LABI Siffre, Amos Oz, Scottish author and sculptor Jimmy Boyle and musician John Cooper Clarke are among many writers, poets and artists booked for this year's Cuirt International Festival of Literature which opens next month in Galway.
The festival, details of which were announced at the weekend, will open with a reading by travel-writer Dervla Murphy, whose most recent book, Visiting Rwanda, was published last year. She will recall her wanderings in an evening of conversation with Lelia Doolan. Joining her will be one of the great Irish short-story writers, Benedict Kiely.
A highlight will be a reading by Ireland's Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, from his new limited edition collection, The Light of the Leaves. The edition includes Spanish and Dutch translations by the poets Pura Lopez Colome and Hans van de Waarsenburg, who will also participate.
Performance poetry is well represented by English poet, performer and songwriter Labi Siffre, and Nigerian poet Patience Agbabi. The inspirational Jamaican poet Valerie Bloom will also read, as will the musician John Cooper Clarke.
Another visitor will be the US short-story writer and novelist David Leavitt. British writers at tending will include poet, broadcaster and essayist Simon Armitage, Jamie MacKenrick, winner of last year's Forward Prize for Poetry, and Welsh poets Gillian Clarke and Menna Elfynn.
Israel's foremost living writer, Amos Oz, Canadian short-story writer Alastair McLeod, Russian author Andre Makine and his award-winning translator, Jeffrey Strachan, and three Bosnian poets - Marko Vesovic, Vojka Djikic and Semezdin Mehmedinovic - are listed among the international participants.
Poet and former political prisoner Jack Mapanje from Malawi will read with John Montague, holder of the Ireland Chair of Petry. Mr Mapanje is writer-in-residence at UCC.
Among the Irish line-up will be poets and lecturers Gerald Dawe and Eilean ni Chuilleanain, fiction-writers Sean MacMathuna and Ita Daly and novelist Antonia Logue.
This year's Cuirt lecture will be given by Terry Eagleton, Thomas Wharton professor of English at St Catherine's College, Oxford University. The Irish Times Cuirt Debate will focus on one of the most prominent publications of the year, The Modern Library, which features the 200 best novels written in English since 1950, as selected by Colm Toibin and Carmen Callil.
The Cuirt International Festival of Literature runs from April 19th to 25th and is assisted by the Arts Council, the British Council, The Irish Times and the Galway Advertiser.
Programmes from the Cuirt box office at the Galway Town Hall Theatre, phone (091) 569777. Galway Arts Centre has also listed the programme on its website, www.galwayartscentre.ie
