Poetry royalty assembles for TS Eliot Prize
Some contemporary-poetry royalty will be on show in London tomorrow night when the poets shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize bar one – Derek Walcott – will read at the Southbank Centre on the eve of the judges’ decision.
Seamus Heaney is on the 10-book shortlist with his collection Human Chain, published by Faber. The other titles are Seeing Stars, by Simon Armitage; The Mirabelles, by Annie Freud; You, by John Haynes; What the Water Gave Me,by Pascale Petit; The Wrecking Light,by Robin Robertson; Rough Music, by Fiona Sampson; Phantom Noise,by Brian Turner ; New Light for the Old Dark,by Sam Willetts; and White Egrets, by Walcott.
After a sell-out last year the readings have moved from the 2010 venue, the Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, to the bigger Royal Festival Hall.
The winner will be announced on Monday, at a ceremony at the Wallace Collection, where the winner’s £15,000 (€17,750) cheque will be presented by Eliot’s widow, Valerie.
Back on this side of the water, Heaney is also under the spotlight having been shortlisted for the 2011 Irish Times Poetry Now Award (the full list is on the next page), as well as being the subject of an event at St Patrick's College in Drumcondra, Dublin, later this month. It's 10 years since the Seamus Heaney lectures were inaugurated at the college; the biennial series honours the Nobel laureate's contribution to Irish life. "Hearing Heaney" is this year's theme; the series starts on January 31st and runs over over six consecutive Monday nights. The first lecture, Seamus Heaney: Part of What We Are,will be given by the journalist Olivia O'Leary, chaired by the Abbey Theatre's Fiach Mac Conghail. See spd.dcu.ie/shl.
Win a Roddy Doyle class in a young writers contest
Budding authors between 12 and 14 are invited to enter the Young Adult Writing Competition in this year’s Dublin Book Festival (March 2nd-6th). Stories can be scary, funny, sad or simply whatever you like. The judges will choose eight winners to share in a most imaginative prize: a creative-writing workshop run by Roddy Doyle at the Fighting Words centre in Dublin on February 26th. The pieces must be between 500 and 1,000 words long; the closing date is February 11th. Entries to Dublin Book Festival Writing Competition, Publishing Ireland, Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylor’s Lane, Dublin 8 or info@dublinbookfestival. com.
The festival is also offering an interesting prospect for folks with time on their hands. It’s looking for volunteers to help man the show throughout venues that include the National Library of Ireland, the Gutter Bookshop, Project Arts theatre, Dublin City libraries and Dublin City Hall. E-mail your CV to info@dublinbookfestival.com.
More than 60 writers, including journalists, will take part in the fourth annual festival, now extended from three to five days. The full programme will be launched next month. See dublinbookfestival.com, facebook.com/DublinBook Festival or twitter.com/ DublinBookFest.
Salute to a ‘true friend of Irish writing’
A galaxy of Irish poets, including Harry Clifton , Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Peter Sirr and Dennis O'Driscoll, salute a Frenchwoman long living in Ireland in a Festschrift launched this week. Françoise Connolly, who was involved in setting up the Franco-Irish Literary Festival in 2000, worked for many years in the cultural section of the French embassy, during which time, in the words of the poet Theo Dorgan, she became a true friend of Irish writing. In her work Connolly has made an immense contribution to broadening and deepening the long conversation between Irish and francophone writers, says Dorgan in his preface to the tribute anthology, La Paume Ouverte, "a dialogue that stretches as far back in time as, we may hope, it will extend into the future".
