Oxygen Books

Can't miss event at Dublin Book Festival: What is Dublin's place in literature?

 

This very question will be discussed at the opening event of the Dublin Book Festival, as three acclaimed writers, Eileen Battersby, Dermot Bolger and Anthony Cronin, join forces to debate the impact of the recent UNESCO City of Literature award and how Dublin has positioned itself in the modern literary world.

Starting at 6.30pm on Wednesday, March 2nd, in the National Library, this is a particularly astute topic to discuss as the festival opens; after all, without a secure position in the literary world and support for modern writers, there would be no funding for festivals such as this one.

And with the current economical and political unrest, the position of the arts has never been more important. Like C.S. Lewis said, “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”

So what does the future hold for Dublin? And how will the UNESCO award affect how the world views Dublin as a city filled with modern literary talent? I have my own ideas (and a few questions too) – but I think my eyes will be opened by this experienced panel. Hopefully, I’ll see you there.

Meet the speakers: Eileen Battersby, Anthony Cronin and Dermot Bolger

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times and four times winner of the National Arts Journalist of the Year Award. Her book, Second Readings: From Beckett to Black Beauty, a volume of literary criticism, was published in 2009 and subsequently reprinted. She is currently working on a new book due to be published by Faber in November.

Anthony Cronin is an acclaimed poet, novelist and biographer. His reminiscences of Dublin literary life during the early 1950s in Dead as Doornails, provide detailed portraits of Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, and Brendan Behan. His novel, The Life of Riley, was recently reissued by New Island. He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 2003, an honour awarded for exceptional artistic achievement.

Dermot Bolger has written ten novels, including The Woman’s Daughter, The Journey Home, The Family on Paradise Pier and New Town Soul. In 2010 he published ASecond Life: A Renewed Novel. Author of thirteen stage plays, his Ballymun Trilogy was published in 2010. He has published eight volumes of poetry, devised the bestselling collaborative novel, Finbar’s Hotel, and has edited numerous anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction.

The theme ‘Dublin, its place in Literature’ will be discussed on Wednesday, March 2nd at 18.30 in The National Library. www.dublinbookfestival.com

 

Well, could your city be a World City of Literature?

There's literary gold in them thar streets ... 

What do Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City and Dublin have in common? The answer is they’ve all been designated UNESCO Cities of Literature, the latter receiving its award only this summer.

 To become a City of Literature a city has to meet a long list of criteria covering everything from publishing, education and venues to festivals, bookshops and marketing. A lot of work has to be done to itemise a city’s literary success in all these areas (it also includes translation activities) – and obviously a roster of brilliant past, present (and future) writers is essential. But the rewards far outweigh the initial outlay, even if in Dublin’s case there hasn’t yet been a huge amount of coverage on the book pages of the UK press.

 ‘Cities are drivers of the local economy and creativity is the catalyst,’ says Jane Alger, director of the Dublin City of Literature and responsible for Dublin’s successful campaign.

 ‘We’re reaching out internationally for tourism but also have to bring in the local market. It instills pride in people.’

 UNESCO estimates that Edinburgh City of Literature activities generate about £2.2 million a year for the city, and £2.1million for the rest of Scotland, in income events and conferences in the city, higher levels of tourism and book sales.

Dublin already has plans underway for widespread pos and events, including a big celebration in March 2011, which will celebrate everything from song writing to drama and comedy. The emphasis is on writing in its widest sense and Dublin as a city of words, building on the city’s literary strengths. ‘UNESCO is a worldwide brand,’ says Jane Alger. ‘And literature and writing are things that make Dublin different.’

Admittedly it is strange that city-pick cities like London, Paris and Berlin  have never applied for status, while other cities like New York, St Petersburg, Prague and Vienna are similar no brainers. While a city’s size might be a problem when it comes to co-ordination – and London’s failure to ever hold a successful cross-city book festival is a case in point – it didn’t stop Calcutta applying in 2010.

Perhaps it is the smaller cities that have the best chance of actually getting an application together – and because of the tourism opportunities more incentive to do it. Implementing UNESCO policies and activities and informing them annually about progress isn’t perhaps easy in our biggest mega-cities. It’s not surprising then that recent applicants have included Reykjavik, Norwich, Amsterdam (a city-pick city!) and Vancouver despite Alice Munro having famously called the city ‘boring’.

 So, if yours is a not too big city with a thriving literary reputation and a need for a little economic regeneration, get started on your application now. In two years’ time you could be producing City of Literature baseball caps and t-shirts, just like Dublin.

