Madam, - As reported in your Arts page of October 1st, Dublin, the birthplace of three Nobel prize-winners for literature, does not have a permanent home for the national poetry organisation, Poetry Ireland.
This time last year the Munster Literature Centre sent a copy of the anthology Best of Irish Poetry 2008 to each member of the Oireachtas, together with a letter pointing out this disappointing situation. Every major German city has a Literatur Haus; Berlin has several.
It is a source of national embarrassment that a country which lures tourists to its shores on the basis that they are visiting the home of Joyce, Yeats and Beckett does not provide in its capital city a permanent home for literary institutions engaged in contemporary practice.
The Dublin Writers' Museum and the Joyce Museum are laudable in celebrating the writing of yesterday, but what this country needs is a permanent, rent-free home in the capital supporting the writing of today and tomorrow.
The Munster Literature Centre is lucky to be situated within the administrative area of an enlightened local council: in 2003 Cork City Council assigned us Frank O'Connor House on a rent-free 30-year lease. We are the only national literary organisation with a secure home to call our own. Instead of wasting tens of thousands each year on rent we can spend this money on developing audiences for literature and augmenting writers' livelihoods.
The Arts Council, with its very limited budget, does the best it can in contributing to literature's operational costs. But if the Government and Dublin City Council continue to fail to recognise the importance of literature to this nation, Poetry Ireland might be better off moving lock, stock and barrel to the People's Republic of Cork. - Yours, et,
PATRICK COTTER,
Director,
The Munster Literature Centre,
Douglas Street,
Cork.