sadbh@irish-times.ie
Sadbh was happy to mingle with the Joyceans on Tuesday at the opening in Dublin's Chester Beatty library of the exhibition built around the Rosenbach manuscript of Ulysses. Stephen Joyce, looking the image of his grandfather, was among the throng as people peered through the glass cases at the spindly hand of Joyce. For Sadbh, the most thrilling thing was the original copy of the letter he wrote to Nora Barnacle when, on June 14th 1904, she failed to turn up for their first rendezvous outside Sir William Wilde's house on the corner of Merrion Square. "I may be blind. I looked for a long time at a head of reddish brown hair and decided it was not yours. I went home quite dejected . . .", home at the time being 60 Shelbourne Road.
Later, walking home down Nassau Street and on past Nora's old place of employ, Finn's Hotel - the building is thankfully still with us - into Merrion Square, Sadbh found it impossible not to think of the extraordinary pair walking those same streets a century ago. This is a marvellous exhibition with alot more in it than just the manuscript of Ulysses. See it.
The first copy of Portal has just arrived on Sadbh's desk. It is one of the many cultural projects which have been commissioned in conjunction with the Irish EXPO Pavilion at Hanover. There will be five issues of the newspaper-type literary magazine, one of which will appear each month for the duration of EXPO, with a whacking print run of 50,000 for each one. Portal is being distributed free to people who visit the Irish pavilion - the idea is that it will serve as a teaser, or selective introduction, to Irish literature. The first issue carries an extract entitled "That He May Face the Rising Sun" from a novel-in-progress by John McGahern; poetry by Peter Sirr and Paula Meehan; an interview with writer Philip Casey; film reviews by Hugh Linehan of this paper; and an essay by Fintan Vallely entitled "Acoustic Music in the Electronic Age". The poems and prose have German translations by prize-winning translator Hans-Christian Oeser. Portal's editor is poet Pat Boran. Web addresses for those who can't make it over to Germany to get their own copy are: www.expo2000.ie and www.eventguide.ie/ portal
The Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design, and Technology has recently announced details of a new BA course, which will take in its first students this autumn. The four-year programme offers a BA in English, Media, and Cultural Studies which, the course organisers say, is a combination not on offer at any other third-level institution. The programme will cover literature from 1600 to the present, alongside film and media studies, electronic media, and television. There will be an emphasis on teaching writing skills, so scriptwriting, creative writing, and multi-media publishing are all on the syllabus. More information from 012144764, or www.iadt-dl.ie
Oxford University Press has just reissued seven classic books about the Blaskets, all at £6.99 in the UK, which will probably introduce the islands to a new generation of readers abroad. They are: The Western Island by Robin Flower; A Day in Our Life, by Sean O'Crohan; The Islandman, and Island Cross-Talk by Tomas O' Crohan; A Pity Youth Does Not Last by Micheal O'Guiheen; and Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan. The seventh book, of course, is the now-infamous An Old Woman's Reflections by Peig Sayers. Sadbh, who encountered Peig while a Sadbhette at school, thinks this particular tome should be retired for at least a generation in this country, to give it time to recover from the stigma of forced learning that hangs about it like an immovable pall.
On the re-issue topic, O'Brien Press has reintroduced us to Oliver St John Gogarty, a biography by Ulick O'Connor (whose diaries will be published by John Murray next spring). The surname Gogarty has certainly been aired a lot in recent times: this Gogarty, who was a drinking buddy of Joyce, appointed O'Connor as his official biographer. First published in 1964, this edition is flagged as containing "a previously unpublished ballad by Gogarty on the reputed encounter between Edward VII and a lady of the night in a Dublin brothel." Hmmm. Sadbh has read it, and if you like ballads that have crude words which rhyme with "night", "luck", and "yours" in them, this is for you. Some may feel it's an insight into Gogarty we could have done without.
Sadbh hears that the winner of the Fingal Scribe competition is playwright Tara Marie Lovett, who has won £1,000 for her play, The Shape. The competition was run by Spotlight on Skerries. The prize will be awarded for a short story next year.
Well, strange as it might sound, old Jim Joyce isn't the only dead male Irish writer whose life and work is being celebrated around this time. "Remembering Patrick Kavanagh: A Celebration of his Life and Times" is the title of the evening planned for Wednesday at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin at 8 p.m. Debate, discussion, readings, and harp music are all promised by the organisers, the Monaghan Association Dublin. Those on the debating panel are academic Declan Kiberd, and poets Tony Curtis and Macdara Woods. Admission is £5 at the door.
A Harry Potter frenzy is being actively encouraged by the publishers, who seem to think they have the Fourth Secret of Fatima in their warehouses, by not releasing even the title of the forthcoming J.K. Rowling book, let alone advance review copies. Review copies? Sadbh can still hear the publicists hooting like Howgarts' owls down the line at such a request. Sadbh loves Harry Potter, but not the hype around it. It is after all, only a book written for children, not a set of blueprints for nuclear plants in arcane locations.
Sadbh