sadbh@irish-times.ie
Granta's catalogue for the latter part of the year is now out and Sadbh notes that poet Richard Murphy's memoir, The Kick, is due in November. Murphy is now living in Durban, South Africa. His memoirs have been long-awaited, and are likely to arouse a fair bit of interest, since he has had friendships with so many fellow writers. Among these were W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Robert Graves, John McGahern and Conor Cruise O'Brien. According to the advance literature from Granta: "Murphy writes about the most painfully delicate personal issues, including his own ambivalent sexuality . . . and with affectionate lack of sentiment about the Protestant gentry from which he comes."
THE north wind might be blowing, but "the trees are sweetly greening", as the lovely Scottish ballad goes. The advent of the summer means that people are thinking about gardens again - theirs and others'. On May Day, the O'Brien Press will launch the O'Brien Guide to Irish Gardens by Shirley Lanigan. This is a guide to some 303 gardens, ranging from a tiny apartment plot to large country estates, all of which are open to visitors at set times of the year. The gardens are listed by county and there is a note on "garden-visiting etiquette". Among these, presumably, is the tip that you shouldn't pinch cuttings, otherwise you'd be a very unwelcome guest, indeed. There is also an extensive list of country markets, gardening societies and landscape artists. Lanigan includes some of her own favourite gardens, from wild to walled, as well as the 20 best nurseries.
SADBH got an e-mail this week from Cormac Kinsella, who had a story to tell about a Dublin house which is currently for sale. Number 55, Lansdowne Park, Ballsbridge, was rented by the poet John Berryman, and his wife Martha, from September 1966 to June 1967. During their time there, Berryman wrote 75 of his Dream Songs - but not all of them in Lansdowne Park. Some were penned in Ryan's Pub in Beggar's Bush, which is still open to this day. The bit you won't want to hear is that the rent of the house in 1966 was £140 a month.
SEANCHAI, the Kerry Literary and Cultural Centre, is due to be opened in Listowel by Sile de Valera, Minister for the Arts, on Friday. In the fine tradition of hyperbole in the Kingdom, the press release declares: "It is a museum of words and spirit where the imaginative worlds of the great Kerry writers are evoked." The renovated house in the centre of Listowel comprises eight rooms, each of which marks a part of Kerry's literary history. One room focuses on the seanchai tradition and another looks at Writers' Week, "Ireland's premier literary festival". Hmmm. Sadbh wonders what the Galway folk who organise Cuirt think of that claim. Other rooms look at the work of John B. Keane, Bryan MacMahon, Brendan Kennelly and Maurice Walsh. The settings are interactive to a degree: you can sit in the bar with John B. and listen to the story of the Bull McCabe; visit George Fitzmaurice in the bedsit where he spent the last years of his life; and listen to local actors performing extracts from Bryan MacMahon's work. Elsewhere, there's a focus on the Blasket Islanders, and the famous farmer poet of Lisselton, Robert Leslie Boland, who wrote bawdy humorous verse. The centre also has an auditorium, which can hold 150 people. It will all be open in time for this year's Writers' Week.
SADBH notes in this week's Bookseller that Wexford writer Eoin Colfer is in the news again. Colfer received a large sum of money from Penguin for his children's book, Artemis Fowl, which is due to be published on May 2nd in hardback. Children's publishers - apart from Bloomsbury, which has the golden goose of J.K. Rowling - are frantically trying to find the next huge book. Colfer's book is being touted in the trade as just that. All the bookshops have their orders in and expect large sales, particularly with summer holidays approaching. However, WH Smith, the bookshop and newsagent which has outlets all over Britain, has maddened competitors with its special deal. The Penguin hardback is priced at £12.99 sterling, but WH Smith will have a paperback edition which will sell for only £8.99. It'll be interesting to see what edition turns up here in the latest example of dog-eat-dog competition.
Sadbh