LooseLeaves Caroline WalshWhile Monday's announcement of a €25 million redevelopment plan for Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery drew attention mainly to the famous historic dead who lie there - including Daniel O'Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and Eamon de Valera - like any big cemetery it has its famous dead poets, playwrights and novelists as well.
The 10-year refurbishment plan, which will include a heritage and interpretive centre, will inevitably also shine a light on Glasnevin's dead literati. Chief among them is English poet and Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins
(right), author of The Wreck of the Deutschland. Dogged by gloom, he was professor of Greek literature at University College Dublin but died of typhoid fever in
1889 in his mid-40s, somehow managing to utter "I am so happy, I am so happy" on his deathbed.
Also in Glasnevin are Brendan Behan, Dora Sigerson Shorter, Christy Brown and James Clarence Mangan, though, according to the cemetery's chief executive, George McCullough, none of them have the draw of Glasnevin's most popular attraction, Michael Collins. "The amount of flowers that go on to his grave is extraordinary," McCullough says.
With 1.2 million graves in Glasnevin - not counting those in areas such as the cholera, smallpox, famine and "Holy Angels" plots - the 120-acre cemetery has the potential to become, if not quite Paris's Père Lachaise, then even more of an attraction than it already is. It's already on the Joycean trail due to Paddy Dignam's funeral procession and the Hades episode of Ulysses, and though Joyce himself is buried in Zurich's Fluntern Cemetery, his parents are buried in Glasnevin.
Although the trend in favour of cremation probably means that contemporary writers' ashes may be scattered to the four winds, visiting the graves of those who are no longer with us can be an engaging pastime - and Ireland being Ireland, literary graves are something we're not short of. On Dublin's south side, Mount Jerome Cemetery, final resting place of writers including William Carleton, George Russell (AE) and John Millington Synge, has a strong literary presence. In Co Cork there's Elizabeth Bowen's grave in Farahy churchyard and the graves of Edith Somerville and Martin Ross (aka Violet Martin) high up in St Barrahane's churchyard in Castletownshend. In the west, Oliver St John Gogarty is buried near his Connemara home in Ballynakill Cemetery and George Moore's ashes are interred on Castle Island on Co Mayo's Lough Carra, one of the loveliest pilgrimages a literary tourist can make. And if you come to the end of Irish writers' graves on the old sod, you can head abroad to Père Lachaise for Oscar Wilde, or most moving of all perhaps, to Ypres, where, even amid those acres of fallen war dead, it's still possible to find the grave of Francis Ledwidge. If you're not able to travel you can at least take a virtual tour of the French cemetery at www.pere-lachaise.com. A Glasnevin Cemetery virtual tour is scheduled to be updated and running in April at www.glasnevin-cemetery.ie
Big names to make Hay
Ever since Bill Clinton called it "the Woodstock of the mind", the Guardian Hay Festival in the tiny Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye has gone from strength to strength. It takes place this year from May 24th to June 3rd, and it will be a high-profile event, as it is celebrating its 20th year. Writers due to attend include Martin Amis, last year's Man Booker winner Kiran Desai, Terry Eagleton, Dave Eggers, Doris Lessing, David Mitchell, Edna O'Brien, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell and Graham Swift.
Barry to take over Dublin
So well evoked is Dublin in Sebastian Barry's novel, A Long Long Way - the story of young Royal Dublin Fusilier Willie Dunne, who marches out to fight on foreign fields as rebellion bubbles up at home - that it's an obvious choice for the Dublin: One City, One Book project, which is designed to encourage people in the city to read the same book at the same time. It takes place in April. The initiative is seen as a chance to promote reading, libraries and the joys of a naturally literary capital.
Women's Day reading
It may be running a week after the event, but the message is still the same. Eavan Boland, Carol Rumens, Paula Meehan, Clairr O'Connor, Cherry Smyth and Carol Ann Duffy are the line-up on Thursday at 7pm for an International Women's Day reading, along with sean-nós singers Naisrín and Róisin Elsafty, at the Unitarian Church on Dublin's St Stephen's Green. Entry is free, but booking is essential, from management@poetryireland.ie or 01-4789974.