Pigott Prize picks Tara Bergin, Nithy Kasa, Tom French; Lucy Caldwell, Adrian Duncan make history

In this Saturday’s Irish Times, Max Porter talks to Alex Clark about his latest novel, Shy; a dozen Northern writers share their thoughts on the Belfast Agreement 25 years on; and there is a Q&A with author Michelle Gallen.

Reviews are Ray Burke on Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll; Sara Baume on Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us by Keggie Carew; John Walshe on Liam Lynch by Gerard Shannon; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Mia Levitin on Close to Home by Michael Magee; Ruth Hegarty on Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape by Henry Dimbleby, with Jemima Lewis; Niamh Donnelly on Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict by Elizabeth Day; Doug Battersby on Shy by Max Porter; Molara Wood on Dr No by Percival Everett; Lucy Sweeney Byrne on The Red Bird Sings by Aoife Fitzpatrick; Declan O’Driscoll on Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov; and Sarah Gilmartin on Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld.

This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is the bestselling thriller The Last to Disappear by Jo Spain, only €4.99 with your newspaper at any branch, a €5 saving.

Tara Bergin’s Savage Tales, Nithy Kasa’s Palm Wine Tapper and the Boy at Jericho and Tom French’s Company have been shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize 2023 by judges Clodagh Beresford Dunne and Martin Dyar.

The judges called Bergin’s Savage Tales (Carcanet Press) “a thrilling experimental collection that is grounded in the playfulness and intelligence of a singular voice. A book of wry disclosures and specialised glances. But also a book defined by energetic focus and linguistic verve. Cumulatively and surprisingly in Savage Tales, a vision of life is announced and a biography in miniature is granted to the reader, even as the workings of the heart are held at arms length for artistic purposes at once ambiguous and humane.”

Kasa’s Palm Wine Tapper and the Boy at Jericho (Doire Press) is “an invigorating debut collection, defined by subtle, enchantingly concentrated and at times memorably elusive narratives,” the judges said. “Impressions of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ireland are meditated on and framed by a philosophically flexible and passion sensibility. Palm Wine Tapper and the Boy at Jericho is a book of close-up perceptions and intimately rendered cultural bridges that signal the arrival of a compelling, original and promising new voice.”

Company by Tom French (Gallery Press) is “a powerfully assured and authentic book of poems. The company of the title evokes the powers and pitfalls of friendship and family, and the capacity of historic narratives and works of art to address and contain the reality of individual and collective human experience. It also refers to animals and landscapes, those agents of wordless companionship that appear through the collection like dual guarantees of environmental pressure and imaginative intensity. Company excels and delights with its spirited lyricism and through a brilliant illusion of empathic conversation on the page.”

The overall winner will be announced on May 31st at Listowel Writers’ Week opening night and will receive €12,000. The shortlisted poets will receive €1,000 each.

These Days by Lucy Caldwell and The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan have been shortlisted for the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, along with Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris; The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry; The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane; Ancestry by Simon Mawer; and I Am not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam.

The judges said: “Cat and mouse with 17th-century regicides. Love in the Belfast blitz. The death of Emma Hardy. A lost boy (and so much else) in southern Australia. A Soviet exile in Ireland. A dig into personal ancestry. The voice of a voiceless muse. Seven very different stories with very different approaches have reached the shortlist for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. And as with the best historical novels, each book offers the reader more than the story.

“This year we explore martyrdom, self-knowledge, remorse, exile, art’s human price, complex relationships under an unsettling sun and the impossibility of knowing exactly who we are. As required by the prize criteria, all the novels on our 2023 shortlist are set sixty years or more in the past, but how vividly they speak to the present. We hope you’ll read, enjoy and watch out for the winner.”

The winner receives £25,000, and each shortlisted author receives £1,500. Previous winners include Hilary Mantel and Sebastian Barry (both twice winners), Andrea Levy, Robert Harris, Christine Dwyer Hickey and James Robertson. The winner will be announced at the Borders Book Festival on June 15th.

Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose, the debut novel by the west Cork based author, has been chosen by Good Morning America in the United States as their Book Club pick for April, having already been picked up as Amazon Editors’ Pick and Apple Books ‘Best of the Month’.

Bose, 32, was born and raised in India, and has lived in Calcutta, London and Dublin. She worked in the tech industry before joining the Masters in Creative Writing programme at University College Dublin. She was shortlisted for the DNA Short Story Prize for 2016.

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Yes! Reflections of Molly Bloom, a new adaptation of James Joyce’s Penelope Chapter from Ulysses, is set to tour theatre venues across Ireland. Described as “expertly performed” by The New York Times, this one-woman performance promises a daring theatrical journey into the mind and heart of the beloved Ulysses character.

The show stars New York based Irish actor Aedín Moloney, who adapted the piece with Irish author Colum McCann. The accompanying music to the show was recorded by Moloney’s father, Paddy Moloney, founder of The Chieftains, who died in 2021.

The show won the Outer Critics Circle Award for best solo performance during its premiere in New York. Now the piece will tour multiple venues in Ireland including a premiere at the Wexford Arts Centre (May 4th-5th) and a closing run at The New Theatre, Dublin (June 13 - June 17) for what promises to be a highlight of this year’s Bloomsday Festival. Moloney said that the show was in honour of her late father.

“Bringing our adaptation of Molly Bloom back home to Ireland is a truly remarkable experience for us all. It’s an emotional journey honouring my dad and his immense contribution to Irish music with the incredible score he arranged and recorded especially for this show. Now it will be heard by audiences across the homeland, making this return extra special.”

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Now in its ninth year, Poetry Day Ireland is an annual island-wide celebration of poetry which invites the nation to read, write, and share a poem on Thursday, April 27th. All are welcome to get involved, with participation encouraged from artists, venues, schools, hospitals, community groups, poetry-lovers, and more.