'You walked the Dublin streets of Brendan Behan and Phil Lynott. Bob Geldof and Lady Gregory ... all singing from the same dark hymn sheet'

 

Four Nobel Prize winners (Shaw, Yeats, Beckett and Heaney) as well as Joyce who should have got one too. One of Europe’s smallest capitals but with something in the air or water that, as Maeve Binchy says, makes writing here ‘a lot easier than most places’  and where the greeting of many Dubliners is an understated question: “What’s the story?”.  It’s not surprising that this summer UNESCO awarded Dublin World City of Literature status.

Dublin is, above all else, ‘a city made of stories’, novelist Joseph O’Connor writes in the excellent City of Words, the Irish Times’ supplement on Dublin and its writers, published this week, where to be a Dubliner has always been to be part of a living literature. He remembers his own writer’s story:

‘It seemed that you were living in a compendium of stories, an anthology, a tarot-pack of narratives. You walked the streets of Yeats and Pearse, of Brenan Behan and Phil Lynott, of Bold Robert Emnet, the darling of Erin, and of  James Plunkett and Luke Kelly and Zozimus and Nuala O’Faolain and Bob Geldof and Lady Gregory. As a young person, that’s how I felt. All these storytellers were my neighbours, each of them attempting versions of perhaps the same thing, singing from the same dark hymn-sheet.’

Everyone knows about Dublin’s most famous literary exiles, Joyce and Beckett, but Eileen Battersby also reminds us of Maeve Brennan who left Dublin for New York and spent the rest of her life recapturing her Dublin childhood in a series of finely crafted stories. Joyce, while rejecting his city’s parochialism yet wrote the greatest paen to it in Ulysses. Booker Prize shortlisted writer Emma Donoghue left the city at the age of 20 but insists ‘I am and always will be a Dublin writer. It’s the place that has shaped me … I’ve always loved Dublin for its buzz, the speed, bite and satire of its conversation.’

While no area of the city is unsung by a writer and any walk through Dublin will be spent in the company of literary phantoms, yet its literature is not set in aspic. Maeve Binchy recalls a time when Mary Lavin and Maura Laverty were the only famous Dublin female writers, a situation she herself remedied and opened the way for an even wider range of women’s voices.

The last decade has seen an explosion in Dublin-set crime writing, from John Connolly and Benjamin Black to Arlene Hunt and Declan Hughes. Novelist Claire Kilroy sees a distinction between novelists like Paul Murphy, Chris Binchy, John Boyne and herself, for example, and an older generation publishing more historical fiction: ‘it’s fair to say that our age group, mainly Dubliners, are pre-occupied with the city itself, and in particular with the nasty side of recent wealth, and the victims left in its wake.’

As Dublin is officially recognised for what it always has been, a City of Literature, the city of Celtic Tiger bling rapidly recedes into the past. ‘A communal work of fiction, it suspended disbelief,’ says Joseph O’Connor. But Dublin’s storytellers look to telling their own truths, both slant and direct, as they have always and inimitably done.

 Joseph O’Connor’s novel Ghost Light, his fictional account of the affair between Synge and actress Molly Allgood, will be Dublin’s One City One Book next year.

city-pick Dublin, £8.99, paperback, published by Oxygen Books features many of the writers included in City of Words.

 

Meet the Dubliners: from James Joyce to Anne Enright at Redbridge Libraries exciting Word of Mouth Festival next month!

 
Meet the Dubliners: from James Joyce to Anne Enright at Redbridge Libraries exciting Word of Mouth Festival next month!

 The city-pick guides are an entertaining, lively and fascinating new series of travel guides looking at the soul of major European cities: the literature. The Dublin Guide was published on St.Patrick's day this year and includes all the best writing on Dublin. Meet editor Heather Reyes, Orna Ross, well-known Dublin journalist and bestselling author of "A Dance in Time" who wrote the forward to the guide and Malcolm Burgess from Oxygen Books for lively literary debate. Admission: Free. Date: Wednesday 13 October. Time: 7pm-8.45pm. Venue: Seven Kings Library, Ilford, Essex. Enquiries: 020 8708 2737.

It's official - Dublin is a UNESCO City of Literature, one of only four in the world!

 Dublin’s Lord Mayor, Gerry Breen, in the company of the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, Mary Hanafin T.D., formally announced Dublin’s designation as UNESCO City of Literature!

The announcement took place in the forecourt of the iconic Grand Canal Theatre, Grand Canal Square, Dublin 2 at 11.00am, Monday, 26 July 2010.

Dublin is one of only four cities in the world with the designation of UNESCO: City of Literature.

The sought after accolade was bestowed by the Director General of UNESCO and recognises Dublin’s cultural profile and its international standing as a city of literary excellence.

• Dublin UNESCO City of Literature website
• Read the full press release.
• Dublin's writers tell us why Dublin is a city of literature.

