Loose Leaves/Sadbh: If you thought Aspen was all about skiing and little else, forget it. Another life goes on there entirely and from tomorrow the place will be coming down with Irish writers.
Edna O'Brien, Malachy McCourt, Nuala O'Faolain, Paul Muldoon, Colum McCann, Polly Devlin, Hugo Hamilton, Jamie O'Neill and Gerard Donovan are among those scheduled to appear at the 29th annual Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival, a guestlist the organisers flag as a line-up of Ireland's literary all-stars and "the A-list of contemporary Irish literature".
Summer Words is billed as the Sundance Film Festival of literary publishing, and this year the five-day event is a tribute to Ireland's literary heritage. As well as readings and question-and-answer sessions, there are a lot of parties, including a gala dinner. Explaining why they chose Ireland as this year's theme, Lara Whitley of the festival said it was because of the love the Irish had for language, their rich storytelling tradition - but also because of their ability to have a good time. While in Colorado, Edna O'Brien and Paul Muldoon will be joint recipients of the $10,000 Aspen Prize for Literature.
[ www.aspenwriters.org/festival.htmlOpens in new window ]
Talking SHOp
News of a new literary prize is always welcome, even if, as the instigators of the latest one say, it's very preliminary. It's a new poetry competition emanating from poetry magazine The SHOp and will be open to anyone who lives or has lived in Co Cork or who is now working there. It is for an individual who has not previously been published in a literary magazine or anthology. The competition will be administered by The SHOp and sponsored by Cork County Council. The winner or winners will be announced at a ceremony coinciding with publication of the autumn/winter issue of the magazine this November, which will also publish the winning entry or entries. Don't send anything yet, say the organisers, until details are finalised.
Leafing through the spring issue of the magazine and reading a poem by the late Caitlín Maude, it seemed hard to believe that another towering figure of Irish-language poetry, Michael Davitt, who also has a poem in this issue in Irish (and in English translation ), has now also departed. Davitt, who died suddenly last Sunday, aged 55, is represented in the magazine by the poem, Nuair a d'Fhág a gCuid Ban Iad (When Their Women Left Them), from his collection Seimeing Soir. He will be particularly missed at The SHOp, where he was Irish-language adviser.
The spring issue also has poetry by Adam Czerniawski, Leanne O'Sullivan, and Alexandre O'Neill, the Portuguese poet of Irish extraction whose family originally left Co Tyrone for Portugal in the mid-18th century because of the Penal Laws. Some of the contributors are published for the first time, the youngest of these being 15-year-old Rachel Brennan, with Landmine.
The Shop, No 17, Spring 2005, €8.50
Lecturing for Ireland
A Scrambled Egg and a Dish of Rice: International Nationalism and the Genealogy of Minoritisation - this is the intriguing title of a lecture by Homi Bhabha in Dublin on Tuesday as part of The Irish Seminar 2005. The annual seminar opens on Monday and runs until July 15th. The lecture kicks off at 8pm with Seamus Deane in the chair in Room G32, UCD Earlsfort Terrace, and is not only open to the public but free as well, as are two other main lectures at the same venue: Maud Ellman on Ulysses: Turning into an Animal (Tuesday, July 5th), and Siobhan Kilfeather on Genealogies of Irish Feminism (Tuesday, July 12th).
Details from Irishsem@nd.edu
Joyce at the double
The Ninth Annual Trieste Joyce School kicks off tomorrow and runs until July 2nd, with a list of speakers that includes Luke Gibbons, John McCourt and Bernard O'Donoghue, while closer to home the James Joyce Summer School starts on July 3rd and runs until the 15th at Newman House on Dublin's St Stephen's Green. Speakers at the latter include Fritz Senn, Luca Crispi and Cormac Ó Gráda, whose talk on July 13th is on Joyce, Bloom and the Jews of Dublin. Ó Gráda's talk has a particular poignancy, given the reduction in the size of this community over the years.
The good news is that the public are welcome to attend individual lectures, for which there's a €20 charge. There are also a number of walking tours with Seamus Ó Canainn, built around such Ulysses episodes as Lotuseaters and Lestrygonians.