ON my way somewhere else, I only had time to stop briefly at the Alliance Francaise in Kildare Street where the latest edition of the magazine College Green was being launched. However, as the place was absolutely thronged with young poets and their young admirers and friends (just like the people of the Appian Way, "always the same pleasant age twenty four on average), I doubt if I was noticed either arriving or departing.
Many of the contributors to College Green have strong ties to Trinity College, and when I looked around the packed room, I was struck by an enthusiasm that I can't recall from my old UCD days when some of us wrote for St Stephen's, which was that college's literary journal in the cultural hurly burly of Earlsfort Terrace, we arty types felt a bit beleaguered.
Gerry Dukes, a survivor from that time and place, has an interesting review of the latest Beckett biography in the new College Green, while Thomas Kinsella has contributed an essay adapted from the final chapter of his provocative book, The Dual Tradition. Mostly, though, the magazine is devoted to, poetry, some of it striking, and at the launch the poets were only too happy to declaim it to their peers and contemporaries. In UCD we'd have been afraid of getting tarred and feathered by Commerce students from Tullamore.
STAYING with poetry a little longer, I should point out that some of the poems in College Green actually rhyme. No, honestly, they do. I mention the subject because recently in this column I wondered aloud why most contemporary poets don't bother with rhyme (well, I didn't really wonder the answer is that it's hard to do), and in response I got an encouragingly large correspondence.
One of the most interesting letters came from David Wheatley, who is the editor of College Green and who, like myself, believes in the healing properties of rhyme. That's not really surprising from what I've read of his own work he seems to be among the most scrupulous, as well as original, of younger poets, though you can judge for yourself when his first collection comes out shortly from Gallery Press.
By contrast, Macdara Woods (not overly fond of rhyme) is an old stager, though by no means old. I recall him from McDaid's in bygone days, when that venerable pub offered solace to such eccentrics as John Jordan and David Franklin (both, alas, gone in to the world of light) and to Anthony Cronin before he discovered the more beneficial brew of Charles Haughey and Aosdana.
You'll find echoes of those years in Macdara's Selected Poems, which was launched by Dedalus in the Teacher's Club, Parnell Square. The book is conveniently divided into decades, starting with the Sixties and ending with a heartening output from the Nineties.
McDaid's meanwhile has become infested by yuppies who wouldn't know a poem if it walked up and bit them. I suppose, though, that the rot set in a couple of decades back when bar man Paddy moved to Grogan's in South William Street a departure immortalised by a McDaid's wag as "a ship deserting sinking rats."
DAVID MARCUS's appointment as Irish literary adviser to the Curtis Brown agency is already bringing tangible results American born and Sligo based Molly McCloskey, who won both the Fish prize and the Francis MacManus competition and whose quality was spotted by David, will have her first collection, Solomon's Seal, published by Phoenix House early next year. Meanwhile, next month will see the Phoenix House publication of Irish Short Stories 1996, which is edited by David and which features new as well as established names. This, as it& title implies, is to be a yearly collection.
Since his appointment, David has been deluged with manuscripts, but he doesn't seem to mind, and if you want to add to the flood, you should send your MS to him at PO Box 4937, Rathmines, Dublin 6. Be sure to enclose a stamped self addressed envelope.
SOME years ago, BBC2 screened a production of Alban Berg's uncompromising (make that unlistenable) opera, Lulu, and whoever was compiling the television listings in the Evening Press mistakenly used a picture of the diminutive Scottish pop singer. Wishful thinking, perhaps. I was reminded of this by the reviews in the English papers of Jim Ring's biography of gun running novelist Erskine Childers. The Daily Telegraph used a picture of the wrong Childers, and both the Mail on Sunday and the Observer committed the same error.
Did our former President really make so little impact across the water that no one can remember what he looked like?
A few dates for your diary Peter O'Toole will be signing copies of the second volume of his memoirs, Loitering With Intent. The Apprentice, in Hodges Figgis at 2pm tomorrow (the book lakes him up to 1953, so we can expect further volumes until kingdom come) Mary O'Donnell reads from her new novel, Virgin and the Boy, in Waterstone's on Tuesday at 6.15pm Rita Ann Higgins reads poems in Bewley's of Graft on Street on Wednesday at 8pm and cult writer Irvine Welsh will be bringing ecstasy to his fans when he reads in Waterstone's on Friday ate 6.45pm.