Bloomsday dawns and it's becoming a bit like St Patrick's Day, with Joyceans as likely to be out of town as downing the Burgundy and gorgonzola in Davy Byrne's. David Norris, for instance, has hot-footed it to Shanghai, no less, for a performance of his one-man show. And Joyce's grandson, Stephen, will be reading from Ulysses in the James Joyce pub in Prague. Joyce's nephew, Ken Monaghan, curator of the James Joyce Centre on Dublin's North Great George's Street, tells us that more than 200 Joycean celebrations are taking place worldwide, from Brazil to Sydney and even Tokyo. The fact that it falls on a Saturday this year means the hoi-polloi will be able to join in the fun with greater abandon. Ironically, architect and Joycean Sam Stephenson has lined up a rake of ambassadors from foreign shores to take part in the readings from Ulysses over brekkie in the James Joyce haven't got round to actually reading Ulysses, there are readings of excerpts all day outside the James Joyce Centre, from a restored 1904 tram.
Elsewhere, there's a chance to see the house at 15 Usher's Island which featured in 'The Dead' (before it is closed for renovations). , a bus trip along the quays to the mouth of the river, is a celebration of the River Liffey and the women in Joyce's work. There's also a photographic exhibition of Edwardian Dublin at Meeting House Square, some Joycean music at Bewley's CafΘ Theatre, and the quest for lemon soap. It's endless indeed. Check out www.jamesjoyce.ie
THOMAS KINSELLA has been writing for well into five decades and a celebration of the poet and academic's work is the theme of the latest issue of the Irish University Review. His working life has included a period as private secretary to T.K. Whitaker, credited with pioneering modern economic planning in this country, at the Department of Finance. Kinsella took six months out in 1963 to work on The Tβin and the reason he writes, as he told Donatella Abbate Badin in an interview, is "to try to understand, to make sense, to preserve what I can and give it a longer life". Eleven contributors in all mull over the poet's writing. Paying homage to Kinsella's wit and capacity for Dublinspeak is Denis O'Driscoll, while Lucy Collins focuses on the appetites central to human experience in Kinsella's work, the hunger and lust which drive individuals onward. Other contributors include guest editor Catriona Clutterbuck, Maurice Harmon, Ruth Ling and Ian Flanagan. Kinsella himself contributes by including two recent poems. Copies cost £8.50, from bookshops or direct from the editor of Irish University Review, Dr Anthony Roche, Department of English, University College, Belfield, Dublin 4.
THE universal themes of love, loss, dreams and loneliness all feature in Another Place, an anthology of prison writing - and, needless to say, the issue of confinement looms large. This is an inspiring book comprising the best of writing submitted by prisoners to teachers in 11 prison units countrywide. It is designed not merely to recognise talent and ability but also give a voice to a hidden group in society. Interspersed throughout are contributions from established writers on the outside.
Published by the Department of Justice, Another Place costs £5 and is available from bookshops, with proceeds being donated to post-release centres for prisoners. Information from Jane Meally at 0502-20607.
CONGRATULATIONS to poet Paul Durcan, who has been garlanded with the Cholmondeley Award (worth £2,000 sterling) recently announced by the Society of Authors in Britain. The prize is in recognition of a poet's overall body of work.In Durcan's, it case includes Daddy Daddy, which won him the Whitbread Award for Poetry in 1990. His next book, Cries of an Irish Caveman, will be published by Harvill in November.
Another poet with an Irish connection to be honoured is Maurice Riordan. Born in Lisgoold, Co Cork, he has been awarded a travelling scholarship worth £1,500. And Maggie O'Farrell, born in the North, has won a Betty Trask Award worth £5,000 for After You'd Gone.
Still with prizes, Ian Kershaw's Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis, has been been awarded the Wolfson History Prize, while Michael Burleigh's The Third Reich: A New History this week carried off the Samuel Johnson Prize for the best non-fiction book of this year.