On the Town: Enniscorthy native Colm Tóibín saluted friends including fellow townsman Anthony Cronin on Wednesday night on receipt of a cheque for €100,000 and a trophy as this year's winner of the International Impac Dublin Literary Award.
An international panel of judges chose Tóibín from a shortlist of 10 as the winner for his book, The Master, which they described as "a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart" and a "probing portrayal of Henry James".
Tóibín, who went to St Peter's College in Wexford town, said this was the same school John Banville, winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize, went to 10 years before him. Both writers had the same English teacher, Fr Seamus Larkin, who was "a great teacher," recalled Tóibín.
In his acceptance speech, he praised the central role of libraries in their promotion of reading, which is as much about empowerment as about entertainment, he said. The 10 shortlisted books, including three Irish titles, were nominated by 180 libraries from 43 countries around the world. The award is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries. He recalled the library in Wexford town where the staff would have known him as a teenager going in "looking for weird stuff", such as philosophy books, he said.
"He can take his place on the world stage of Irish writers. It's fantastic. Seventeen libraries nominated him. He got inside the head of one of America's greatest writers. It's just amazing. I'm so proud," said writer Marita Conlon-McKenna, chairwoman of Irish Pen, the Irish association of writers.
The Master was the outright winner of the Impac Literary Award because "Colm Tóibín fully inhabited the life and character of Henry James in a manner which drew on the sensibility of the age and it also drew on the critical aspects that formed Henry James as a person", said poet Mary O'Donnell, who was one of the judges. Later in the week O'Donnell's collection of new and selected poems, The Place of Miracles, published by New Island, was launched in Dublin.
"James is a very, very labyrinthine writer. Colm is able to go into the labyrinth . . . and to reveal to his readers the many aspects of James the writer," said another judge, writer Paulo Ruffilli.
Among those at the event were Gay Byrne, archivist Catríona Crowe, writers Anne Enright, Anne Haverty, James Ryan, Hugo Hamilton, John Quinn, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill with her son Timucin Leflef, a film writer and director, and opera singer and writer Judith Mok.
Sparking off the sparkles
Juggling, clowning, puppetry and face-painting were on offer last Monday evening at Draíocht. There was a party atmosphere at the Blanchardstown arts centre in Dublin 15 to mark the opening of Fingal's International Arts Festival, Spréacha.
The festival also included an exhibition of artwork featuring monsters, wizards and a red wool tunnel.
Emma Golden (five), a ladybird painted delicately on her nose by face-painter Anthony Fay, was there with her mother Elizabeth O'Keeffe from Maynooth. Other young people queuing to have their faces painted by Fay included Michael (six) and Áine Gahan (seven) from Castleknock and Bevin Murphy (who was eight yesterday) from Blanchardstown.
"The use of colour is so adventurous and great fun. It's very vibrant and playful, rather than being serious. The artists are not afraid of sugary and edible colours," said Carissa Farrell, Draíocht's visual arts officer, about the centre's current group show A Long Time Ago.
The festival also included theatre companies from Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and the US who performed shows (including four Irish premieres) for young people.
"Our catchy Spréacha name, sparkle or sparkles, is to spark their imagination," said festival and centre director, Emer McGowan. Over the past five days, more than 3,000 children between the ages of three and 12 will have visited Draíocht, as well as many schools and libraries, which also take part in the festival.
The six-day event concludes today with performances of Animals by Spain's El Retablo Puppet Theatre and of Snowflake by LaJoye Productions, of the US.
The third Spréacha festival was opened by Emily Logan, Ombudsman for Children. "It's really important that the young people in Blanchardstown get exposure to this kind of art," she said. The area has a very young population, with up to 43 per cent of its population under 15, she added. Her office, she said, is interested in "promoting different ways of engaging with young people and giving them their freedom of expression as well." Spréacha is "a freer, more creative way of promoting children's rights," she said.
Passion, painting and prose
Artists gathered at the National Gallery of Ireland on Wednesday night for the opening of the Samuel Beckett: a Passion for Paintings exhibition.
Alice Maher, Dermot Seymour, Mick O'Dea, James Hanley, Maeve McCarthy, Donald Teskey, Marie Carroll and Des Murrie were among those who were curious to see the new exhibition, which includes rarely seen paintings by Jack B Yeats and others that were owned by Beckett.
Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue, who opened the exhibition, pointed out: "Central to this exhibition is the correspondence between Beckett and his Kerry-born friend, Thomas MacGreevy" who was director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963.
The two became lifelong friends after they met in Paris in 1928. Beckett described MacGreevy as "a living encyclopaedia", O'Donoghue recalled.
The gallery "was extremely influential for Beckett as a writer," said Raymond Keaveney, director of the gallery. More than 40 works of art from the gallery's collection, as well as from private and public collections in Ireland and abroad, aim to explore the influence that art and artists had on his life and work.
"He developed a passion for painting, which transmitted into his writing and . . . his theatre," Keaveney said.
The exhibition also includes a number of artists' books that contain responses to Beckett's work.
Beckett's first cousin, Deirdre Sinclair, was at the opening, as was John Minihan, who photographed Beckett on a number of occasions, actor Barry McGovern, whose voice has become synonymous with Beckett's work and Marie Rooney, deputy director of the Gate Theatre, which was central in the Beckett Centenary Festival. Others present included Henry Lord Mount Charles and his wife Iona, writer Leo Cullen and his wife, the painter Carole Cullen and Celine O'Neill from Sandymount with her friend Merci Kinahan.
Admission to Samuel Beckett: a Passion for Paintings, which continues at the National Gallery of Ireland until Sunday, September 17, is free
Soundtrack of the city
Strange sounds will emanate from the Contemporary Music Centre on Fishamble Street in Dublin's Temple Bar throughout this month. The specially commissioned outdoor sound installation by composer Ailís Ní Riain, a Cork woman based in Manchester, is entitled Streetsong. The four-minute piece, which is on a loop and plays daily to the bemusement of passers-by, comprises snippets of sean-nós singing, bells, a female choir and a flute.
Streetsong is one of three sound installations that were commissioned to mark the centre's 20th birthday last Tuesday. Eblana Civitas by composer Siobhán Cleary, who is based in Riverstown, Co Sligo, can be heard on Essex Street West while Alignments by Limerick-based Seán Taylor plays in the rear courtyard of the centre at 19 Fishamble Street.
Composers in attendance at the centre's anniversary open day included Roger Doyle, Michael Holohan, Fiachra Trench, Seoirse Bodley, Raymond Deane and Trevor Knight, who is currently working on a multi-disciplinary piece called Slat, which will explore the lives of feral or wolf children, to run at the Project at the end of July.
Others who came to mark the anniversary included Olive Braiden, chairwoman of the Arts Council, Nicholas Carolan, director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, Ingrid McIlwaine, of the Culwick Choral Society, arts consultant Eugene Downes and pianist Thérèse Fahy.
Eve O'Kelly, the centre's director, said there are 170 composers on its books. "There is a lot of music activity happening now," she said. "Composers and their work "can well hold their own in countries around the world. They are increasingly being picked up for international performances."
"I couldn't say enough for it," said composer Gerry Murphy. "It represents composers," he said, pointing to the fifth CD volume of Contemporary Music from Ireland, a promotional series that aims to give a snapshot of what's going on currently in music.