Loose Leaves

Compiled by GILES NEWINGTON

Poetry prize: from Ring to the Hartnett

This year’s winner of the prestigious Michael Hartnett Poetry Award is Stiofán Ó Cadhla, for his debut collection, An Creideamhach Déanach. The €6,500 prize, funded by Limerick County Council and the Arts Council, is awarded in alternate years to Irish- and English-language collections. Ó Cadhla (below), who was born in the Ring Gaeltacht, is the award’s second successive winner from Co Waterford, after last year’s prize for Peter Sirr’s collection The Thing Is.

In their citation, the judges, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Paddy Bushe and Louis de Paor, said: “An Creideamhach Déanach is a weighty, considered book, assembled over many years, and has a quality of experience and achievement that is rare in a first collection . . . His work is marked by attention to the craft of poetry and a deep conviction in the language itself, an edginess honed by tradition.”

Ó Cadhla, who teaches at University College Cork, said his first reaction to the news of his prize was surprise, followed “by a degree of contentment”. He added that Michael Hartnett had possessed “a genuine poetic gift and was intellectually courageous . . . He was heroic in a way. He was brilliantly honest and willing to buck the trend. He wrote A Farewell to English in 1975, two years after Ireland entered the EEC. We need more reverse modernism like that.”

President Michael D Higgins will present Ó Cadhla with his award at Éigse Michael Hartnett, the annual three-day literary and arts festival in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, which starts on Thursday, April 26th.

To e or not to e? Readers answer the question

The numbers on the bestsellers chart on this page look a lot less healthy than they used to, and the shrinkage in the sales of printed books is accelerating, according to the latest data from Nielsen BookScan. There was more than a flutter of panic in the UK book trade when it was revealed earlier this month how rapidly sales across the water have declined already this year, especially in the worst-hit area, adult fiction. It looks like all those ereader Christmas presents are having their effect.

Ireland’s printed-book market is faring little better. Last year, according to Nielsen, overall sales here were down by 9.2 per cent in value on 2010, while the adult-fiction market was down by 8.8 per cent. To show the pace of change another way, 14,577,292 books, worth €156 million, were sold in the Republic in 2009; in 2011 the figures were 12,336,577 books, worth about €132 million.

According to Hazel Kenyon of Nielsen BookScan, “2011 saw another difficult year for physical-book sales, with the economy still struggling, a decline in retail space and the growth of ebook sales.”

Deadline for the Strong at Mountains to Sea

The deadline is approaching for publishers who want to enter their poets for the DLR Strong Award, in partnership with Shine, the national organisation dedicated to the rights and needs of those affected by mental ill health.

The award, in memory of Rupert and Eithne Strong, is part of Poetry Now, at Mountains to Sea, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s book festival; it is given to the best first collection published by an Irish poet. The shortlisted nominees will read at this year’s festival, and the winner will receive €1,000. The deadline for entries is noon on Thursday, March 29th. For more, email Maeve Buckley (maeve@lineupsme.com) or call 086-1582725.

The Mountains to Sea festival will run from September 4th to 9th, and among the poets already signed up for its Poetry Now strand are James Fenton, Mark Doty, Moya Cannon and Ilya Kaminsky.