Photographs of poets - Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, W. H. Auden, Robert Frost and a host of others - are part of an exhibition of the work of Texas-born Rollie McKenna, which continues at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and which Sadbh popped into on a recent visit across the water.
It was through her friendship with John Malcolm Brinnin that McKenna got to know many of the writers she photographed over 40 years; some of them she photographed in London for the Poetry Centre in New York, where she had her first solo exhibition. Included in the London exhibition are two classic portraits of poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, both of whom later committed suicide. Here they are young, beautiful - and caught forever in their prime.
The retrospective continues until May 13th and is well worth a visit.
The Franco-Irish literary festival, Etonnants Voyageurs, continues today in Dublin Castle from 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. Michel Deon, Jennifer Johnston and the Algerian writer, Yasmina Khadra, are among those participating today. Khadra is the pseudonym of Mohammed Moulessehoul, who was born in Algeria in 1955, and enrolled at the age of nine in the military college of El Mechouar. He went on to become a senior officer in the Algerian army. Using his pseudonym, he became known in France through three crime novels, in which he denounced the atrocities of the Algerian civil war. He abandoned his military career and now writes full time.
A filial festival to the original Etonnants Voyageurs, set up 12 years ago in Saint-Malo in France, Etonnants Voyageurs has visited other cities, including Sarajevo and, this year, Bamako in the Republic of Mali. A report by Jamal Mahjoub on this festival appeared recently in the TLS. Organised by Michel Le Bris and novelist Moussa Kounate, writers from Congo, Senegal, Cameroon and other parts of Africa took part. As many African writers now live in France, there was heated discussion on whether native writers are less African because they live in Europe, and whether literature is more valid when it is written in Africa. The pros and cons of writing in national languages, as opposed to French, and recent events in Rwanda were also on the agenda
Many of the writers taking part in the Dublin festival were feted at a party in the French Embassy on Thursday night. Today's sessions, at which they will read from their work and talk about its gestation, are all free. So no excuse: head for Dublin Castle forthwith.
Lady Gregory Autumn Gatherings: Reflections at Coole edited by Sean Tobin, with associate editor Lois Tobin, is a compilation of articles based on lectures delivered at Coole Park, Gort, Co Galway, as part of the annual autumn schools there from 1995 to 1999.
Among the essays are `The Edward Martyn Connection' by Kevin Barry, `Wise Lady Gregory and her Friends' by Lorna Reynolds and `The Gort Barm Brack: Jack Yeats and Lady Gregory' by Bruce Arnold. "Let Us Now Praise Famous Women" is the title of the contribution by Irish Times journalist Katie Donovan.
The booklet costs £12.50 and is a welcome body of research on the work of a writer who has not been the subject of as much scholarship as she deserves. The autumn gathering this year is scheduled for September 28th to 30th.