Courting nerves, heckles and vision

Cuirt 2001 began impressively with a Michael Longley/John McGahern double bill and sustained a quality, week-long international programme of purpose. Cuirt's objectives are manifold; allowing literature to hold court in a busy, confident city well used to the arts may be central. It is part of it. Readers fill the venues out of conviction for writers they admire and out of curiosity for those they know little about. Cuirt underlines the essential differences, but also the close relationship bound by language, of poetry, fiction, fact and theatre. This festival, come of age but not too showbizzy, is a celebration but it is also an exploration, a discovery - "does this move me? Should it? Do I understand this? Do I want to? Do I care?" Above all, it is an examination.

It is interesting to observe world-class international writers displaying first-night fears and doubts when embarking on the maiden reading of a new work. The audience becomes a collective reader. And how often writers announced they don't exactly know what a work is about or that they don't know what they're doing until it happens. Some give the impression the entire process is a conspiratorial mystery in which we are all involved. Few convince anyone that it is all as random as that.

There is also the strange experience of waiting in a packed theatre foyer to hear a familiar poem or story emerge in the writer's physical voice when the listening reader, now a member of an audience in a communal setting, recalls the private experience of holding the book and encountering the text alone, in silence, late into the night when your eyes hurt but you read on because you wanted to.

Some sessions reaffirm. Others provoke and stimulate. Those who attended the biography seminar in which Anthony Cronin and Adrian Fraser discussed their respective subjects, Samuel Beckett and George Moore, gathered insights and perspectives as well as some sense of the business of investigating a life. Imprisoned and held on death row, Nigerian novelist Chris Abani stepped out of the pages of his books to testify to the price writers pay and still pay in some places for telling the truth.

It seemed far more gentle, even reassuring to gather and enjoy the lyric beauty of Michael Longley's benign if all-seeing vision. On the evening of the day it was announced he had been awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Longley, one of the world's finest poets, calmly began what he described as "a kind of duet with my friend John McGahern". He said there were three places he loved the most - Mayo, the Burren, and Belfast.

Describing himself as "the North's only floating voter" Longley read work evoking nature, love, memories of his father "an old soldier, an oldfashioned patriot" and the conflict in the North. From Gorse Fires, he read "The Ice-Cream Man" addressed to his daughter: "Rum and raisin, vanilla, butter-scotch, walnut, peach:/ You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before/They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road"

Nothing Longley, with his thoughtful, deliberate delivery, has ever written or said could justify the ignorant challenge from an audience member intent on interruption. "Why are you so bitter?" the man shouted. The poet, as surprised as the rest of us, replied "I'm not bitter" with a hint of polite outrage. The bizarre, pointless heckle exploded and was gone, providing the only sour note of Cuirt.

John McGahern in his customary countryman's suit appeared under the lights. Thin and loose limbed with his expression of playful surprise, he looked like a man who would stand at the back of the church during a funeral service. He is a very fine reader, strong-voiced with an easy feel for comic timing. While the extract he read on family visiting from The Pornographer (1979) got the crowd laughing, his handling of the final pages of the story "Gold Watch," in which a son endures his ritual return home for the hay, demonstrated McGahern's mastery of the tensions and bitterness of family. He then read the opening sequence of his new novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun. It will be published next year. The brief preview made it easy to see why he stands among the finest writers alive.

As reassuring as a kindly vicar, Frank Kermode, Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University, among other things is a critic with a well-developed common sense. The author of Shakespeare's Language, Kermode, a textual critic, is well aware that much Shakespeare criticism is far removed from Shakespeare. He looked at the way the meaning of language has changed since Shakespeare's day and argued that the great poet-dramatist's work, as well as his use of language, should be looked at in the context of its Elizabethan world.

Later Sir Frank would further endear himself as a member of the "Politics of Prize-giving" debate. Admitting to have held prizes in little regard "until I won one", he reflected the general tone of a discussion in which mixed feelings won the day. Prizes are mixed blessings. They cause rows - but they do sell books.

Few Irish writers have emerged as impressively as the subtle Anne Haverty who read on Friday. Her debut One Day as A Tiger (1997) is original and confident. The Far Side of a Kiss, based on essayist William Hazlitt's obsession with a young servant girl, is elegant, profound and atmospheric.

One of the unsung heroes of English fiction, Jim Crace has created a powerful, imagined, black and political world. Author of Being Dead (1999) he is both practical and daring. He read from his new book The Devil's Larder to be published in September and shared the stage with John Banville.

As solemn as an undertaker, the laconic Banville described the work he read as a work-in-progress. Having been introduced as a sinister writer, he played on the theme. "It's called Shroud, in my gay fashion." The narrator is a familiar Banville figure, a man on the run from himself, his past, his lies. The calm desperation of both the text and the writer's voice created the sensation of being inside the mind of another. Two youngish men leaving the theatre pronounced judgement. "Wow" said one, "Jesus" replied the other.

A capacity crowd gathered for the inspired pairing of Beryl Bainbridge and Annie Proulx. Bainbridge read from her new novel which is based on the life of Samuel Johnson and his friendship with Hester Thrale.

Four times a Booker runnerup, Bainbridge gets better and better. Johnson's London was brilliantly evoked and her low-key reading of the beautiful, understated prose was hypnotic. Proulx chatted, and told the Irish what great readers we are. It was a bit corny. She then read in a knowingly comedic tone "The Half-Skinned Steer" from Close Range (1999). It's a fine, gritty story.

It was Proulx who probably filled the Town Hall Theatre, but Bainbridge, an erstwhile actress, impressed. It could be fifth time Booker lucky for her. She smiles the smile of experience.

Cuirt director Helen Carey is too tired to feel triumphant. But she is pleased. Even before Tom Kilroy introduced playwrights Paul Mercier and Enda Walsh with a genuine interest and admiration, she knew Cuirt's critical success owes too much to good book office, organisation and volunteer-assisted commitment than to adequate funding. "It has cost £73,000 - the Arts Council Funding was the same as last year, £30,000. We don't want to just `pull it off'. Sponsors have been crucial in hopefully delivering a successful festival.

"I want writers to be given a platform, to meet their audiences and each other. It's a celebration but I also want it to be critical and relevant."

Jim Crace will be interviewed by Eileen Battersby in Saturday's books pages