Tóibín takes prestigious French prize: Colm Tóibín has won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger for his novel, The Master, about the life of the writer Henry James. Tóibín will be presented with the award on November 9th. Carlos Ruiz Zafón took the prize last year for The Shadow of the Wind. Previous winners include Australian author Peter Carey.
The jury is composed mainly of French publishers - such as Ivan Nabokov of Plon and Anne Freyer of Le Seuil and the award is a great boost to the sales of the French edition of the winning book. Earlier this year, The Master won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
Elegies for Cork poets
There's an elegiac feel to the latest issue of Poetry Ireland Review which pays tribute to two poets who died during the year Michael Davitt and Gregory O'Donoghue , both from Cork.
Theo Dorgan, who was a few years behind Davitt (1950-2005) in Cork's famous North Monastery school and followed him into UCC, remembers how, with Liam Ó Muirthile, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Gabriel Rosenstock and others, Davitt initiated a revolution in Irish poetry, much of it through the Irish language journal Innti. In the Gaeltacht cultures of Múscraí and Corca Dhuibhne Davitt found a spiritual home and, always the poet, he was "hyper-conscious of his life in language, convinced at some cell-deep level that without the Irish language his soul would perish".
He wrote in the Irish language because he had "no choice" in the matter. "He knew in his bones and his mind how much poorer we would be when and if it [the Irish language] died, but he was no romantic visionary, he was not given to illusions. He knew, as every thinking adult knows, that languages die every day, in every corner of the world, and will continue to die. He had to deal every day with the possibility, perhaps the likelihood, that after him and his friends and contemporaries there would come no more poets in the living Irish."
Gréagóir Ó Dúill sees Davitt as seminal to the modernisation of Irish language poetry and the creation of a new audience. "His own verse has not so much thrown open doors and windows as obliterated boundaries."
Dorgan writes about Davitt's passion for the songs of Bob Dylan, and Dylan crops up too in Greg Delanty's tribute to Gregory O'Donoghue (1951-2005). As well as Ní Dhomhnaill, Davitt and Ó Muirthile, O'Donoghue was of the same UCC generation as Thomas McCarthy, Maurice Riordan, Patrick Crotty and the late Seán Dunne - all destined for the literary life. A minimalist, O'Donoghue's poems from his two main collections, Kicking and Making Tracks, were, says Delanty, as intricately crafted as the inside of a watch. A third, posthumous collection is now in the offing.
Work by both O'Donoghue and Davitt features in the journal including, in Irish and in an English translation by Paul Muldoon, Davitt's poem The Mirror - In Memory of My Father.
Poetry Ireland Review, No 84, edited by Peter Sirr, costs €7.99
Dusting the books
The Long Room of the Old Library in Trinity College Dublin has to be one of the jewels in Dublin's crown - but preserving and cleaning it is another story. A small team of conservation staff has been dusting away there over the past year - no joke when dealing with delicate books from the 16th century onwards - but at their current rate of work and without more funds the college estimates the dusting job could take 20 years. In an attempt to speed things up, the Save the Treasures of the Long Room Campaign is targeting former students, with graduates being asked to give a minimum of €50, which will clean five books. Needless to say, they'll take more if it's offered. For instance, a shelf of 30 books can be cleaned for €250. Details at www.tcd.ie/alumni/support
Marking change
Writer Dermot Bolger hopes to reflect the changing experience of life in the catchment area of South Dublin County Council over the past half century with the help of people who have lived, or are living there . As council writer-in-residence he's looking for submissions of between 300 and 2,000 words and poems. He hopes to publish an anthology next summer.
Clondalkin, Lucan, Tallaght, Rathfarnham, Saggart, Palmerstown, Rathcoole, Newcastle, Brittas, Templeogue and Firhouse are all part of the terrain he hopes to track: Send typed submissions to him, before December 19th, at the Arts Office, South Dublin County Council, County Hall, Tallaght, Dublin 24.