While every nook and cranny in the country - and beyond - latched on to its connection with James Joyce this month, they had an interesting idea in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown - to celebrate the Bloomsday centenary by looking beyond 1904 at the wider heritage of the area.
Whatever it is about this neck of Co Dublin, it has a rich literary tradition and claims to be home (probably) to more successful writers today than any other county.
The perception that they know how to live at a more civilised and leisurely pace here is reinforced by the Blooming Lit exhibition at County Hall. For instance, playwright Lennox Robinson, who was director of the Abbey Theatre from 1923 to 1956, used the terraced garden of his home, Sorrento Cottage, on the Vico Road, which sloped down to the sea, to stage plays that wouldn't otherwise have been staged in Dublin - imagine Iphigenia in Tauris against the backdrop of Killiney Bay and you get the idea. Then there were the regular afternoon tea parties with such guests as Austin Clarke and Padraic Colum, which ran on into the evening, at the home of poet and novelist Monk Gibbon at 24 Sandycove Road. Apart from throwing parties, Gibbon also had the endearing habits of always writing in bed and occasionally wandering down to the seafront in his pyjamas to collect driftwood.
Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Hugo Hamilton, Frank McGuinness and Gerald Dawe are among the other writers celebrated on the panels that make up the Blooming Lit exhibition.
Colum McCann remembers his father breeding roses at their home on Clonkeen Road. Eamon Delaney recalls growing up in Stoneview Place, a lane of fishermen's cottages near the People's Park in Dún Laoghaire, his sculptor father working away there on Thomas Davis and Wolfe Tone memorials before they were hoisted away over the houses in wooden boxes to be unveiled in various public places. Paul Murray, whose novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes focuses on the fortunes of Charles Hythloday and his crumbling ancestral home in Killiney, recalls a childhood in the suburbs: "My life consisted of malls, video rental and fast-food outlets, identical streets passing themselves off variously as Groves, Crescents, Avenues, Parks. No one had written any great novels about these."
Joe O'Connor decided to commemorate it all in a poem that takes in such landmarks as Teddy's ice cream parlour, Caviston's deli and "Hugo Hamilton, speckled boy, sitting on a wall".
Curated by heritage officer Tim Carey there is a lot of interesting material at the exhibition, and it is well put together. And yes, Joyce's many associations with the area are also well-documented. It would make a lovely book.
Blooming Lit: the Literary Heritage of Dún Laoghaire- Rathdown continues in County Hall, Dún Laoghaire until July 9th. It then runs at Dalkey Castle Heritage Centre from July 19th to August 27th before transferring to Dean's Grange Library from September 7th to 30th.
Festival birthday present
The Poetry Now festival in Dún Laoghaire celebrates its 10th birthday in 2005 with the inauguration of a new, prize, the Irish Times PN05 Award. The judges for this year's award are the English poet and novelist, Simon Armitage, critic and lecturer Selina Guinness, and novelist Colm Tóibín. The €5,000 award, sponsored by The Irish Times in association with the Poetry Now Festival and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's Arts Office, is for the best single collection of poems by an Irish writer, or published by an Irish press, in 2004. A shortlist of five titles will be revealed next February and the winner will be announced at Poetry Now 2005 in April.
Details from arts@dlrcoco.ie
Seeking Hyde
Archaeologists and musicians will be joined by poets and writers at this year's Douglas Hyde Conference in Co Roscommon. Poet and former minister for arts Michael D. Higgins, Angela Bourke, Marie Mac an tSaoi, Gearóid Mac Lochlainn and Mary O'Malley are among the writers listed for the event, which this year focuses on Hyde's recognition of culture as being at the heart of identity and on the artist's role within the state.
The conference kicks off on July 16th and runs until July 18th at various venues, including Strokestown Park House and St Nathy's College, Ballaghaderreen.
Details: www.roscommonarts.com