On Thursday there was a bit of a rebirthing ceremony at the National Library. New Age activities among the bookstacks? Not quite. The bash was for the relaunch of publishing company, Arlen House, which ceased operation in 1987. Arlen - associated with feminist publishing, although it did publish male writers - had published some 50 books before going out of business. Among them were classic reprints of writers then somewhat out of sight, such as Kate O'Brien.
Now Alan Hayes, who is based in Galway, has relaunched the press. He told Sadbh that the venture was "a dream come true" and enthused about his plan to publish some six titles before Christmas. The two books launched this week are Travelling West, a collection of poems by Rita Kelly, and The Years Flew By, a collection of journalism and memoirs by Madame Sidney Gifford Czira, a Republican stalwart and the youngest of the Gifford sisters. Of the Kelly publication, Hayes says that it's a big printrun for a book of poems - 2,500 - but he is expecting it to do very well.
SADBH hears that Pol O Muiri, Irish language editor of this paper, has been sporting a few other hats lately. He has just been awarded the £2,000 first prize in an Oireachtas competition for his novel Paloma, which will be published by Comhar.
O Muiri is also one of the 15 Irish poets who've been invited to contribute to the forthcoming Leabhar Mor na Gaidhlig/The Great Book of Gaelic. This volume - which sounds to Sadbh like a Scots Gaelic and an Irish language version of the Great Book of Ireland - will bring together more than 150 poets, visual artists, calligraphers and typographers from Ireland and Scotland. New poetry and visual artwork will be commissioned, and the work initially will form a major touring exhibition, before being collected and published.
IMAGES and Reflections: photographers and writers seeing our century is a well-produced publication from the Linen Hall Library put together by John Gray, Mark Phelan, Eoin Magennis and Ophelia Byrne. The little book was published to coincide with an exhibition of photographs of Ulster life at the library.
Ulster writers were invited to contribute a piece of their work which they felt best illustrated the image. Some writers approached the project from the other direction and wrote a piece to go with a photo. Among those who did this were Tom Paulin, who wrote about Belfast City Hall; Medbh McGuckian, who wrote a poem in memory of the Quinn children who died in a sectarian arson attack at their home in Ballymoney, Co Antrim in 1998; Seamus Deane, who wrote a fragment on unemployment in Derry; Gerard Dawe, who wrote a poem about the emigrant family pictured on a boat in the photo he chose; and John Kelly, whose lovely poem, "Babby", about a child and his grannyturned-babby who's gone astray and rambling in the mind, accompanies a picture of Derry children outside a pawn-shop and ends - "You Babby were living up the stairs/ A bell by the bed like Lady Belmore/ Or Lady Muck/ And rambling seemed like such a gentle word./ Like the other gentle word we kitchen-whispered/ Stroke." ebler, and Anne Devlin. Images and Reflections costs £5 sterling.
SADBH is a dog-person and not a cat fan at all, but just to show she is unbiased, here's news of a book that came meowing onto her desk. Called Dustbin Cats, it's a collection of stories about those sulky furry creatures, edited by Patricia Boland, and sold in aid of Animal Welfare and Environmental Concern, for £4.99. The foreword is by well-known cat-fan Hugh Leonard, and there is also a contribution by Maeve Binchy, called Gordon and Maeve's Cat Story.
The Stinging Fly magazine, edited by Declan Meade, is looking for submissions for its forthcoming special fiction issue, which will appear in February. The magazine is looking for stories/extracts from novels of no longer than 3,000 words. Send submissions to The Stinging Fly, PO Box 6016, Dublin 8, before November 30th. The current issue is a considerable improvement on earlier publications. Among the contents are: a chapter of a novel-in-progress, The Fisher Child, from Philip Casey; an interesting interview with short-story writer Claire Keegan; poems by Dennis O'Driscoll, Medbh McGuckian, Mary O'Donnell, and James Liddy; and a fresh and engaging piece of short fiction, "Heroes, Just For One Day", from newcomer Fiona Ni Chinneide. Issue No 8 costs £4 and is out now.
Sadbh