Bord Failte's magazine Ireland of the Welcomes is more than that in the current issue. It is Ireland of joy and exuberance and surprise. You open, perhaps, at a stunning painting by Pauline Bewick, through which is superimposed John Montague's version of the poem "Brighid O'Neill". The picture is entitled Water, Eel and Otter, but you'll find much more than that to delight you. On the opposite page is Seamus Heaney's version of "The Yellow Bittern", beautifully illustrated by David Daly.
Other poets figuring are Paul Muldoon, Francis Stuart, Brendan Kennelly, Peter Fallon and Mary O'Donnell. It is a special issue, edited by Derek Mahon, who has chosen well and who admits that the poetry section of four pages has been his special interest. But the range of articles is wide, lively and often humorous. John McGahern contributes a pungent essay on his Leitrim, noting such diverse details as the fishbones and crayfish shells scattered "where the otter feeds and trains her young." And not neglecting town or village. Such as Fenagh, where "two bars watch each other across a road, one Fianna Fail, the other Fine Gael," he says. And his story of the telephone box that used to move with every change of government. "The public telephone is no longer the potent symbol of power it once was, and governments change too often." Mohill is his town. Late winter on a market day, he knows that the season is turning when he sees bags of seed potatoes and bundles of cabbage plants - Early York and Flat Dutch, Greyhound and Curley - on the corner outside Luke Early's, each bundle tied with baler twine of all colours". He thinks of Mohill as "one of the happiest towns in the world." Not just Ireland, mark you, but in the world. Leitrim for ever.
Ireland's contribution to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Derek Mahon reminds his readers, is on the theme "Ireland and its Diaspora" and Joseph O'Connor meditates on the state of mind where "you were home in Ireland but you weren't home really." So much in so few (about forty) pages.
Nuala Ni Dohmnaill reminds us of some words of wisdom from the Annals of the Four Masters and writes: "To succeed in writing poetry in Irish is the most difficult and challenging thing know how to do. Yet the study it entails is like a gold mine that will never run dry. It is an over arching and abiding passion and is sufficient in itself to keep me well and truly occupied and out of mischief for the rest of my days. And in these days a ubiquitous ennui and almost blanket disenchantment, what more could a body want?".