Loose Leaves:The judges for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2008 are Philip Coleman, Sasha Dugdale and William Wall.
The award is presented each year to the author of the best single volume of poems published by an Irish poet or an Irish publisher in the previous year. The shortlist of five titles will be announced in January. Philip Coleman, whose book on John Berryman will be published next year by UCD Press, is a lecturer in the school of English, Trinity College Dublin. Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator whose two collections, Notebook (2000) and The Estate (2003), were published by Carcanet/Oxford Poets. Her new translations of poet Elena Shvarts, Bird Song on the Seabed, will be published by Bloodaxe next spring. William Wall is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently Fahrenheit Says Nothing To Me; four novels including This Is the Country, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2005, and a short story collection, No Paradiso (2006).
As a panel they were described by Belinda McKeon, curator of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Poetry Now, as a trio of brilliant readers and writers who had placed poetry and its complexities - as well as its pleasures - at the centre of their working and their thinking. The winner of the €5,000 prize will be announced at next year's festival, which runs from April 3rd to 6th.
Rattle off a short story
Write a short story overnight and have it judged and pronounced on by your peers? A tall order surely but that's what 20 writers will be doing next weekend at the Frank O'Connor Festival of the Short Story in O'Connor's native Cork. Called the Short Story Open-Mic competition, the subject writers must write on will be given out next Friday morning at the Triskel Arts Centre. Then back to the garret for contestants, who will read their offerings out on Saturday afternoon in a bid to win the €300 top prize. While they'll be judged for the story itself, they'll also be rated on delivery - so a bit of stage presence is required as well. The wordcount is 300 and there's a €10 entry fee. Also next Saturday there's a two-hour workshop, Words Into Light, with poet Derek Mahon. For festival details see www.munsterlit.ie
Remembering Benedict
The Benedict Kiely Literary Weekend in honour of the writer who died earlier this year is in full swing this weekend in his native Omagh, Co Tyrone. Today starts with reflections on the writer by anthologist and critic Patricia Craig. Also speaking today are Gerard Lynch on Kiely's short stories and Irish Times Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby, whose topic is Benedict Kiely: A Literary Man in a Changing Ireland. This afternoon there's a bus tour of Kiely country. Tomorrow 's events include a reading by Michael Longley. In this, the year he died, the commemorative weekend, as well as offering analysis on his long literary career, will be a chance for friends and colleagues of Kiely's to meet in his native place and celebrate his achievements on terrain he knew like the back of his hand and immortalised in much of his writing. For more details e-mail struleartscentre@omagh.gov.uk
Women writers course
Anyone wanting to learn more about women writers - and discover the techniques of creative writing at the same time - might like to sign up for a new course on University College Dublin's adult education programme. Taught by poet Nessa O'Mahony, it will explore the work of some of the leading writers of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Sheila Wingfield, Anne Stevenson, Eavan Boland and Paula Meehan. Participants will also use various creative writing techniques to explore their own stories and narratives. It will run on Tuesday nights over 10 weeks from September 25th to November 27th ; cost: €175. Details: 01-7167123 and www.ucd.ie/adulted.
A mid-career €10,000
The €10,000 Hugh Leonard Bursary is for a mid-career writer (playwright, TV and film writer, fiction or non-fiction writer) with a proposal on how it would be used and how it would support his/her professional development. The closing date is Thursday, September 27th, and interviews may be held.
Details from Claire Power, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Arts Office; e-mail: cpower@dlrcoco.ie or call 01-2719531.