justyna@irelandpoland.org