Surgeons to the rescue

ArtScape: In the nick of time, Poetry Ireland's critical illness has been cured, so to speak.

The poetry resource organisation has been facing a crisis with the loss of its Dublin Castle base and has just secured a new home, "lodging" with the Royal College of Surgeons. PI's new base will be the third floor of the four-storey Georgian building at 120 St Stephen's Green, which the RCSI leased this year. Poetry Ireland finalised the deal this week, which sees it sub-leasing the 1,000 square feet space in this elegant house in a prime location.

PI director Joe Woods is delighted the organisation has secured the premises, and is full of praise for how supportive the RCSI has been in the deal.

Poetry Ireland had been based at Bermingham Tower at Dublin Castle for the past eight years, and the OPW informed it some time ago that the premises would be needed when Ireland takes over the EU presidency. Attempts to find a new premises were getting desperate. Woods says both UCD and the RCSI were enormously helpful in helping them try to relocate.

Barry O'Brien, director of estate and support services at RCSI, said he was moved to act, particularly by a letter in this paper, signed by Robert Ballagh, Louis le Brocquy, Seamus Heaney and others. "I was anxious to respond positively and to disprove Macauley when he said 'as civilisation advances - poetry necessarily declines'."

The new arrangement involves PI paying rent - it had been at the castle on a grace and favour basis - to the RCSI, although it is described as not being anything like a commercial rate for the premises. All the same, it is an additional cost for PI which, along with many others, saw its Arts Council grant cut by 25 per cent this year. The RCSI is assisting PI in the move, scheduled for the first week in September, including help with converting the premises to suit its needs; it will also be able to use facilities in the college, for example, for poetry readings, on a preferential basis.

It's an interesting move for the RCSI, which occupies a lot of property on that side of St Stephen's Green, but hasn't been involved in the arts before. O'Brien says the arts "enjoy a high value within our college, which sometimes we find difficult to express". Seamus Heaney has been awarded honorary fellowship of the college, and Prof Eoin O'Brien and Prof J.B. Lyons are both writers. Barry O'Brien said the move would "hopefully have a 'humanising' effect upon all of us and in the fullness of time it may inspire us to establish a school of humanities, to complement all our other courses and programmes". Indeed, the college is in discussion with another cultural organisation, which would complement PI, about locating in the building.

A sigh of relief for Poetry Ireland; Joe Woods hopes that this will turn a bad year into a good year for the organisation.

Arminta Wallace reports further on Poetry Ireland's move in Tuesday's Arts page.

Focus on Irish film

The Arts Council and Sgrîn Cymru Wales have commissioned a comprehensive study on the economic and cultural impact of cinema in both Ireland and Wales, writes Michael Dwyer, Film Correspondent. The study includes a detailed cinema audit in the two countries, concentrating on designated EU Interreg 111A zones which here include counties Dublin, Carlow, Kilkenny, Kildare, Meath, South Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow. The study will also examine the potential for co-operation and joint initiatives between the two regions.

Siobhán Bourke, film adviser with the Arts Council, said: "With major technical changes within cinema on the horizon and a changing legislation regarding disability access, the need for specialised research of this kind is imperative if Irish audiences are to continue to have high quality cinema experiences."

The final report findings and recommendations for Wales will be announced in November, with the recommendations for Ireland to follow next spring. The study is funded by the Arts Council and Sgrîn Cymru Wales, with match funding of €87,000 from the Ireland/Wales Interreg 111A Community Initiative programme.

And furthermore . . .

A major conference entitled 'Identity and Cultural Diversity in Irish Writing' will be held on August 23rd, in Trinity College Dublin. This conference will explore some of the ways in which ideas of cultural difference have been represented in Irish literature.

Papers will touch on a range of issues - such as the importance of black writers in 18th-century Ireland; the place of Protestants in the Free State; and the history of representations of the Travellers and the Jews. Papers will also explore issues relating to ethnicity, immigration, multiculturalism, and the North.

A number of internationally renowned scholars are contributing to this event; speakers from outside the academy are also participating. Speakers include Tom Nairn, Lyn Innes, Colin Graham, Gerry Smyth, Piaras Mac Éinrí, Bruce Stewart, Lionel Pilkington, Ronit Lentin and Chinedu Onyejelem.

Admission is free, and members of the public are invited to attend. The conference begins at 10 a.m., and will be held in the Arts Block, in the Máirtín Uí Chadhain Theatre. For further information, contact Dr Paul Delaney at School of English, TCD, or e-mail delanep@tcd.ie . . . Hopeful writers take note of some upcoming competition deadlines, writes Amy Redmond. Submissions for the Tiernan Mc Bride Screenwriting Awards must be in by Friday, Sept 26th. The competition, named after the late producer and Film Institute of Ireland member, is for feature-length scripts by writers who are Irish-born, citizens or residents, over 18 years old. First prize is €10,000 and winners will be announced in December. Details on the Film Institute of Ireland website: www.fii.ie . . . Meanwhile, the deadline for this year's RTÉ Radio 1 Francis MacManus Short Story Competition, for writers of short stories for radio, is Friday, Sept 19th. Prizes are worth €6,000 and short-listed stories will be broadcast. Entry forms from MacManus Awards, RTÉ Radio Centre, Dublin 4 (enclose S.A.E.) . . . Musicians and their instruments are more likely to identify with Flann O'Brien's portrait of the Third Policeman (where molecules from both intermingle to the point at which only a biochemist could differentiate one from the other) than with any po-faced notion of how to remain true to the tradition, and still keep pulses racing, writes Siobhan Long. Stripped of their instruments, musicians have complained of symptoms akin to those of an amputee whose severed limb continues to elicit signals in the brain, despite the deafening silence . . .

Dingle box player, Seamus Begley has fallen victim to this fate in recent weeks when his favourite accordion was stolen after a gig in Temple Bar. Begley admits that the box, a Paolo Sopraino, was "the love of my life", and its disappearance from the Bar of Blooms Hotel, has left him with an inferior E flat accordion at his disposal for gigs and sessions. Any box player or traditional music fan will recognise this distinctive instrument by its dark grey colour and its sound. As far as Seamus Begley is aware, it is the only model of its type in Ireland.

If anyone has any information on its whereabouts, contact Seamus Begley at: 087-6794936 . . . For the final weeks of its run, the National Gallery is offering concessions on its standard €10 entrance fee to Louis Ducros: A Swiss Painter in Italy. Entrance to the show will be free on Mondays throughout this month, and the full entrance cost on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays is down to €6. The concessions reflect the fact that the watercolourist, who painted large-scale scenic views of classical Italy, Sicily and Malta at the end of the 18th century, is a relatively obscure figure whose name is not guaranteed to draw the crowds. But the show is worth a look - and you've nothing to lose if you go on a Monday. It ends on Aug 31st. . . . Forget the Nobel Prize, Seamus Heaney has been given the ultimate honour. According to the Observer, his name is now cockney rhyming slang for bikini. Example:

"Grab your Heaneys, we're heading for the beach." Following his recent defence of rapper Eminem, it seems that

the Nobel Laureate will be known to the youth of London for generations

to come, if not necessarily for the right reasons.