Eagleton for GalwayAcademic, author and cultural commentator Terry Eagleton was this week appointed adjunct professor of cultural theory at NUI Galway.
He'll be based at the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies and each semester will give master-classes for doctoral students and junior staff, as well as open lectures and seminars on modern literature.
Announcing the appointment, Kevin Barry of NUI Galway said: "Without doubt, Terry Eagleton is one of the most distinguished and recalcitrant public intellectuals of his time . . . He has continued, whether in his writings on culture, critical thinking, economic inequality, or the politics of terror, to 'rough up the edges of the mainstream', as he calls it. He remains (and his time may have come again) a defender of Marx's analysis of power and its discontents. He is a famous and fabulous communicator and one of the rare articulate, persuasive critics of contemporary liberalism. His presence on campus will bring exciting benefits to our students, and we are delighted he will be sharing with them his time and the energy of his arguments."
Eagleton said he was delighted to be appointed to a chair in "the most beautiful of all the Irish campuses". The Eagletons, he said, come from Headford and Shrule and there are still members of his family in the borderlines of Co Galway and Co Mayo.
"I look forward to meeting the students very soon". On December 10th he will deliver his inaugural lecture in Galway entitled The Death of Criticism. His most recent book is Trouble with Strangers: a Study of Ethics (2008).
Berry on top
Irish poet Ciarán Berry has won the £3,000 (€3,480) Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize given in association with the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
The 37-year old poet won with his collection The Sphere of Birds, published by the Gallery Press. Previous prize winners have included Colette Bryce and Nick Laird. Berry, who lives in New York where he teaches at New York University, said: "While there's a pure joy to making art in a vacuum, the recognition that what you were doing at that desk, in that room, for all those hours holds value for someone else at least equals that joy and will sustain me in my search for a second book in the months and years ahead."
The 58 entries were judged by poets Helen Dunmore and Jamie McKendrick as well as Michael Laskey, who chaired proceedings. He said: "The poems in Ciarán Berry's The Sphere of Birds are remarkable for a mature assurance, generous amplitude of detail and a capacity to accommodate all kinds of fascinating information and discover its vital significance.''
Eclectic selection
Irish born novelist Joseph O'Neill, who in spite of being widely tipped didn't make this year's Man Booker shortlist, is up for another British award with his novel Netherland. This one is the £50,000 (€60,000) Warwick Prize for Writing, run by the University of Warwick; O'Neill features on the longlist of 20 titles. This is the inaugural prize and is unusual in that fiction and non-fiction are included on the same list with economists, mathematicians, and other writers in specialist areas battling it out with seven novelists and a poet. Any genre and form is eligible for this international cross-disciplinary biennial award. Other books on the list include The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. The shortlist will be announced on January 23rd; the winner on February 24th.
Prize collection
Poet Áine Uí Fhoghlú from Ring in Waterford has won the Michael Hartnett 2008 poetry award for her Irish language collection An Liú sa Chuan, which is rooted in the Ring Gaeltacht she knows so well. The prize is €6,500.