Loose Leaves SadhThe poetry confraternity worldwide - and his many fans - were rocked with news this week of the recent death of Irish American poet Michael Donaghy at the age of 50.
Resident in England since the mid 1980s, he was among a top 20 of young poets earmarked as New Generation poets in a 1994 Poetry Society promotion. Very much in his prime, he was to be among the line-up at next month's Poetry International festival in London; one of the saddest e-mails that arrived at the books desk about him during the week was from its organisers, amending their programme in the light of his death. He was to have taken part in several events, including a tribute to Anna Akhmatova at which leading contemporary poets will read their specially commissioned versions of the Russian poet's work during a session introduced by Elaine Feinstein (whose biography of Akhmatova will appear next year). Donaghy had already written his Akhmatova poems and now they will be read in tribute to him at the event on October 23rd. In his time Donaghy, who was born in the Bronx in New York to Irish Catholic parents, won many major poetry prizes, including a Forward Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Prize .
Among Irish poets who paid tribute to Donaghy, David Wheatley described him as an effortlessly warm and entertaining writer and man, whose poetry readings - in which he would recite, not read - were spellbinding. "He was a very careful writer who boasted of writing no more than three poems a year, which means he published only three full books in his lifetime, and makes his death at 50 all the more difficult to bear." We should, said Wheatley, have been hearing a lot more from Michael Donaghy for many years to come. Poet Joe Woods, director of Poetry Ireland, spoke of his readings at the Irish Writers' Centre and at Cúirt and recalled a warm, unassuming, interesting man who was very knowledgeable about Irish poetry. "A fine poet and a musician also, he'll be missed."
Joyce condensed
"Oh rocks! Tell us in plain words!", an exercise billed as "James Joyce in eight easy lessons", will run on Mondays from 6.30-7.30 p.m. from October 11th to December 6th at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin. The first one will be on The Life & Times of an Irish Exile - James Joyce (1882-1941 ) by Joyce biographer Peter Costello. Over the remaining Mondays (excluding October 25th) there will A Style of Scrupulous Meanness - Dubliners by Brian Cosgrove (NUI Maynooth); Forging in the Smithy of his Soul - A Portrait of the Artist by Anne Fogarty (UCD); "Our national epic has yet to be written" - Ulysses: stories & myths by David Butler (James Joyce Centre); "We See The Canvasser at Work" - Ulysses: language, music, style by Brian Cosgrove; "A way a lone a last a loved a long the" - Finnegans Wake by John Nash (TCD); "The Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis" - Joyce and the Modernist City by John Nash and To Keep the Professors Busy for Centuries - Joyce's Legacy by Anne Fogarty. Details from 01-8788547 or e-mail education@jamesjoyce.ie
Chinese poems - as Gaeilge
Bilingual events are common enough but it's not often one hears of a trilingual one. That's what marks out the launch of a book and poetry reading next Friday evening in Trinity College Dublin. The occasion is the publication in Chinese, English and Irish of the work of Shanghai poet Zhang Ye, whose work is almost unknown in the West. The book, An Gostfhear/The Ghostman (Coiscéim), is a selection of poems taken from over 40 years' work. The Irish versions of her poems have been done by Gabriel Rosenstock, the English ones by Paddy Bushe, and it's all part of the Imram festival of writing in Irish. The poet and her two translators will read from the work at 7.30 p.m. in the Edmund Burke Theatre, Trinity College, after the book launch.
Limerick Cuisle festival
A six-week series of poetry workshops will be part of Limerick's International Poetry Festival - Cuisle - this autumn. Organised by the Limerick City Council Arts Office in association with the White House Poets, the series will start with a masterclass on October 16th at the Georgian House and Gardens, Pery Square. The facilitator is poet Kevin Higgins, whose first collection, The Boy With No Face, will be published in January by Salmon Poetry. The masterclass costs €15, and €35 for those who wish to continue with the series. Potential participants should send a minimum of three poems and contact details to the Limerick City Arts Office, City Hall, Merchants Quay, Limerick.