Culture and literature to fore for St Patrick's Day

THE FOCUS of this year’s St Patrick’s Festival may be firmly on the literary but space will still be made for musicians, dancers and professional party-goers.

The festival, which gets under way tomorrow and runs until Sunday, is themed in honour of Dublin’s designation as Unesco City Of Literature and will see legions of literary luminaries discuss, debate and reflect on Dublin’s cultural heritage.

Tomorrow evening there's an open discussion, titled How Ireland Gets Its Voice,examining the ways in which the Irish literary tradition has progressed into genres such as film, television and radio alongside theatre and music, at 6.30pm in the Alexander Hotel, Dublin 2.

On Thursday, the St Patrick’s Day parade, which is the centrepiece of the festival and the biggest open-air street performance in Europe, will also have a literary theme.

Based this year around a specially commissioned short story, Brilliant, by Roddy Doyle, the parade will come in eight "chapters", each telling a chapter from the story, each performed by a different performing arts company.

The story, which can be downloaded from the St Patrick’s Festival website, tells the tale of two children who are hiding under the kitchen table listening to the grown-ups talk about their troubles.

They interpret the discussion to mean a black dog has stolen the city’s funny bone, so they set off to find the dog and the funny bone, and return triumphant.

The parade will also feature marching bands from Dublin, the United States, France and Spain.

The event that will really entice lovers of the word and culture takes place on Friday evening at the Convention Centre Dublin.

“Dublin Swell” will see some of the finest writers and musicians come together to chart the course of literary Dublin in readings, music and song.

Among those performing will be Séamus Heaney, Maeve Binchy, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Cathy Kelly, Joseph O’Connor, Paula Meehan, Paul Durcan and Mike Scott .

On Saturday, a literary treasure hunt invites participants to solve clues while finding out about Dublin’s poets and writers.

Teams of four can register at City Hall between 10am and 5pm for a free event with lots of prizes.

There will be numerous music events, including the festival céilí between 4.30pm and 7.30pm tomorrow in St Stephen's Green; the Kilfenora Céilí Band play the National Concert Hall tomorrow and Thursday evening; a range of Irish bands play Vicar Street at 7.30pm tomorrow in an event titled Ceol, and Trad Trails sees different Irish musicians playing at street locations throughout Dublin city tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday.

The Skyfest fireworks extravaganza is in Wexford town this year, between 6.30pm and 8.30pm on Saturday.