The-O! The-o! The-o! Everyone wants a bit of The-o. Theo Dorgan's fan club stretches out the door. Rebel poets pack the Coachhouse in Dublin Castle. They've come to celebrate his retirement as director of Poetry Ireland.
"A sensitive person might misread the situation, you're all here because I'm going," says a happy Dorgan, who intends, after 11 years at the helm, "to write, to sit quietly, and stay out of trouble as best I can - to retire to my Sabine farm to compose or decompose in hexameters."
"It's a watershed time," says the Corkman. "I'm very nearly stuck for words. It's been a trip. We have a delusion of progress, driven by accountants and sycophants. It's a false progress," he cautions. Quoting Michael Hartnett, Dorgan speaks to his flock: "Poets with progress/ make no peace nor pact/ the act of poetry is a rebel act." Hurraaah. The-o! We party on. Cuirt na bhFili is in session.
The rebel poets include Gabriel Rosenstock with his wife Eithne; Tony Curtis and his wife, Mary Canavan; Dan Tobin of Kenosha, Wisconsin; Rory Bren- nan, a former director of Poetry Ireland; Joseph Woods, new Poetry Ireland director and winner of this year's Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award; Dennis O'Driscoll, a Thurles exile whose up-coming book of prose is Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams. Corkman Colm Breathnach and Biddy Jenkinson an in Co Wicklow are here too talking about poetry, which to them "was always sexy - now more so than ever".
Dorgan recalls the day his partner and fellow poet, Paula Meehan, wrote in the The Great Book of Ireland. It was the happiest day of all for him, he says.
"This is the Dorgan decade, we reckon," says Dorgan's brother, Chris. More of Dorgan's 14 siblings are present also, including Kay, Margaret and Angela. Other Corkonians at the party include Mick Hannigan, director of the Cork Film Festival and Mary Ahern, a long-standing family friend.