Waves of inspiration

The Dublin Writers Festival dived into deep waters, with sparkling results, writes Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent

Take two Canadian writers and send them on a mission. Their task: to explore the relationship, if any, that exists between Dublin's population and water - their water, the River Liffey and the sea into which it flows. After a week-long investigation, the writers, Alistair MacLeod and Timothy Taylor, must present their findings to the Dublin Writers Festival.

Sound easy? It wasn't. Even for professional writers, this was a difficult brief; how to balance the factual with the abstract. Here was an instance of the storyteller having to become social geographer. Taylor is an experienced magazine travel writer. MacLeod is not.

Dublin port's traditional image of cargo ships and containers has become transformed, almost softened. It is enough to make a sailor weep. Today's dockland image is one of glass offices and glamorous apartments. As well as that, there is the long-held suspicion that Dublin did not so much idealise its water as turn its back on it.

One of the world's great writers, Alistair MacLeod, smiles his reassuring smile at the audience. A native of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he could tell any listener pretty much anything there is to be told about the sea. He has experienced its beauty, no doubt about that, he has written about the sunlight reflecting on the water. But he knows more about its cruelty, the vicious power of the waves, the ice that suspends dead bodies for months, the cold that can kill a drowning man before the water floods his lungs.

Some six generations back, his ancestors travelled from Scotland. Many died on the way and were buried at sea. Since finally heeding the voices in his head and his memories of family myths, MacLeod has written majestic tales set in a remorselessly bleak maritime landscape of ice and water. Faced with the Dublin docklands, it was unlikely he would enthuse about development projects and concept living. "I saw lots of containers", he said, in a tone similar to a scout who was reporting on the presence of an injun war party camped over the next ridge.

The magic of this great Canadian writer, whose two collections, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood(1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun(1986) is that he makes high art appear as natural as breathing. He also knows how to hold an audience.

Anyone wishing to consider Dublin and water, the sea and the Liffey, need not look beyond James Joyce. And as Saturday was Bloomsday, MacLeod, the English professor, took his cue from the opening chapters of Ulysses. If the sea back home in Nova Scotia is the great frontier, the enemy that will kill a fisherman as easily as it will yield fish, the sea in Ulyssesis about reverie. From Buck's ritual morning shave, Stephen takes the coast road into work. Later, one of Bloom's most moving fantasy sequences takes place on Dollymount Strand. But nothing MacLeod could offer about his Dublin observations of the importance of Dublin's waterfront could compare with his own writings about the sea. The Liffey was crucial for the Vikings. For today's Dubliners, it seems to mean little aside from recreation. Yet for those from the west of Ireland, the significance of being island people is life-defining. MacLeod could appreciate this.

Taylor spoke about the Vancouver waterfront and how much it meant to him, but his observations about Dublin places the waterfront and the newly regenerated docklands area in a commercial context. In his presentation he made several references to writing magazine pieces and that is exactly what he delivered, a magazine piece. As a project, the session didn't quite work, but as it gave the audience an opportunity to hear MacLeod read from his work, no one was complaining.

Earlier, Lionel Shriver impressed with her candour, recalling that she had written seven or eight books before becoming famous with the Orange Prize-winning We Need To Talk About Kevin. Wary of offering definitive statements about the art of writing, she said she wasn't that good. Her road had been a long one that had taken more than 20 years. Shriver is gracious in her success but she has not forgotten the struggle.

The festival planners set out for a programme balanced between writers reading their work and other sessions, such as the pairing of Tim Robinson and Iain Sinclair, a writer who has made London his map, looking towards themes. The pairing of Claire Keegan and MacLeod was always going to be a festival highlight.

And it was. Keegan heeds her influences: William Trevor, John McGahern, Mary Lavin and Katherine Mansfield. Her physical presence may bring to mind a Russian poetess, yet this is an Irish writer at home in her tradition, with no fear of a past that remains vivid and relevant. There is nothing brash about her literary voice; it is deliberate, wise, deliberate in its exactness.

Surrender - After McGahern was inspired, she told the audience, by an incident recorded in McGahern's Memoir. A reluctant candidate for marriage, McGahern's Garda sergeant father sat on a bench and ate 24 oranges. Keegan's story, and the reading of it, was an uncanny experience. The caustic-tongued sergeant strode across the stage, complete with bicycle, the steel buttons of his tunic reflecting the light.

It was a McGahern story. Easy answers hold no interest for Keegan, as she brilliantly deflected any attempt to explain her art. She spoke of the importance of "being in trouble". Problems make stories and she stressed her efforts "to find the edges". The longer she spoke, diverting questions like a superior tennis player bored by weak shots, the closer she came to resemble Martha, the storytelling wife in her story, The Forester's Daughter. Making no apology for her sense of period or the Ireland she evokes, Keegan was emphatic: "The past is now."

Before any questions were asked, MacLeod had let his art do the talking. In common with Keegan, he knows the past holds the best stories. The horrible beauty of As Birds Bring Forth The Sun(1985) again cast its spell. It is a cautionary tale; the big dog returns to greet her loving master and her murderous young rip his throat out. The narrator recalls the fear "when we hear the scrabble of the paws and the scratching at the door". MacLeod is a fine reader, his soft voice always articulates the menace at the heart of his stories.

Too good-natured to make life difficult for anyone, he diluted a measure of the fascinating tension created by Keegan's impressive despatch of some leaden questioning. These writers are natural exponents of the short story, even if MacLeod mentioned he noticed his stories were getting "longer and longer". Recalling how those stories became his IMPAC-winning novel No Great Mischief(1999), MacLeod said with characteristic good humour, "I was glad I finished it before I died."