Loose Leaves

Paean to Paul Durcan:A major conference and celebration of the work of poet Paul Durcan takes place in Trinity College Dublin next week, with a gala reading of the poet's work as the opening event on Thursday evening in the Robert Emmet lecture theatre at 7.30pm.

Readers include poets Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Brendan Kennelly, Brian Lynch, Paula Meehan, Caitriona O’Reilly and Macdara Woods, as well as David Norris, Marie Burke and John Gormley.

This is followed on Saturday with a day-long series of talks in the same venue, beginning at 9am and concluding at 4.30pm with a reading by Durcan who will also take part in a public interview with novelist Colm Tóibín at 3.30pm.

Participants in the programme of talks include Prof Declan Kiberd, Caitriona Clutterbuck and Alex Runchman, the title of whose talk is “‘again, and again, and again, and again, and again’: Paul Durcan’s refrains and repetitions”.

The conference coincides with the conferring of an honorary doctorate on the poet by TCD during the week.

Trains of poetic thought

Trains have featured in the work of many poets: the Russian Boris Pasternak, the Norwegian Kurt Jacobson and the British poet Sean O'Brien, who has published collections entitled Ghost Trainand Night Train.

For many years now, poetry has been a familiar feature in the carriages of Dublin’s Dart trains, and to commemorate 25 years of the service, Iarnród Eireann ran a poetry competition, the theme of which had to relate to the Dart or rail travel in general. The winners receive a showcase in the Poet’s Corner slot on the trains.

Three winners were chosen from more than 400 entries: John O'Donnell for The Blue Man; Eamon Bonner for Climbing Out of the Windowand Cecilia McGovern for It Is Dangerous to Lean Out. They were each presented with a prize of €500 by Seamus Heaney in the National Gallery of Ireland last Monday. The Nobel laureate not only read, for the first time, an unpublished poem of his own The Gates – about the Merrion railway gates – but presented a copy of the poem to literary agent Jonathan Williams, who has been the prime mover behind putting poetry in motion on the Dart.

Notes on a Saturday

An unusual call out to writers has been issued by the literary journal Succourfor one of its future editions. All submissions for next year's spring/summer issue have to be written on Saturday, February 6th, 2010.

A further stipulation by the editors says that what contributors write “should not be an attempt to execute an idea – for a story, for a poem, etc – that has previously occurred to you. Rather, we would prefer you to write whatever happens to come into your head at that particular time.”

The idea for this issue was inspired by 20 Lines a Dayby American author Harry Mathews, in which he sets out to follow a rule Stendhal once set himself, to write "Twenty lines a day, genius or not". Mathews's project was an attempt to overcome "the anxiety of the blank page".

Succour, which has been described as a Grantafor the Facebook generation, will welcome poetry and prose fiction "written in the same spirit " but kept to no more than 400 words and to be sent to succourdublin@gmail.com.