Peter Sirr scoops Michael Hartnett poetry award:Peter Sirr has won this year's Michael Hartnett poetry award, worth €6,500, with his collection The Thing Is, which judges Tom McCarthy, Mary O'Malley and James Harpur described as a book of great poetic power, a complex and illuminating work of art.
Limerick county arts office inaugurated the award, for a third or later collection, in memory of Hartnett (1941-1999), and it has become an established part of the poetry scene since it began, in 2000. Welcoming his win, which is for his eighth volume, Sirr said the award was important for him because Hartnett was a poet he valued highly. "When I was a student in Trinity College I invited Michael to come and read at Éigse na Tríonóide, and I'll never forget the impression he made, the energy, the fierce determination, the absolute confidence in himself as a poet and in the importance of poetry. He was the first real poet I had ever met, and I followed his poetry and translations closely in the years that followed, and met him again many times. For me he was a model of a certain unyielding dedication." Sirr described his win as enormously confirming. "It means the book has got through to people, that it hasn't sunk without trace." An award based on a book, rather than a single poem, was particularly encouraging, as it rewarded a body of work that might have been years in the making. "Poets are slow workers generally; it can take years of painstaking work to assemble a collection." Poetry, he added, is as necessary as ever, "a way of making sense of the world and our place in it, an attempt to escape into the real, maybe. I don't expect its status or prestige to change much in the future, but there will always be a troop of quarrelsome, argumentative, ecstatic, sceptical and inspired poets pacing the margins, somehow finding an audience". Sirr, who was born in Waterford in 1960, is married to his fellow poet Enda Wyley; their daughter Freya is the subject of a central sequence of poems, The Overgrown Path,in The Thing Is.When he was told of the award, Freya, wondering what all the fuss was about, muttered, "Not poetry again." Sirr will receive the prize at Eigse Michael Hartnett, from April 14th to 16th in Newcastle West.
Harry Clifton: seriously into cultural detritus
Seriously into Cultural Detritus: Writing the Rustbelt in Britain and Irelandis a free public lecture by Harry Clifton, Ireland professor of poetry, at University College Dublin's John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies on Tuesday, March 1st, at 7.30pm.
What’s your favourite Beryl Bainbridge novel?
When she was was alive the English novelist Beryl Bainbridge, shortlisted five times for the Booker prize but never the victor, was often dubbed the Booker Bridesmaid. Now, in her honour, it has created the Man Booker Best of Beryl, asking the public to consider which of her five shortlisted novels – no writer ever appeared so many times – deserves the accolade. The titles were The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory Outing (1974), An Awfully Big Adventure (1990), Every Man for Himself (1996) and Master Georgie(1998). The Man Booker's Ion Trewin says they want posthumously to make her a Booker Bride. "Dame Beryl was a very gracious non-winner, and no Man Booker dinner was complete without her." Her daughter, Jojo Davies, says that, despite her protests to the contrary, Bainbridge did want to win the Booker very much. Voting is online at themanbookerprize.com. The winner will be announced in April.
