Sadbh was delighted to see poet Michael Longley this week picking up the £10,000 T.S. Eliot prize for poetry in London. His latest book, The Weather in Japan, had already won the Hawthornden Prize last year. Longley was not considered the big name favourite by the British press - Derek Walcott, Thom Gunn, Anne Stephenson, and Douglas Dunn being names that were flagged a lot more prominently. But, to borrow the title of the film everyone has been raving about these past few weeks, Longley quietly crept up on the competition like some Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and collected the laurels. "The thing about Longley is that he has really come into flower in the last 10 years," fellow poet and director of the Irish Writers' Centre, Peter Sirr, told Sadbh. "He's had a really interesting career in that sense. He's now making up for his relative neglect in his life as a poet. Certain poets get better as they get older - like Yeats. And they're the luckiest poets of all."
Those young critics are at it again. Following the New Voices in Irish Criticism conferences in Dublin and Belfast, this year's event takes place next weekend at NUI, Galway. Sadbh found both previous conferences very lively, and this year's could be even more so, as a number of established critics, such as Kevin Barry, Gearoid O Tuathaigh and Terence Brown, will take part in a panel discussion on Saturday night exploring the directions current Irish criticism is taking. By widening the scope to papers on international topics, this year's organisers hope to challenge the boundaries of Irish Studies and encourage interdisciplinary debate. Papers include: "Native voices; Irish language speaking characters in Thomas Keneally's The Great Shame and Christopher Koch's Out of Ireland", by Dymphna Lonergan of Flinders University of South Australia; "Ethnicity and history: the Irish traveller in Irish writing", by Mary Burke of Queen's University Belfast; "There are no children here: dead babies in Northern Irish drama", by Neelum Wadhwani of the University of Texas, Austin; and "Celluloid cityscapes: filming urban Ireland", by Katie Moylan of NUI, Galway.
Proceedings start on Friday at 4 p.m. and the venue is the Siobhan McKenna Theatre in the Arts Millennium Building. Details from Karen Vandevelde at the English Department, NUI, Galway.
One of the next major prizes looming on the horizon is the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize, worth £5,000, which was inaugurated to commemorate the British ambassador who was killed by the IRA 25 years ago. This year's winner will be announced on February 23rd. The shortlist is: Marianne Elliott - The Catholics of Ulster: a History; Stephen Howe - Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture; Alvin Jackson - Ireland 1798-1998: Politics and War; David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton - Lost Lives: the Stories of the Men, Women and Children who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles; Marc Mulholland - Northern Ireland at the Crossroads: Ulster Unionism in the O'Neill Years 1960-9; and Adrian Rice - The Mason's Tongue.
Roy Foster, a trustee and judge of the prize, said that in this anniversary year it was appropriate the shortlist reflected works which showed not only how far we had come over the last generation, but also "the terrible waste of opportunities along the way". The award will be presented by Dr Garret FitzGerald.
The Cathal Bui Summer School 2001 is looking for entries for its short story and poetry competitions, either in Irish or English. The school runs on the first weekend of July at Belcoo, Co Fermanagh, and Blacklion, Co Cavan. There is a prize of £100 and £50 in each section. Entry forms and details of entry fees are available from Writing Competition, Belcoo, Co Fermanagh; Closing date: March 17th.
The Yeats Winter School takes place this weekend in Sligo. If you get to the Sligo Park before 9.30 a.m. today, you'll hear Ann Fogarty, director of the winter school, give a paper entitled "Ancestral houses; Yeats and the poetics of place". In the Yeats Memorial Building at 11.15 a.m. you'll have the opportunity to hear poet Peter Sirr's lecture "Faint harps and silver voice; a winter notebook". Tomorrow the programme includes Ann Fogarty talking on "Ghostly colloquies; Yeats and Seamus Heaney." For more details, telephone 071-42693.
Sadbh has received an e-mail from that august body, Cambridge University Press. Every year, Magdalene College hosts the Parnell Lecture in Irish Studies, which is given by whoever is the Parnell Fellow - or Parnell Lass - that year. Past holders include Denis Donoghue, Helen Vendler, Joe Lee and Edna Longley. The holder this year is Padraig O Riain, of UCC. One of the main research projects O Riain is currently engaged in is chairing a team which is working on a new historical dictionary of Irish place-names. The title of the lecture is "Irish hagiography; a product of conflicting cultures". It takes place at 5.15 p.m. on Monday, February 12th, in Benson Hall, Magdalene College, Cambridge.