It will be heaven with Seamus Heaney, purgatory to judge by the title of Yeats's last play, - and all hell to pay if the spectre of the dreaded foot-and- mouth rears its unfortunate head again. So far, organisers of this year's Yeats Summer School in Sligo (to run from July 28th to August 10th) are quietly confident that bookings will be maintained, despite the usual heavy concentration of American scholars.
The poet's son, Michael Yeats, will officially open the school and Nobel laureate Heaney is merely one of a number of writers and scholars due to attend, including Tom Paulin, James McKendrick, Edna Longley and George O'Brien.
One of the big draws will be Hollywood heart-throb Patrick Bergin, who directed films of a number of Yeats's plays, some of which will be shown at the Gaiety Cinema in Sligo during the school.
The Hawk's Well Theatre plans a festival of drama, song and music to coincide with the school and a highlight, according to one of the organisers, Maire McTighe, will be a workshop performance of Purgatory, a controversial drama about sin and retribution.
Take note too that an unscheduled seance took place during last year's summer school and it is possible the same could happen again given Yeats's interest in the occult. Indeed, he might turn up himself. Further information from the Yeats Society (tel: 071-42693; e-mail: info@yeats-sligo.com).
This year's Rooney Prize for Literature will be landing in the lap of Dubliner Keith Ridgway next week. The novelist and short-story writer, now based in London, will be presented with the £6,000 prize on Monday evening. He first came to prominence with his first novel, The Long Falling, in 1998, which went on to be nominated for the Lamda Award in Los Angeles the following year, in the category of men's gay fiction, a prize once coveted by Edmund White.
Ridgway's most recent book is Standard Time, a short-story collection, set in contemporary Dublin and reviewed on these pages recently by Catherine Heaney. "He is, undoubtedly, a gifted writer," she wrote, "adept at creating complex, convincing characters in writing that is fluid and unshowy."
Ridgway, who will be 36 this year, tends to concentrate on lives gone awry, on waste and despair, and he provides no easy options for readers. But his bleakness is in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Beckett, who have long inspired him, though he is also an admirer of the late Brian Moore's use of pace and plot. The Rooney Prize for emerging writers is sponsored by the Irish-American owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. Maybe Roy Keane could do worse than dig into his pockets.
you've heard of poetry in motion, so why not poetry and scenery, with the Poet's House Summer School sessions in Falcarragh, Co Donegal, providing a novel way to while away the hols? The Poet's House was established by US poet Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons, whose poet husband James, happily, is back on home turf following a recent serious illness.
The summer school has been running for 10 years, with Muckish Mountain as an inspirational backdrop. Among the poets attending this year will be Michael Longley, Joseph Woods, Joan Newman, Peter Sirr and EilΘan N∅ Chuilleanβin, plus the US-based Richard Telling, Ted Deppe and Michelle Mitchell Faust, who has just won the prestigious Ellis Prize for poetry.
The sessions attract all comers, but are no cakewalk. They are intense, running for three 10-day periods between June 20th and August 26th. The poet of the day gives a lecture each morning, participants dissect their own work in afternoon workshops, and there is a reading each evening. Poets, new or established, are invited to send poems and letters of recommendation to: The Poet's House, Clonbarra, Falcarragh, Co Donegal (tel: 074-65470). Courses cost from £300 with accommodation available locally.
The Poet's House also runs MA courses in conjunction with the University of Lancaster. Another local development is the plan by the American University in Fairfield, Connecticut, to set up a base in Falcarragh.
It was the mini-marathon on the streets of our capital earlier this week, but the real story is the marathon taking place next weekend in the sun-splashed Spanish city of Guadalajara. Celebrating the worldwide revival in the art of telling a good yarn, the Storytelling Marathon will last 48 hours and include hundreds of storytellers. Fifteen of them, one from each member of the EU, will take part in both the marathon and a conference in the Infantado Palace.
Flying the Irish flag will be actor and storyteller Nuala Hayes and musician Ellen Cranitch of the Two Chairs Company. The conference will be addressed by the distinguished Cambridge anthropologist, Prof Jack Goody, who will explore the relationship between the oral and the written word.
A storytelling and writing project for children between 10 and 12 years of age will run next month at the Irish Writers' Centre, in Parnell Square, Dublin. The course runs in the mornings from July 9th to 13th, and costs £85 per child.
Sadbh