Literary links between Ireland's majority immigrant communities of China, Nigeria and Romania and this country will be explored at this year's Cúirt International Festival of Literature which takes place in Galway this week. Fresh interpretations of existing work by Irish writers, such as Brian Merriman's Midnight Court, will also be presented at the week-long festival.
The festival was opened last night by Robert McCrum, literary editor of the Observer newspaper, before a sell-out reading by South African Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee and Nigerian poet and novelist Helon Habila.
Writers from Russia, Nigeria, Moldova, Belarus, Britain, the USA, Romania and from Ireland North and South are contributing to this year's event, and a junior dimension - which marks the bicentenary of the birth of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen - has also been added to the programme.
Among the international participants will be Nina Cassian, who has been living in New York since she was forced into exile from Romania in 1985 by Ceausescu's secret police, the Securitate; Herta Muller, who was also persecuted, and has won Germany's most distinguished literary award, the Kleist Prize; Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare, who is currently professor of English literature at the University of New Orleans; Ken Wiwa, son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995 for his work with the Ogoni people; Chinese-American writers Li-Young Lee and Maxine Hong Kingston; and Russian writers Evgeny Rein and Tatiana Shcherbina.
The festival commissioned poet Ciarán Carson to write a new translation of Brian Merriman's celebrated work Cúirt an Mheán-Óiche/The Midnight Court to mark the bicentenary of the poet's death.
The "part-raucous satire on politics and sex, part-Orphic rite" will be read by actress Bríd Ní Neachtáin, and be performed in a condensed version by the Galway Youth Theatre.
The former lead singer of the punk rock group, The Stranglers, Hugh Cornwell, will read extracts from his autobiography, and give an acoustic performance and songwriting workshop.
Critic and lecturer Denis Donoghue of New York University will deliver the Anne Kennedy Memorial Lecture.
A plethora of Irish writers booked for the week include Ronan Bennett, Dermot Bolger, Desmond Hogan, Celia de Fréine, Jackie MacDonnacha, Tomás MacSiomóin and Colm Breathnach.
The festival will host its popular bardic brunch and poetry grand slam, along with an outing to Inverin, Connemara.
Its annual debate on Friday night, to be chaired by Prof Ivana Bacik, will discuss the influence of multiculturalism on cultural politics.
Full details of the programme are available at the Cúirt festival office, telephone: (091)565886;
at website: www.galwayartscentre.ie/Cúirt, and at e-mail address: info@galwayartscentre.ie