Loose Leaves: You may not have felt the urge to saunter down Dublin's O'Connell Street last night to socialise with Hagrid, Dobbie and Dumbledore outside Eason or nip down to Carlow for a glass of free ghoul juice at Byrne's bookstore on Tullow Street, but you'd want to be a right muggle not to get excited at some of the repercussions of last night's midnight launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Bloomsbury).
What else could provoke the phenomenal sight of night-time queues outside bookshops with young readers clamouring to get their hands on a 608-page book that costs £16.99 (€24.65)?
For an older generation that remembers when bookshops in Irish rural towns were as scarce as the corncrake is today in the countryside, there's a special thrill about the dozens of bookshops from Portlaoise to Westport and Tullamore to Drogheda that went Harry Potter crazy in the early hours this morning. Another good knock-on effect of author JK Rowling's success is the discount purchasers of her new book are getting from many shops around the country on other children's books bought in their stores at the same time.
Though all eyes were on Edinburgh Castle for Rowling's unveiling of the book at the stroke of 12, inevitably a few copies of the top secret tome did sneak out inadvertently in the run-up - on the west coast of Canada. Staff at a shop in Coquitlam sold the book to 15 fans before realising it was meant to be under wraps but, in an astonishing move, its Canadian publishers got an injunction preventing the lucky purchasers revealing any details about their new acquisition before this weekend. Some even gave their copies back, as did nine-year-old Sylum Mastropaolo whose family had inadvertently bought it from a pharmacy in New York state. Sylum did, however, manage to read two pages before his parents gave it back.
With Potter fans in the ascendent worldwide this week it was interesting to learn that Pope Benedict XVI is not among them; writing last April before he was pope to Gabriele Kuby, author of a book called Harry Potter - Good or Evil, he appeared to agree with her theory that Harry may distort young people's understanding of the battle between good and evil. That didn't stop more than 350,000 copies of Harry Potter and the Half- Blood Prince being pre-ordered on Amazon.co.uk, an amount which, if stacked on top of each other, would be as tall as Mount Everest. If you wanted to receive it today, the day of release, you had to order by last Thursday. Amazon even set up a special secure warehouse to pack the books and get them out on time.
Poetry on the map
Tarnished Map: the Geography of Memory after Conflict - a phrase used by John Hewitt in his 1984 postscript to his poem Ulster Names, written in 1954 - is the theme of the 18th John Hewitt International Summer School which runs from July 25th to 29th at the Marketplace Theatre, Armagh. Participants include Terence Brown from TCD; Magill editor Eamon Delaney; novelist and poet Nick Laird; poet and Irish Times journalist Pól Ó Muirí, writer Gillian Slovo and Chief Constable of the PSNI Hugh Orde. Details from www.johnhewitt.org
Rhyme and season
Calling all poets: Oxfambooks is looking for six undiscovered poets whose work will appear on a calendar they are producing for 2006. Six established poets - Pat Boran, Theo Dorgan, Kerry Hardie, Paula Meehan, Sinéad Morrissey and Dennis O'Driscoll - will also contribute new poems to the project.
The emerging poets must submit a poem of 20 lines or fewer, in English, accompanied by an entry fee of €5 or the donation of a book. Proceeds from the calendar, which will be on sale in the autumn, will go towards Oxfam Ireland's work overseas. The judge will be Sinéad Morrissey.
The closing date is August 8th. Details from www.oxfamireland.org or Oxfambooks, 23 Parliament Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. Tel: 6707022
Lunchtime reading
The Out to Lunch poetry reading series continues over the summer on Fridays at 1.15pm in the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre on Foster Place, Dublin, with Tim Cunningham on July 29th, Joan Newman on August 12th and Desmond O'Grady on August 26th.