Donnelly's star still burns bright

Loose Leaves: Every generation has its heroes. Too often they burn brightly and die tragically - and young

Loose Leaves:Every generation has its heroes. Too often they burn brightly and die tragically - and young. One such was the poet and social activist Charles Donnelly (1914-1937), who was a source of fascination and admiration for many of his contemporaries in University College Dublin in the 1930s and got iconic status when he was killed at the Battle of Jarama fighting with the International Brigades on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War.

Now he is to be celebrated in his old college at the instigation, most appropriately, of an undergraduate student, Enda Duffy. Poet Gerald Dawe, who has written about Donnelly, will give a public lecture on him, Child of the Revolution in Theatre R, Newman Building, UCD, on Tuesday, February 26th at 7pm. A plaque is also being unveiled at the college.

Lamenting him the year after his death in a piece in The Workers' Republic, Frank Ryan, who was with him in Spain, said Charlie Donnelly's death was "one of the tragedies of those breathless days just a year ago when men just had to fling themselves across the path of the fascist advances." The poet was immortalised in print by contemporary Donagh MacDonagh in his poem Charles Donnelly.

Dead in Spain 1937 as the "first fruit of our harvest, willing sacrifice/ Upon the altar of his integrity/ Lost to us . . .", and again years later in Christy Moore's version of Viva La Quinta Brigada. Donnelly's own famous line on the carnage of battle, "Even the olives are bleeding" - uttered just before he died - is the title of Joseph O'Connor's book Even the Olives are Bleeding - The Life and Times of Charles Donnelly (New Island, 1993). It was also the title of Cathal O'Shannon's Spanish Civil War documentary Even the Olives are Bleeding (1976).

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Dublin Book Festival

Dermot Bolger, Joseph O'Connor, Anthony Cronin, John Montague, Cathy Kelly, Kate Thompson, Gabriel Rosenstock, Margaret MacCurtain, Kevin Barry, Martin Mansergh, Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, Karen Ardiff, Mary Rose Callaghan, Proinsias Mac A'Bhaird, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Pat Boran, Marita Conlon McKenna, Enda Wyley and many others will be contributing to the inaugural Dublin Book Festival to showcase the best of Irish writing and publishing.

Organised by CLÉ, the Irish Book Publishers Association, it runs from March 7th to 9th in City Hall. It's not only creative writers who are participating, says CLÉ: "journalists and thinkers" will also read from their work, debate the state of Irish literature and discuss contemporary Ireland. Topics include crime, history and politics.

The full programme will be posted shortly on www.dublinbookfestival.com

Longley's life's loves

Michael Longley, the new holder of the cross-Border Ireland Chair of Poetry and this semester in residence at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen's University, Belfast, is giving his inaugural lecture in Queen's Great Hall on Thursday, February 14th at 7pm and in UCD on Monday, February 18th, at 6.30pm in Theatre M, Newman Building, Belfield.

It's called A Jovial Hullaballoo: Discovering Poetry, and focuses on how he discovered poetry as a reader and writer of it - and about poems and poets that matter to him. As Longley is a set poet on the Leaving Cert course for 2009 and 2010, it's an invaluable chance for students to have a tutorial from the man himself. The event is free and all are welcome.

To celebrate Longley taking over the chair - which he will hold until 2011 - he'll be interviewed on RTÉ Radio 1's The Poetry Programme tonight at 7.30pm. In a wide-ranging interview with fellow Belfast poet and Poetry Programme presenter Gerald Dawe, Longley will talks about growing up in Belfast, his love of jazz, his tentative steps in writing poetry, his friendship with Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon, his love of nature and the forces and passions that have shaped his life and his writing.

Love with a capital L

St Valentine's Day spreads its rosy pink web wider every year, and this year the city of Dublin is getting a look-in in the form of a love-in from some of its native writers. Dublin Valentines is a talk chaired by writer Dermot Bolger, with Deirdre Purcell, Paula Meehan and David Norris, where the four Dubliners will discuss their relationship with the city. The talk is on Tuesday at 8pm in Axis arts centre, Ballymun, Dublin 9. To book, tel: 01-8832100.Tickets €8.