Acclaimed poet Martina Evans is on board as this year’s curator. Martina chose ‘Message in a Bottle’ as the theme for Poetry Day Ireland 2023, reminding us, in the words of Paul Celan, that “a poem can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the – not always greatly hopeful – belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making towards something.”

If you’re out in Dublin for a canal bank walk this Poetry Day Ireland, stop by for a lunchtime chat on the Grand Canal with typewriter poet Stephen Maguire. Stephen will be at the statue of Patrick Kavanagh with his typewriter from noon to 2pm, ready to create, for you, your very own bespoke poem.

Poetry Ireland in conjunction with Clean Coasts supported by Waterways Ireland are also hosting a poetry clean-up of the Grand Canal, from 6pm to 7.30pm. You’re invited to join in cleaning up our beautiful canals, with intermittent entertainment from poets Jean O’Brien, Sree Sen, and Sonya Gildea.

2023 marks 50 years of Ireland’s membership of the European Union, and together with Poetry Day Ireland partners at the European Parliament Liaison Office and European Commission Representation in Dublin, Poetry Ireland have selected poems from across Europe for the ‘Poetry In Motion’ project. Expect to see poems from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic and of course, Ireland, displayed in their original form with translations on DART and commuter services.

Celebrating one of Ireland’s great poets, the late Eavan Boland, a panel of writers will come together on Achill Island to read their own work and to discuss her legacy and impact on poetry in Ireland in the 21st century. In 1989, Eavan Boland published her famous essay, A Kind of Scar, setting out her vision for poetry inspired by her Achill Island experience and an old woman that she met there. The event will be chaired by Nessa O’Mahony, Writer in Residence at the Heinrich Böll Cottage and editor of Poetry Ireland Review 138, the special tribute issue to Eavan Boland. Participants include other contributors to the special issue, poets Geraldine Mitchell, Moya Cannon and Mary O’Malley, as well as Achill-based harpist Laoise Kelly. Presented in association with Mayo Arts Office and the Heinrich Böll Annual Festival Weekend on Eavan Boland’s third anniversary.

For details of other events nationwide, visit poetryireland.ie

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Strokestown International Poetry Festival takes place from April 27th to 30th. The 25th annual festival in the Roscommon town opens on Poetry Day Ireland with the premiere of Bealach an Fhéir Ghortaigh/Hunger’s Way, commissioned by the festival during the pandemic and featuring the work of a whole host of poets and musicians responding to Strokestown Park House and the surrounding landscapes.

Over the weekend we will host a variety of readings, talks and panel discussions; book launches of anthologies, journals and sole collections; workshops for adults and children, and screenings of poetry related films. Highlights include Burmese poet in exile ko ko thett and a celebration of the work of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin by assembled poets and followed by a reading of her work alongside cellist Eimear Reidy. The four-day poetry festival is all housed graciously under the one roof of Strokestown Park House and Gardens and the National Famine Museum. strokestownpoetryfest.com

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West Cork Literary Festival has announced this year’s creative writing workshops which will take place from July 10th to 12th. The workshops are on sale now and each workshop will have a maximum of 15 participants. These include Making Poetry with James Harpur, The Shape of Your Story: Fiction with Belinda McKeon, Crime Fiction with Catherine Ryan Howard, Place Writing with Cal Flyn and Essay Writing with Brian Dillon. Four of the workshops take place in Bantry and participants for Cal Flyn’s workshop will be boarding the ferry to Whiddy Island each morning. Full details: westcorkmusic.ie/LFWorkshops

Graham Norton will be appearing at this year’s festival which takes place in Bantry from July 7th to 14th. He will be in conversation with fellow writer, Maeve Higgins. The full programme will be announced next week and booking opens on April 11th at noon. westcorkliteraryfestival.ie

Legend Press is to publish award-winning Irish writer Gráinne Murphy’s fourth novel, Greener, next spring. Greener explores the changing dynamics of friendships and asks whether adult friendships are, by their nature, transactional rather than true. In finding a new identity as adults, can we hold onto the friends who knew us as we used to be?

Murphy is from Kilmichael, Co Cork. Her short story Further West was longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in 2021. Her debut novel Where the Edge Is was published by Legend Press in 2020, followed by The Ghostlights (2021) and Winter People (2022). A winner of the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair 2019, her novels have been shortlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award 2019 and Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2019 and longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2018 and Mslexia Novel Award 2017.

Murphy said: “One of the reasons teenage friendships are so intense is that we live in each other’s heads and homes in a way we don’t as adults. I was interested in that tangling-up of families and what might happen if those dynamics had to be revisited years later, among people who once knew each other inside out but who now have to be adult and polite. A lot of books deal with the power of women’s friendships and I found myself thinking more about the faded friendships, the resurrected friendships, the regrets. There’s also something intriguingly fragile about a group of three that made me want to poke in the cracks and see if it held.”

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Bookselling Ireland has welcomed the Department of Education’s guidelines for the new Free School Books Scheme for primary and special schools. The sector had voiced its concerns over the risks inherent in the new system which could disrupt the smooth delivery of schoolbooks in readiness for the new school year in September.

Bookselling Ireland is encouraging schools to liaise directly with their local bookshop for their orders, to ensure that all pupils will have all their book requirements for the first day of the new school term in September.

Dawn Behan, chair of Bookselling Ireland, said, “Bookselling Ireland members have an enduring commitment as booksellers to supporting educators in securing the joys of reading for children across Ireland. Bookshops provide enduring social and cultural value to local communities, and we hope that this will be a meaningful factor as decisions are made on school book supply. Our members look forward to working with local schools to ensure that the new system works well and doesn’t create too much of a burden for school staff.”