Loose Leaves/Sadbh: The term "classic" is a much abused one when it comes to literature, especially fiction. It is also one which, when the question is asked - what is a classic? - gives rise to passionate debate and sometimes diverse views on what the defining qualities of such a work are, or should be. But quite often a consensus of opinion marks out particular books which pass into posterity to take their place among literature's greatest achievements.
Now, to mark its 15th anniversary, the publisher Vintage is again asking this question and, naturally enough, Vintage authors of past and present generations are the ones presented for consideration by book-lovers. The exercise is to devise a Vintage Future Classics list and the publisher has put forward 100 of its titles for debate among reader groups. Only 15 books can be nominated. Five Irish authors are included in the 100, among them Joseph O'Connor, for Star of the Sea, Seamus Deane (Reading in the Dark), Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha) and Bernard McLaverty (Cal).
From the 100 titles, Sadbh would suggest the following list, leading off with The Heat of the Day, by the fifth Irish writer, Elizabeth Bowen: Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita; If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, by Italo Calvino; Cathedral, by Raymond Carver; Disgrace, by JM Coetzee; The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner; The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass; The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene; The Trial, by Franz Kafka; To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee; Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann; Atonement, by Ian McEwan; All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque; and Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf.
Yes, this list is dominated by the heavyweights, but they have stood the test of time. Will The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time still be read in a 100 years?
On unconventional lines
A gathering of almost 50 poets, as well as musicians and visual and video artists, takes place in Cork every day next week as part of the Capital of Culture programme. The SoundEye Cork International Poetry Festival, at the Christian Brothers School on O'Sullivan Quay, is now it its ninth year and eschews the mainstream to focus on what the organisers call "unconventional poetry".
International participants include Yang Lian (in exile from China since 1989); Israeli poet Amir Orr (coordinator of Poets for Peace), who will read with English poet and translator Fiona Sampson; American poet Charles Bernstein ( who also reads in the Irish Writers' Centre at 7pm on Tuesday ); and Susan Howe, who with David Grubbs on computer and piano, will perform her work. Writers from the UK include Tom Leonard, Bill Griffiths, John Wilkinson, Kelvin Corcoran, Lee Harwood and Peter Riley. The world premiere of Wendy Mulford's The Unmaking, based on the highland clearances on the Scottish island of Skye in the 1840s, which was specially commissioned by SoundEye, will also take place during the festival.
Irish participants include writers associated with New Writers' Press, such as Michael Smith, Geoffrey Squires, Augustus Young and Trevor Joyce, who is founder of SoundEye, which will host tributes to the work of Brian Coffey and Robert Creeley.
Information: www.cork2005.ie
Now for the judges
The judges for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award for 2006 have been announced. Those reading this year's new collections are: Prof Patrick Crotty, lecturer at University of Aberdeen and editor of the Blackstaff anthology, Modern Irish Poetry; Dublin poet Gerard Fanning, who has published three collections with Dedalus; and Welsh poet and translator Fiona Sampson, who edits the UK's leading journal, Poetry Review, and whose most recent publication is the verse novel, The Distance Between Us (Seren).
The award will be presented to the author of the best single volume of poems by an Irish poet, or from an Irish publisher, in 2005. The shortlist will be announced on January 31st next and the winner will be announced in Dún Laoghaire on the opening night of the Poetry Now festival on March 23rd 2006. The winner of the inaugural prize this year was the late Dorothy Molloy's debut collection Hare Soup. For further details, contact Poetry Now, The Arts Office, Marine Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin (01-2054873) or e-mail arts@dlrcoco.ie.
The Yeats and Synge show
In 1905 Jack B Yeats was commissioned by the Manchester Guardian to illustrate a series of articles by JM Synge on the condition of the poorest parts of Ireland, Connemara and Co Mayo. The Model Arts and Niland Gallery in Sligo is now mounting a mixed-media exhibition (until September) to mark the centenary of this partnership. The show will bring together many of Yeats's drawings for the first time since they were commissioned. The show will include screenings of To the Western World, a dramatised documentary about the Yeats and Synge collaboration.