Some more publications from the literary world
Homage to Hartnett
Michael Hartnett: the man, the myth, the poet is what his son Niall Hartnett sets out to convey in Notes From His Contemporaries: A Tribute to Michael Hartnett, published in advance of the 10th anniversary of his poet father's premature death, in October 1999. "Limerick's Lorca," as Seamus Heaney describes Hartnett in a eulogy included here, is celebrated in this volume by more than 40 poets many of whom – a decade after his death in his late 50s – still seem to be mourning him. Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill writes of her last meeting with him at a book launch in Dublin. "He was still beautifully and formally dressed in a brown-hued tweed suit but, never very large, seemed wasting away to nothing. He seemed more than ever like a 'siofra', or changeling," writes Ní Dhomhnaill, who took him aside and told him she thought he was drinking too much, and harming his health.
“‘Nuala,’ he said, ‘what does it matter. My work is done.’ I was so flabbergasted I didn’t have the wit to say something to the effect of ‘But Michael, you are more than just your work.’ I have never been able to to forgive myself for not getting my tongue around such a sentence . . . Not that it would have made any difference, which he knew right well himself. He died three weeks later.”
In 1980, having come back from Turkey where she had been living, and seeking to find out what had been happening in the worlds of poetry and Irish while she was gone, Liam Ó Muirthile told her the most important thing to have happened in Irish language poetry was that Michael Hartnett had switched to Irish with style and panache in Farewell to English. Soon she tracked Hartnett down to Templeglantine in Co Limerick. "By a dogged process of questions and answers, I finally found a house to the left of a narrow road, over a humpy-backed bridge and walked into a kitchen where I introduced myself. I felt I should have said 'Michael Hartnett, I presume.' I was as overawed as Stanley must have felt when he finally encountered Livingstone."
In many ways, the publication also serves as a monument to the Dublin of Hartnett’s era. Dennis O’Driscoll writes of how most of his encounters with Hartnett were as random as dreams: chance meetings on streets around Hartnett’s shopping and drinking haunts. “Michael might be carrying a rattlebag of fresh oysters or a newly-minted circle of Lombardian focaccia. His tastes in poetry, as in food, could range far beyond Munster.”
Hugh McFadden evokes images of Hayden Murphy with his duffel bag full of copies of the latest Broadsheetmagazine; the long-gone Eblana bookshop near the top of Grafton Street – and establishments such as the Kum Tong restaurant where they would repair during the Holy Hour. Once from the junction of Grafton Street/ Harry Street/ South Anne Street there was a sighting of the striking figure of "Myles/Flann/ Brian Ó Nualláin" dressed in long dark overcoat and black wide brimmed hat, "the image of an Irish version of the 'Sandeman' man", pondering his own next port of call during the HH – the Holy Hour.
Eavan Boland, Anthony Cronin, Theo Dorgan, Paul Durcan, Pearse Hutchinson, Brian Lynch, John Montague, Gerard Smyth, Macdara Woods and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin are among the contributors to this book – which is illustrated by striking photographs of the writers by Niall Hartnett. These have already been exhibited at galleries in Chicago and Milwaukee and the photographer hopes to have an exhibition in Ireland. Without doubt, though, the most memorable image in the book is the tiny photo-booth image of the poet with son Niall and daughter Lara when he was a young man and they were infants. The book is online at lulu.com/content/6490300
Come back Percy French
The Last Troubadouris the title of the inaugural Percy French Summer School at Castlecoote House, Co Roscommon, from July 15th to 21st. Performances of French's songs are a mainstay of the festival, while other events include talks by writer Eugene McCabe on "Percy French in the novel Death and Nightingales" and by Liam Byrne on "Percy French in Ireland from 1957 to today". French was born in 1854 at Cloonyquin House, Co Roscommon.