Surprise package

There is no shortage of literary magazines in this country, but far too many of them offer an identical tired formula of poems, pieces of fiction, and out-of-date reviews. Only a very few do it very well. A good literary journal should always surprise the reader, both in the range and content of its material - and this is just what the Dublin Review, Ireland's newest literary magazine, which is edited by Brendan Barrington, does.

In the first issue, Colm Toibin has an excellent in-depth essay on painter Francis Bacon; Anne Enright writes with knuckle-whitening humour about the birth of her first child, which opens with the line, "Amniotic fluid smells like tea . . . "; there's a memoir fragment by Tim Robinson on his time as National Serviceman for the RAF in Malaya; and a long and moving poem by Ruth Padel, as well as new poems from Vona Groarke, Peter Fallon, and Tom MacIntyre. And more.

Among the magazine's other surprises is an extract from a play, Members, about the Irish Literary Revival's Edward Martyn, by Terry Eagleton. Not a genre readers will immediately associate with the well known critic and Thomas Wharton Professor of English Literature at Oxford.

The oddest and most fascinating piece in the journal is a selection of reproductions of a bizarre and hilarious selection of 1930s correspondence between the French theorist Antoine Artaud and various diplomats and creditors in Ireland, which is held in the National Archives. Artaud visited Ireland in 1937 while suffering from a breakdown, and left a trail of debts and strange stories behind him. As Barrington notes, "The Irish diplomats concerned with the case enacted a Myles na gCopaleen-esque controversy that belongs perhaps to the theatre of the absurd." Compelling stuff.

The Dublin Review is also well produced, with a simple but strong layout. Clearly Barrington has good contacts, and while a first issue of any magazine is always going to be strong, if it retains its fresh, imaginative editorship, and the quality of its contributors, The Dublin Review is likely to become essential reading every quarter.

Rosita Boland is an Irish Times journalist