Without much fanfare, National Poetry Day came and went this week in Britain. The BBC devoted a few minutes to a reading of the poem voted best-ever in a nationwide poll (at time of writing I don't know what it is, though wouldn't be astonished to discover it was "The Daffodils" or "If"), but otherwise the event didn't receive much coverage.
I can't say I'm surprised. Some of us read poetry, some of us even write it, and a few of us actually believe it's important both in and to our lives, but we're not foolish enough to imagine it's important to the lives of most people, or arrogant enough to think it should be.
However, poet Ruth Padel thinks it should be, and is astonished that her upwardly mobile, career-obsessed friends evince not the slightest interest in it. I glean this from a piece she wrote in the Independent this week, and can only conclude that Ms Padel lives in Cloudcuckooland.
Essentially, she can't understand how her friends could possibly think that modern poetry is "difficult" and "hard work" - "amazing," she says, "how university-educated people tend to say that." Well, no, not amazing at all, given that so much of modern poetry really is "difficult" and "hard work" : rhymeless, rhythmless, with no discernible form and showing not the remotest interest in engaging the reader.
Britain, as if quantity constituted an argument. I'm afraid, however, that most of them will remain unread by 99.9 per cent of the public - for the reasons mentioned above and also for the reason that poetry will only ever be cherished by a minority of people, and probably a decreasing minority at that. Ms Padel may think this deplorable (and so may you and I), but those, I'm afraid, are the facts.
One of the main selling points of Finbar's Hotel, the recently published novel devised by Dermot Bolger and written by him and six others, is that the reader is left in the dark as to who wrote which chapter - a parlour game, in other words, for those who have the time to indulge in such things.
If you haven't, don't feel left out because spoilsport Anne Haverty has come up with the answers, anyway. Reviewing the book in the Daily Telegraph, she claims to have sussed all the authorial identities. The different chapters focus on different rooms in the fictional hotel, and Room 107 is "definitely Colm Toibin (the elegant fall of the sentences, the odd unknowingness of his gangster character), "while the "sparkling perceptions" and "zaniness" of Room 105 suggest Anne Enright, and the "laugh-out-loud" Room 103 "comes surely from Hugo Hamilton".
Who else? Jennifer Johnston "is easy: genteel daughters of the Rectory, getting tired and emotional together in Room 102", Room 106 is "obviously" Joseph O'Connor ("on-the-road details evince the travel writer and the sensitivity of the urbane, new-mannish columnist"), and Room 101 "has to be Bolger - its Dublinese gusto, its wry comedy . . ."
She falters a bit here, admitting this last could possibly be Roddy Doyle, given that the remaining room, 104, "does not have enough intensity for Bolger, nor enough dialogue for Doyle".
Hmmm. Still, I'll go along in general with Anne's instincts - whenever I get round to reading the book, that is.
The late Terry O'Sullivan, who took great pride in his army background, was an avid reader of the Journal of the Military History Society of Ireland and he praised it frequently in his Evening Press Dubliner's Diary column. Indeed, I recall reading one particular Diary that was almost entirely occupied by a lengthy extract from the journal - though I suspect that on the night in question a tired Terry had simply used it as a way of avoiding going out on his usual social rounds.
The journal was also of some personal fascination - my father worked for many years as private secretary to Defence Minister Oscar Traynor, and his cousin Dick Bunworth ended a distinguished army career in charge of the UN forces in the Middle East.
Thus, it has often been perused by such a non-militarist as this columnist, and I've been reading the latest edition, devoted to the role of the Irish defence forces in the UN, with special interest.
Entitled The Irish Sword, and taken from papers delivered at a seminar in the Curragh, it includes essays by Robert Fisk, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Noel Dorr and Lt Gen Gerry McMahon, and provides a detailed overview of our UN involvement down through the years. It costs £9 and you can get it by writing to Mr R.O'Shea, 147 Lower Drumcondra Road, Dublin 9. The Society itself is based in Newman House, 86 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.
Eamon Sweeney's novel Waiting for the Healer was one of last year's more striking Irish fictional debuts, and next Wednesday in Waterstone's of Dawson Street he'll be reading from his new book, There's Only One Red Army.
Published by New Island Books, this isn't a novel, being an account of his and his family's obsession over the years with Sligo Rovers. And no, it isn't simply an Irish Fever Pitch, either, the publishers assure me. You can find out what it really is at Wednesday's 6.30pm reading.