Loose leaves

Good day for Power: Bad Day in Blackrockby Kevin Power which won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for 2009 this week, parallels appalling things that happen in our Hibernian world, across the social spectrum, involving young men, sometimes women – and a lot of alcohol.

That’s how one of the selection committee, writer Carlo Gébler, described Power’s debut novel, which revolves around the death of a young man after an attack outside a Dublin nightclub. It was published last year by the Lilliput Press.

In his citation, Gébler praised the way Power created a whole world in our heads: “A world that is Irish, middle-class, prosperous, complacent, violent, narcissistic, philistine, consumerist, cynical, selfish and in absolute denial about alcohol, what it does and how it is abused.” It was, he added, a novel about a kind of culture that creates these catastrophes.

The reader’s capacity to understand Dublin and Ireland today would be increased by encountering this fictional milieu. “And that’s what novels are supposed to do – they’re supposed to tell you lies, which bring you to the truth and help you to live. This does that wonderfully.’’

The €10,000 Rooney Prize, which was first presented in 1976, is endowed by Daniel M Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers, now the US ambassador to Ireland. The award is administered by the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing in Trinity College Dublin where it was presented on Wednesday evening. Previous winners include Neil Jordan, Frank McGuinness , Deirdre Madden and Anne Enright.

Poetry award season

DLR Poetry Now is calling for applications for The Irish TimesPoetry Now Award with a deadline for entries of December 1st.

The €5,000 prize is given annually to the author of the best single volume of poems published by an Irish poet in the previous year. The shortlist of five titles will be announced next March and the winner announced at the DLR Poetry Now Festival, which runs from March 25th to 28th, 2010. Previous winners include Harry Clifton, Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon.

Applications are also invited for The Rupert and Eithne Strong Award, worth €2,500, for first collections published in English or Irish by Irish poets in 2009. Details from cbrown@dlrcoco.ie, tel. 01-2719532, or The Arts Office, Marine Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin. See poetrynow.ie

Galway fiction slam

Poets have had their poetry slams for ages. Now, Over The Edge in Galway inaugurates what it says is Ireland’s first fiction slam . The venue is Sheridan’s Wine Bar, 14-16 Church Yard Street on Friday, October 16th, at 8pm.

Mia Gallagher, who is currently writer-in-residence with the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, is the featured writer at the event.

To make a pitch to take part, scribes should register by e-mailing kphiggins@hotmail.com or texting their names to 087-6431748.

Nine writers will be selected this way; after that three more places will be available on the night to the first three fiction writers to make it to Sheridan’s on the night of the reading and give their names to MC Kevin Higgins.

As there are two rounds, all participating writers should bring two pieces of their own fiction. There is no entrance fee; the time limit in both rounds is five minutes, and proceedings will be judged by a jury of audience members.

Three writers will go through to the second round.The prize for the winner is small – a bottle of wine. But think of the glory.

See overtheedgeliteraryevents. blogspot.com/