It's a pulchritude of poets, a positive pileup of peerless bardic, eh, pards. They've come to hear about the greater glory of words. All week, there's a sense of literary giants moving among us. They are marching on Dublin. A festival is planned. A potato feast is due and a Kerry-based writer takes centre stage. The time has come to unmask them.
Pat Boran, poet and programme director of the future Dublin Writers' Festival, takes to the podium to speak. His voice rattles round City Hall like a great sermonising parish priest. His sermon begins: "It's a celebration," he says. Alleluiah.
There's Dennis O'Driscoll, who intends to "electrify the [upcoming] festival", discussing hypertext with a panel of poets; Enda Wyley and partner Peter Sirr, who do speak in iambic pentameter at the breakfast table (they jest, of course, they don't really); and Joseph Woods, now officially the director of Poetry Ireland, whose own collection, Sailing to Hokkaido, is due out soon.
Boran is looking forward especially to the first-time arrival in Ireland of Billy Collins, the American poet who is being called the new Robert Frost, he says. Other stars who have never been in Ireland to read include V.S. Naipaul and Jostein Gaarder, of Sophie's World fame. Boran's own book, As the Hand, the Glove, will be out in the autumn. No, it's not about boxing, he says. It's about flesh.
Jack Gilligan, festival director and arts officer with Dublin Corporation, in grey suit with lilac shirt, is here too to get the ball rolling. Welcome, citizens, to this humble round room. Seamus Hosey, RTE radio producer, says poetic entries for a Radio 75 poetry competition are pouring in at an average of 20 poems a day. Closing date for entry is Friday, June 22nd.
Declan Meade, editor of the annual Bloomsday magazine, which is due out this week to mark that particular day in the life of Leopold Bloom, is also in attendance. More literary fun and frolics are guaranteed at the festival, which runs from Thursday, June 14th to Sunday, June 17th.