Loose Leaves:Cognoscenti apart, lots of people will be amazed to discover how many - and how much - Irish poets have written about Japan. How extensive the body of work is can now be guaged from a handsome new anthology published to commemorate the opening of diplomatic relations between Ireland and Japan 50 years ago in 1957.
Called Our Shared Japan: an Anthology of Contemporary Irish Poetry, it's edited by Irene De Angelis and Joseph Woods. They are right when they say that considering the geographical distance separating the two countries it's extraordinary the interest contemporary Irish poets take in Japan. The anthology includes work by more than 80 poets including Ciaran Carson, Katie Donovan, the late Seán Dunne (the book's title Our Shared Japan comes from his poem The Frail Sprig), Paul Durcan, Pearse Hutchinson, Michael Longley, Aidan Carl Mathews, the late Dorothy Molloy, Paul Muldoon, Catríona O'Reilly and Peter Sirr. Central, inevitably, is The Snow Party (for Louis Asekoff) by Derek Mahon:
Snow is falling on Nagoya
And farther south
On the tiles of Kyõto;
Eastward, beyond Irago,
It is falling
Like leaves on the cold sea.
Also included, and giving the anthology great context, is an abridged version of an essay by Seamus Heaney that was his 2000 Lafcadio Hearn lecture, sponsored by the Japan-Ireland Society, in which he talks of how the names of Bashõ, Issa and Buson have found their way into the discourse to the extent that we in Ireland have learnt to recognise something Japanese in the earliest lyrics of the native tradition.
Explaining how, in the atrocity-filled 20th century, as poets became desperately aware of the dangers of rhetoric and abstraction, the chastity and reticence of Japanese poetry grew more and more attractive, Heaney says: "Its closeness to common experience and its acknowledgment of mystery, its sensitivity to lacrimae rerum, to the grievous aspects of human experience, have made it a permanent and ever more valuable resource to which other literatures can turn."
Also in honour of the diplomatic anniversary, the Japanese embassy has launched an essay competition whereby essays are to be submitted on any Japanese novel from a supplied list of 50 authors whose work has been translated into English. The list includes books by Kobo Abe, Lafcadio Hearn, Yukio Mishima, Haruki Murakami, Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oe. Prizes are being sponsored by Kenny's bookshop and art gallery and Hughes & Hughes booksellers. The first prize is a €300 book token. The closing date is December 14th.
www.ie.emb-japan.go.jp
Short stories revitalised
Short story writer Kevin Barry - the winner on Wednesday of this year's Rooney Prize for Irish Literature - was revitalising the tradition of short story writing for which Ireland is renowned, the chairman of the judging panel Terence Brown said in his award citation. Barry was born in Limerick in 1969, and his collection of stories There Are Little Kingdoms was published in March by The Stinging Fly Press; a new paperback edition of it is coming out later this month. Reviewing the book in The Irish Times, fellow short story writer Philip ÓCeallaigh hailed the stories as vibrant, original and intelligent, a number of them deserving to be read and reread "and to outlast the strange years that made them". The Rooney prize, worth €10,000, is for a writer under 40.
Living, breathing, writing Irish
An Focal Beo is a new series of literary events celebrating the living word in Irish. Based in Gaelscoil Lios na nÓg (temporarily located on the campus of Muckross Park School in Donnybrook, Dublin), the events aim to draw even stumbling readers of Irish into the pleasure of the written language. Funded by Foras na Gaeilge, An Focal Beo will be launched on Wednesday at 8pm by the writer Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, who will read and discuss her novel for young people, Hurlamaboc (Cois Life) about how the lives of three cool suburban teenagers, Emma, Ruán and Colm, are thrown into chaos when the unexpected happens, putting the spotlight on petty snobberies and grasping ambitions in affluent, contemporary Ireland. The event is free. For more information, tel: 086-1744938.