Loose Leaves:If you want a last meander around one of Dublin's oldest bookshops, Greene's of Clare Street, you'd need to move fast.
The iconic shop with the wonderful book-lined staircase, cavernous upstairs rooms filled with dusty tomes, and glass canopy and book barrows out front, closes on May 25th. From then on - in a move similar to that made not long ago by Kenny's Bookshop in Galway - it will be operating online. The new headquarters will be in Sandyford, where it will concentrate on its core business of supplying libraries, as well as schoolbooks and second-hand and antiquarian volumes, with an emphasis on books of Irish interest.
New and second-hand books have been sold on the Clare Street premises since 1843, when John Greene started a lending library there. Herbert H Pembrey took over in 1912 and the family has owned it ever since. Explaining the move, his great-grandson David - the current managing director - puts the move down to a decline in over-the-counter sales and footfall in the Clare Street area over the years - "that, along with the difficulty in recruiting seasonal staff."
Between Finn's Hotel - the building is still there - on the corner of Nassau Street, where Nora Barnacle worked; Oscar Wilde's house, on the corner of Merrion Square; and the fact that Sam Beckett's father's business premises (in which the young writer used an attic room) was on Clare Street, this stretch of Dublin has a rich literary provenance, and Greene's was part of that. The generations of Dublin parents, who came here annually, school booklists in hand and high-spirited offspring in tow, were another huge part of the shop's tradition. Now it'll all be located in Unit 7, 78 Furze Road, in Sandyford. But before they leave Clare Street there's a sale on; a chance to get a bargain and pick up a souvenir of Greene's before it ceases trading in its present incarnation.
• www.greenesbookshop.com
Stirring stories for Bisto kids
Given the runaway success story that is Irish children's literature, it's not surprising that a number of stars of the genre, some of whom are already laden down with garlands, feature on this year's shortlist for the Children's Books Ireland Bisto Book of the Year Awards. The winners will be announced on Monday. John Boyne, who took two awards at the recent Irish Book Awards for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas(David Fickling) is up there with The Fourth Horseman(The Bodley Head) by Kate Thompson, who has already won the main Bisto award four times, as is Eoin Colfer for Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony(Puffin).
Also on the shortlist are The Palace of Laughter, by Jon Berkeley (Simon & Schuster); A Swift Pure Cry, by Siobhan Dowd (David Fickling); The Incredible Book Eating Boy, by Oliver Jeffers (Harper Collins); A Christmas Carol, by PJ Lynch (Walker Books); Hurlamaboc, by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne (Cois Life); An Táin, by Colmán Ó Raghallaigh (Cló Mhaigh Eo); and Something Invisible, by Siobhán Parkinson (Puffin) The overall winner gets €10,000. A further €9,000 goes with various smaller awards.
• www.childrensbooksireland.com
Winners in Strokestown
The first prize in the English-language poem award at the Strokestown International Poetry Competition has been won by Maureen Boyle for Weather Vane: Mick Delap came second with Opening Timeand Victoria Field third for The Lost Boys. The Duais Cholmcille Irish/Scottish Gaelic Poetry prize went to Tadhg Ó Dúshláine's Ecce Homo, with Nead an Ghéibheannaighby Ceaití Ní Bheildiúin second and Aonghas Mac Neacail's sphincs na sgírethird. Winners in each category received €4,000, €2,000 and €1,000.
Festival director Peter Sirr says the satirical poetry competition is not now being awarded this year as its winner, an American poet, had inadvertently submitted a poem that had been published elsewhere.
"Our rules very clearly state that all entries must be original poems and must not have previously appeared in print or electronically," says Sirr, who reports that last weekend's festival had a big attendance, not just from Ireland but from Europe and the US.
• www.strokestownpoetry.org