Frankfurt facts - finally

FACTS though few figures - concerning the Irish initiative at the Frankfurt Book Fair are slowly beginning to appear, like drips escaping from a dam. Luke Dodd, Administrator of Strokestown Famine Museum, has been appointed as curator of the exhibition element of the festival. This centrepiece of the Irish presence will feature "an imaginative, contemporary approach to Ireland and its Diaspora". The organisers this week also released some details of the sponsors now on board. Funds raised to date, they say, "exceed the £500,000 mark". Among the deals now in place is a "Festival Programme Guide," 50,000 copies of which are to be sponsored by Jefferson Smurfit Group plc, and a poetry reading by Seamus Heaney sponsored by Commerzbank. Bisto is sponsoring an exhibition of award winning children's books and there will be an exhibition celebrating the work of architect, Eileen Gray, at the Deutsches Architektur Museum in Frankfurt.