When poets Dennis O'Driscoll and Thomas McCarthy joined forces to celebrate their new collections - Weather Permitting and Mr Dineen's Careful Parade respectively - on Monday night in Dublin's Waterstone's bookshop on Dawson Street, they were paid a double compliment. An extraordinary number of their fellow poets turned up, leading to a most un-poetry-reading-like crush for seats: undeterred, friends and fans stood without a grumble for the duration of the readings.
Dennis set the general tone of the lighthearted evening with his first remark: "I was recently out on a Customs launch at sea and I realised why they call these things launches - they both make you sick to the stomach." He went on to point out that this is the first time he was in the same room as both a Revenue Commissioner and a Nobel Prize winner, referring of course to poet Seamus Heaney.
For his part, Thomas McCarthy confided that the last time he was in Dublin on personal business was some 20 years ago when he made the trip to pick up the first 12 copies of his first collection, The First Convention, from the Dolmen Press on North Richmond Street. On that occasion he was so intimidated he didn't identify himself as the author of the books; on this one, he was detained signing autographs for ages alongside Dennis.
Those who came along to enjoy the readings included poets John Montague, Pat Boran, Theo Dorgan, Tony Curtis, and David Wheatley; writers Anthony Glavin and Elizabeth Wassell; academic Declan Kiberd; artist Pat Scott and Anvil publisher, Peter Jay.
THE marking of the millennium is rapidly becoming both tedious and repetitive, so it's good to hear of a volume that is as much a curiosity as a celebration. Called A Prime for the Millennium, it is a new publication from Tim and Mairead Robinson's press, Folding Landscapes, in Roundstone and it details, in simple terms, the discovery of the "millennium prime". Neither a cut of beef nor a head of state, the millennium prime is a prime number (i.e. one that can only be divided by itself and one) with exactly 2000 digits.
It was found by Dublin mathematician John B. Cosgrave on the evening of 6th of January this year after he left his computer humming on the problem all night. The email he wrote to his young nephew and niece describing his discovery forms the basis of the book which has a foreword by Tim Robinson and is designed by Simon Cutts of Coracle Press. Sadbh fans might remember that Robinson also contributed a discussion of prime numbers to Sources, Maire Heaney's recent compilation of the spiritual sources of well-known Irish people.
WHEN the first series of Pocket Canons came out there was a great furore - who were the likes of A.S. Byatt and Will Self to be writing forewords to the books of the Bible? The series did well and now it's time for the second series and more raised eyebrows. Above all, the doubting Thomases are aghast at our Bono writing on the Book of Psalms. In his foreword, the U2 frontman quotes liberally from the psalms, likens their language to the songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, reminisces about attending church in Finglas with his mother and describes David as "a star, the Elvis of the Bible". He also points out that the great U2 line, sung at the end of so many of their gigs - "How long (to sing this song)" is "pinched from Psalm 6".
Other forewords in the nine new pocket canons are supplied by Joanna Trollope (Ruth and Esther); P.D. James (Acts) and Ruth Rendell (Epistle of Paul to the Romans).
JUST as the hullabaloo over the 1999 Booker prizes has died down, news comes of the chair for the awards in the year 2000. The individual in the hot seat next year will be journalist and author Simon Jenkins, a man with plenty of literary experience under his belt having founded and edited the Sun- day Times books section, among other things. Jenkins, who is married to actress Gayle Hunnicutt, will be replacing Gerald Kaufman as chair. Kaufman was one of the first chairs to break with tradition this year when he announced that the thrice-nominated Anita Desai would be runner-up "had we been allowed to have one". J. M. Coetzee was the author who kept her from the big prize.
WHILE former Miss World contestants turn to good works and former Eurovision winners turn to politics, Booker winners tend to do nothing more adventurous than write more novels. Not so Arundhati Roy - her next volume is not a follow-up novel to her Booker-winning The God of Small Things of 1997, but a small book that could almost be described as a political pamphlet.
Entitled The Cost of Living, it is published by Flamingo and contains two essays written by Roy in response to two events in her home country of India - the May 1998 nuclear tests and the proposed dam to be built on the Narmada river in central India. Packed with facts and quotes, the essays are a far cry from the magic-realist tone of her first novel.
WITH the turn of the seasons, there's a new poetry magazine in the offing. Based in west Cork, it goes under the title Shop (after the Yeats's line "the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart" apparently) and is edited by English-born John Wakeman. No newcomer to the literary magazine scene, Wakeman was the co-founder and co-editor of the international magazine, The Rialto.
The first issue includes new poems by Leland Bardwell, Paul Muldoon, John Montague, Brendan Kennelly, Carol Rumens, Medbh McGuckian and Derek Mahon. For more discussion, look out for Rosita Boland's round-up of literary magazines on these pages later in the year.
Sadbh