Loose LeavesCaroline Walsh Two exciting new jobs opened up this week on the arts and literary front. With poet Pat Boran busy in other areas, including his job at the Dedalus Press, the post of Programme Director of the Dublin Writers Festival came up this week.
It's hard to think of anything more invigorating than chasing down writers from around the globe to put together a line-up for the June gathering that now habitually kick-starts summer's literary calendar in the capital each year. Though the job is initially on a nine-month contract, renewal after that is a possibility. Applications must be in by August 25th. Details from the festival director, Dublin Writers Festival, Dublin City Council, The LAB, Foley Street, Dublin 1.
Tel: 01-2225455.
The announcement also this week that Helen Carey will be succeeded as director of The Irish College/Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris by Sheila Pratschke, director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan, means that the job of running the Monaghan artists' retreat now also becomes vacant. It will be advertised next week.
Meanwhile, Annaghmakerrig this year celebrates 25 years as an artists' colony with a number of events in the autumn. In September Fiona Shaw will open a new performance studio at the centre. In October there will be a day-long celebration in Belfast of Tyrone Guthrie - who left his home to the State in 1971 - while in November a book commemorating the venture, published by Lilliput Press, will be launched in Dublin. As well as a history of the house, built in the early 1800s, and of the families who have lived there, it will also showcase the work of some of the artists who have had residencies there over the past quarter century, including writers Colm Tóibín and Nick Laird, visual artists Mick Cullen and Alice Maher and composer Gerald Barry. More than 5,000 artists have come to Annaghmakerrig over the past 25 years to work.
Pratschke, who took over from Bernard Loughlin, has been six years in Monaghan and leaves in December. The successful applicant for her old job will need to be a multi-tasker, managing the large old house, looking after the artists, seeking funding, improving the facilities and assessing applications for residencies. They will also live on the job at the centre, amid the beautiful countryside around Newbliss.
Both posts should draw in a shoal of interesting applicants.
Heaney's name goes Forward
Seamus Heaney's new collection District and Circle (Faber) joins Paul Farley's Tramp in Flames (Picador), Vicki Feaver's The Book Of Blood (Jonathan Cape), Kate Bingham's Quicksand Beach (Seren), Robin Robertson's Swithering (Picador) and Penelope Shuttle's Redgrove's Wife (Bloodaxe) - a lament and celebration for the life of her husband and poet, the late Peter Redgrove - on the shortlist for the £10,000 Forward Prize for Best Collection. The result will be announced on October 4th.
A chill down every spine
With all the other art forms, you could forget that the Kilkenny Arts Festival (August 11th-20th) has a literary line-up - with quite a spine-chilling slant to it this year. Alex Barclay, new voice on the Irish thriller scene, will read with thriller writer and poet Tobias Hill, who had the distinction of being the inaugural poet in residence at London Zoo. Crime fiction author Adrian McKinty will read with novelist Eoin McNamee, who also writes crime fiction under the name John Creed. Football, meanwhile, should be in the forefront at the paired reading of Gordon Burn and David Peace. Burn's book Best and Edwards - Football, Fame and Oblivion is due in October. Peace's new novel The Damned United, about Brian Clough's controversial term as manager of Leeds United in the 1970s, is due out next month.
There are also children's readings with McNamee, Deirdre Madden and Darren Shan.
www.kilkennyarts.ie
Paddy's poetry prize
The closing date for entries for this year's Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award for a first unpublished collection of poems in English is September 22nd. Eílean Ní Chuilleanain, Paul Durcan, Thomas McCarthy and Sinead Morrissey are among past winners of this prize, now in its 35th year. The main prize is €2,500, with €1,000 for second prize and €500 for third. The presentation ceremony will be on Friday, November 24th at the opening of the Annual Patrick Kavanagh Weekend in Inniskeen.
Tel/fax: 042-9378560 or e-mail: infoatpkc@eircom.net for rules and entry forms, or download from www.patrickkavanaghcountry.com