Kelleher takes a bow:Most institutions, be they academic, learned or cultural, seem to have on the staff someone who personifies their ethos, says Dr Tony Scott, president of the Royal Dublin Society, in his foreword to a
festschriftto the society's librarian Mary Kelleher, which was presented to mark her retirement on Thursday. "Within the RDS that person is clearly Mary Kelleher," says Scott, summing up the sentiments of all present.
Another contributor, Massimo Bacigalupo of the University of Genoa, put it this way: "It is obvious that for me as a scholar and teacher Mary Kelleher has always been a precious asset, someone to turn to for assistance whenever I was writing a dictionary entry on Seamus Heaney or translating a dense Heaney essay. I have shamelessly taken advantage of her expertise." Bacigalupo conjures up lively images of her as a hostess, including one memorable evening in her home when, after he had published an Italian translation of Heaney's Beowulf, Terry Dolan of UCD read from the Anglo Saxon original, Heaney from his translation and Bacigalupo from the Italian rendering. "Then , as I recall, Marie Heaney went one better than the poets and translators by singing a ballad in a lovely voice."
The festschriftincludes accounts of when in the 1960s she was about to study book restoration at the Instituto di Patologia del Libro in Rome and the Arno broke its banks in Florence. With other Instituto staff and students, Kelleher suspended her studies to work on the salvage of rare books and paintings.
“It was hard, dirty, back-breaking work but the thought that you were involved in saving some priceless treasures made it all worthwhile,” she told her RDS colleague Betty Searson. It was an experience that proved useful years later in 1986, when the Dodder burst its banks, flooding the RDS, and she set about restoring damaged works in her own library.
Last year she was given the award of Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella Solidarietà Italiana, partly in recognition for her work in the wake of the Arno floods. Many of the exhibitions she staged at the RDS were connected to Italy.
Contributions include: a translation by Seamus Heaney of a poem by Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912), The Kite( L'Aquilone), dedicated to Mary Kelleher; a tribute by Maeve Binchy; and scholarly essays by contributors including Toby Barnard, Muriel McCarthy, Edward McPartland, Micheal O'Siadhail and John Turpin. Titled To Mary Kelleher: Auguri, it is edited by Fergus Mulligan and published by the RDS.
Calling all writers
The deadline for the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009, organised by the Stinging Fly periodical in association with The Irish Times, and with a prize of €25,000 for the best short story, is on Monday, February 2nd.
Five runners-up get prizes of €1,000 each and the judge is US writer Richard Ford. Writers can hand in entries on the final day to Davy Byrnes pub at 21 Duke Street, Dublin 2 until closing time. Otherwise, entries must be received or postmarked by that date and addressed to PO Box 11462, Dublin 2. Entry forms and rules are at davybyrnesaward.org.
Poetry prize details
Submissions are also now being invited for the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award 2009 organised by Limerick
Co Council Arts Office and co-funded by the Arts Council and Limerick County Council.
The award this year is for poets writing in English, and publishers are asked to submit poets’ third or subsequent volumes of poetry published in the period May 18th, 2007 to January 30th, 2009.
The prize is €6,500 for the winning poet. The adjudicating panel is comprised of Peter Denman, Moya Cannon and Richard Tillinghast. Details at www.lcc.ie or 061-496498/496300.