Loose Leaves:When Jim Slevin, the president of the Royal Irish Academy, realised he would be presenting its prestigious Cunningham Medal to Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, he came up with the bright idea of asking Paul Muldoon to write a poem for the occasion, writes Caroline Walsh.
The poem, A Grand Tour, which Slevin read aloud to Heaney at a dinner following the presentation ceremony in Dublin on Monday is a lovely salute from the younger Northern poet to his older friend and mentor whom he first met in an encounter that's now part of Irish literary lore.
It was in Armagh in April 1968. Introduced to Heaney by a teacher, the schoolboy Muldoon asked him if he could send him some poems. Heaney agreed and, impressed, set about getting them into print.
Muldoon was still a student when his first book was published: his second, New Weather, was published by Faber in 1973. In 2003 he won the Pulitzer Prize with Moy Sand and Gravel. Both Muldoon and Heaney have held the post of Oxford professor of poetry. They have other things in common, the New York Times once suggesting Muldoon's curly mop of hair, his "Irish-Afro hairdo" was a homage to "Heaney's famously unruly thatch".
Muldoon, who has long lived in the US where he is chair of the Peter B Lewis centre for the arts at Princeton University, said when we phoned him that he'd been delighted to write this special poem. "Anything for Mr Heaney."
When asking Muldoon at the end of last year to mark the RIA occasion with a few lines of verse, Slevin said he might like to do so because, as a man from The Moy/Charlemont area, he had a resonance, even if an oblique one, with the academy through its founding president, Lord Charlemont, who had a summer residence just outside Charlemont - in Collegelands - where Muldoon was brought up.
Hence the reference to the first Earl of Charlemont in the poem. Born in 1728, he died in 1799 and having become commander-in-chief of the Irish Volunteers in 1780 he was known as the Volunteer Earl. As an 18-year-old he was sent, as was common for someone of his class, on the Grand Tour of Europe.
It lasted nine years and included a visit to Greece where, in Athens, he became fascinated by the Parthenon. Having collected and sent artworks back to Ireland from his travels he eventually returned, settling in north Co Dublin and building up his estate at Marino where he constructed his famous little ornamental temple. His townhouse is now the home of the Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane.
The academy hopes to publish the address Heaney gave when accepting the award in its proceedings.
Colum reads, Katie writes
Novelist and short story writer Colum McCann, who has lived for years in New York, will be back to his roots later this month when he reads at the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology: he grew up in Deansgrange, just down the road from the college. He will also do a Q & A interview afterwards with poet Katie Donovan, writer-in-residence in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. The event is on Wed, February 20th at 7pm in room AO19. It's free and open to all.
Meanwhile, Donovan is among the writers who'll be giving tips on writing later this year at "In The Write Light", a weekend workshop in creative writing at Tarifa on the Costa de la Luz in Spain. Donovan's course is from June 18th to 22nd. Irish poet Paul Perry will be giving a course in Tarifa later in the year. See www.inthewritelight.com
Pining for Banville
Crime writer Benjamin Black may have been born only a few years ago, but he's highly prolific. It seems there's no stopping him. New York Times readers have lately been following his progress via the major serialisation of his new novel The Lemur.
It's the third whodunnit from Black , aka John Banville, following Christine Falls (2006) and The Silver Swan (2007). It's been one a year for three years for Black since Banville won the Man Booker Prize for The Seain 2005. No disrespect to Mr Black - but hopefully his alter ego will soon be back with a new John Banville.
Prizes for the people
Mary Rose Callaghan is the judge of this year's competition for stories of up to 2,500 words run by the People's College in Dublin. The deadline is Feb 28th. First prize is €500, second prize €300 and third prize €200. Tel: 01-8735879 or see www.peoplescollege.ie