`We're hoping it'll be a night in the rich Munster tradition that Michael was so much a part of," said poet Theo Dorgan, talking about tomorrow's tribute night for Michael Hartnett in Jury's Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin. "It's really a collective act of mourning and celebration."
Following the death of Hartnett at the age of 57 on October 13th, the literary pages of The Irish Times were flooded with an extraordinary number of tribute poems by fellow poets. One, by Michael Longley, appears on the books pages today, but Dorgan, who is at the helm in Poetry Ireland, is now collecting some of the many other tribute works for publication.
In the meantime, a large number of Hartnett's friends and fans will gather in Jury's, to read either their own tributes or from Hartnett's work. They include Dermot Bolger, Anthony Cronin, Pat Boran, John Montague, Paula Meehan, Paul Durcan, Ciaran Carson, Brendan Kennelly and Aine Ni Ghlinn - who will be accompanied by musicians including Seosaimhin Ni Bheaglaoich, Danny Rodgers and Paddy Glacken.
The night will be a larger echo of a night held during the annual Baffle Festival in Loughrea, Co Galway, a few weeks ago when poets Tony Curtis and Pat Boran stepped into the slot in which Hartnett was scheduled to appear. "There was meant to be a camera recording the event but it didn't work, which was as it should be really," recalls Curtis, who will read his own tribute poem, Into the Dark, tomorrow night. "Michael was a real poet's poet," said Curtis, bestowing perhaps the ultimate accolade. The event, which is free, kicks off at 8 p.m.
It has been a good year for Irish poets and writers abroad - Seamus Heaney and his Whitbread nomination is the latest in a long line of gongs that includes Dennis O'Driscoll's Lannan Foundation award and Colm Toibin's Booker nomination. Not quite so widely heralded, but none the less prestigious for that, is the recent announcement by the European Academy of Poetry that Thomas Kinsella is the recipient of its first European Poetry Prize.
The academy is not a widely-known institution, but its credentials are impeccable. Founded in Luxembourg in 1996, its 30 members include Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz as well as renowned European poets such as Cees Nooteboom and Michael Schmidt. The aim of the academy is to ensure the place of the poem in newspapers, radio and television in Europe, and its secretary general is none other than John F. Deane of Dedalus Press.
At its plenary meeting in Luxembourg last month, it was announced that Kinsella had beaten off competition from other nominated poets to win the prize, which will ensure a selection of his work will be translated and published in several countries, including Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy and Spain.
Members of the Inchicore Ledwidge Society have always been tireless campaigners on behalf of the soldier and poet, Francis Ledwidge who died in the first World War in 1917. They have long sought to have a plaque commemorating the poet erected in the National War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge, Co Dublin, but recently heard from the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Sile de Valera, that this is not possible. The reason given by the Minister is that no memorials to individuals should be erected in the garden, which is intended as a memorial to the 49,400 Irishmen who fought in the first World War, regardless of rank, decoration or gallantry. In her letter to Michael O'Flanagan, secretary of the society, the Minister acknowledges the presence in Islandbridge of a plaque quoting the work of Rupert Brooke, the English war poet (who was not killed in the war), but says it is "at variance with my Department's current policy as endorsed by the Irish National War Memorial Committee". The Brooke plaque was put in place when the gardens were restored in the 1980s.
A spokesman for the Minister confirmed to Sadbh that the Minister's position had not changed.
THE STORY of the escape of two Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Vienna is told in Faraway Home by Marilyn Taylor. The book concentrating on their time at Millisle Farm in Co Down, which was a real refugee settlement farm. So it's appropriate that the guest of honour at the book's launch in Belfast Central Library next Wednesday is Lord Dubs, the Minister for Agriculture for Northern Ireland, who was a Jewish child refugee in Northern Ireland during the war.