Dublin Writers' Festival

Just looking at the nicely produced programme for June 2010 and its offerings. There's some interesting material there that appeals to me - I think I have most of Jennifer Johnston's novels, and even though I've read them I like to listen to her speak about writing. She's so candid when speaking about her work and doesn't make a meal or a mystery of it. As Ian McEwan is one of my favourite writers - I like the twisted helix of his psychologies - I'll attend the opening gig. I love Neil Hannon but I guess I'd prefer to hear him sing than talking. Susan McKay, Natasha Walter and Hanif Kureishi will be well worth attending in their respective slots. Am a great fan of Kureishi, who has really thought a lot about cultural identity in his position as an Anglo-Pakastani being raised in the England of the 60s and 70s. His non-fiction work 'Dreaming and Scheming' is absolutely brilliant for writers. It asks the basic questions and attempts to show some of the awkward avenues towards getting on with it as a writer. Who am I? How should I live? Who do I want to be? Anyway, the only thing that struck me on a slightly negative note was that there are few slots for younger writers in this year's fest. Or, am I wrong about the age profile? There are some hoary older crowd-pullers in there, popular of course, which is why they should be there I believe - but isn't there space also for younger writers to be paired with the older people and who would then (the younger writers) gain access to an audience? Just mulling this over ... perhaps sometimes we need to be less canonical in our choices of writers for these things, which brings me to the question of the anthology of Galician poets I mentioned in my last post. When an editor selects poets there are various options. Do I invite the crowd-pleasing 'biggies' to participate, the obvious people, the usual suspects that everybody is quite comfortable with? Do I invite completely unknown - if brilliant - writers whom nobody knows much about? Or - and this was my choice in the end - do I invite a mixture of people I know to be quite simply GOOD WRITERS? I opted for the latter and if any of you come to the launch or pick the anthology up somewhere (it's published by Salmon and is called 'To the Winds Our Sails: Irish Writers Translate Galician Poetry', something I neglected to mention in previous post), you'll see that the range of writers is interesting. We have Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Paddy Bushe, Maighread Medbh, Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Maurice Harmon, Caitriona O'Reilly, Lorna Shaughnessy, Anne le Marquand Hartigan, Celia de Freine and Mary O'Malley doing the translating. Check the book out sometime.

There's a launch at the Instituto Cervantes on Lincoln Place tomorrow night (Wed 26th): the book is an anthology of poetry from Galicia translated by ten Irish poets, co-edited by me (Mary O'Donnell) and Manuela Palacios from Santiago de Compostela. There'll be poetry, wine and some Galician music too provided by Eimear Dempsey. Should be a good night and the book's lovely, if I say so myself!