Electric line-up for literary picnic:As well as the music in store next weekend, Electric Picnic keeps up its literary commitment with a strong line-up of readings and discussion. Next Saturday, at noon, the novelist, poet and playwright Dermot Bolger, who curates this strand of the festival, will be joined by fellow poets Aidan Murphy and Colm Keegan for a reading of their work. Also on the Arts Council stage, at 12.50pm, will be Arlene Hunt, author of the Dublin-based crime thrillers featuring John Kenny and Sarah Quigley.
The Cork poet Leanne O’Sullivan will give a reading at 1.30pm, and at 2pm the presidential candidate Michael D Higgins will join the Ireland professor of poetry, Harry Clifton, for a Poetry Ireland-Trócaire event focusing on development aid and justice for the Third World.
John Banville will discuss his life and work, including his period Dublin thrillers under the name Benjamin Black, with Miriam O’Callaghan at 3pm.
What might turn out to be a contentious event takes place at 2.50pm on Sunday under the title Brand Ireland and the Irish Writer. This debate will focus on the recent tendency of some politicians to portray Ireland’s cultural success as the means by which we can restore our international reputation.
The discussion will be chaired by Mary Shine Thompson, former dean of humanities and research at St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra. It will be interesting to see how many of those taking part – Brian Lynch, Declan Meade, Judith Mok, Catherine Morris and Michael O’Loughlin – agree with the view that a writer can be a cultural ambassador or, instead, with the poet Derek Mahon’s belief that “the idea of using the arts to build Brand Ireland is very dense and philistine”.
The Liberties: been there, written about that
The Liberties area of Dublin has many literary associations that are sometimes overlooked, including an impressive list of authors with local links.
James Clarence Mangan was born on nearby Fishamble Street (and died of cholera in the old Meath Hospital). The whole Liberties district was Jonathan Swift's dominion when he was dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, in the 1700s. And one of the city's great jewels, Marsh's Library, had as writers in residence, so to speak, the likes of Thomas Moore, who wrote his Odes of Anacreon there, and Charles Maturin, author of the influential Melmoth the Wanderer.
The author of The Charwoman's Daughter, James Stephens, lived on Thomas Court, and George Bernard Shaw was born on Synge Street, perhaps not quite the Liberties, depending on which local historian you talk to, but near enough and certainly very close to the famous fictional address on Clanbrassil Street where Leopold Bloom lived.
An exhibition – Dublin Writers: Born Here, Lived Here, Wished We Were Here – has just opened at St Nicholas of Myra Parish Centre, on Carman’s Hall, off Francis Street. A project of the Liberties Heritage Association, the exhibition is being presented in connection with Dublin’s status as a Unesco City of Literature.
The association's founder (and long-time local cultural historian), John Gallagher, is behind this imaginative combination of image and text, chronicling Dublin's literary heritage. It brings together the work of James Joyce, Brendan Behan, George Bernard Shaw, Seán O'Casey, Katherine Tynan and Robert Croker (Tressell) Noonan, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, that great classic of working-class literature. The exhibition is open daily.
Words and music, tea and cake, on the Green
On Monday, the Young Hearts Run Free collective will put on a literary and musical evening for the Simon Community. It takes place at the Unitarian Church on St Stephen’s Green at 8.30pm. The literary side is represented by Michael D Higgins, Belinda McKeon, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Paul Muldoon; there will be music from Margie Lewis, Barry McCormack and Cian Nugent. Admission is €10, and tea and cake are promised.