Dublin City Public Libraries is forever at the forefront when it comes to championing and celebrating its literary heritage. Illustrative of the type of venture taking place in the city currently and involving Dublin City Public Libraries is the Page to Stage initiative. Jointly organised by the local authority library services of Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin, From Page to Stage presents an opportunity for new playwrights to showcase their work as part of Innovation Dublin - a celebration of innovation and creativity across the Dublin Region. Upcoming events include the Penguin Writers' Day and the Roald Dahl Day. 
See the Library Events page for listings of upcoming events.

The application for designation as a UNESCO City of Literature, part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network was initiated and led by the city library service. Through the Creative Cities Network, UNESCO recognises that cities are "increasingly playing a vital role in harnessing creativity for economic and social development"  and "connecting cities can mobilise this potential for global impact".

Right: The Dublin City Library and Archive, Pearse Street, Dublin, headquarters of the Dublin City Public Libraries and administrative centre for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the largest and most international literary prize of its kind.

UNESCO City of Literature is a permanent title which aims to create synergies between cities of the same designation as well as encouraging cultural diversity. Edinburgh, Melbourne and Iowa City already have the designation.

city-pick Dublin (£8.99, paperback, Oxygen Books) features over sixty writers on Dublin from Sean O'Casey and Samuel Becket to Roddy Doyle and Keith Ridgway.

city-pick Dublin: 'a writers' tour of Dublin ... a gem of a travel guide' Irish World

A writers' tour of Dublin

SHELLEY MARSDEN looks at a gem of a travel guide which unveils the literary treasures of the Irish capital…

WHAT better way for literary lovers to explore a city than through the vivid descriptions of some of its country’s most beloved writers? Dublin has a seriously impressive amount of great writers per head of population – including its four Nobel Prize winners Shaw, Yeats, Becket and Heaney.

A Londoner who began her schooling with the Ursuline Sisters and says she “lived with the voices of Ireland in my head”, Editor Heather Reyes says that writing ‘City-Pick Dublin’ (the latest in an excellent city-pick series by Oxygen Books) felt like a bit of a homecoming. She went on to study literature, and found that Ireland was also the country of Swift, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Beckett and a host of other incredibly gifted.

In awe at how such a small country with a famously tumultuous history could have produced quite so many great people, Reyes’ collection aims to be a lyrical but realistic exploration of and tribute to Ireland’s capital. There are few foreign voices in City-Pick Dublin, but the city is so rich in writers that there hardly seems any need

She says, “I hope the reader will find here, along with a little of the ‘expected’, some less familiar voices and surprising gems, and the inspiration to seek out the whole texts from which their favourite extracts are taken – and to look more deeply and widely into the great treasure chest of writing about this great European city which even names bridges after its writer

Take this handily compact tome with you on your city-break to Dublin’s fair city, and your trip will be all the richer for it. This book covers an astonishing variety of writers, from the classic to the modern, the home-grown to the visitor – each of the over one hundred extracts helping evoke the myriad pleasures of this city of writers.

You can choose to arm yourself with City-Pick Dublin’ and head off on a true pilgrimage around the capital, following each writer and their own deeply personal take on a certain angle of this colourful place, or simply dip in and out of it, to take an altogether different perspective on the bustling streets you are walking through.

Anne Enright, for instance who won the Booker prize for her 2007 novel The Gathering reveals the visceral poetry of two unforgettable characters, a Dublin father and daughter, in The Brat.

For the full article, buy this week's Irish World at your local newsagents, or pick up a on this website from only 50p!

city-pick Dublin: 'Bite-sized beauties' says The Dubliner

 

Bite-sized beauties

 

You won’t find pub recommendations or directions to art galleries

in this little guide, but you will get a taste of Dublin’s most

important natural resource: stories. By Bridget Hourican

 

The cover shows the Custom House,

the Trinity Campanile, the Ha’penny

Bridge, a glass of whiskey (I think), a

pint of Guinness (of course), James

Joyce (of course) and a whole lotta green. Inside

52 writers, ranging from Thackeray in the mid-

19th Century to Orna Ross in 2008, showcase

their Dublin in extracts from novels, stories,

essays and travel pieces, ranging from a few

lines to fi ve pages. Dublin is the latest city to get

the Oxygen Books treatment; previously called

‘City-Lits’ (there was a legal wrangle so they’re

now ‘City-Picks’), these British-published

guides view world cities through the words of

native and visiting authors. Berlin, London and

Paris have already been featured; due later this

year are Istanbul and Amsterdam. It’s a clever

format for a travel guide – you don’t get opening

hours for galleries, but you do get reveries by

Nobel Laureates jostling beside blog entries.

So who gets to say what about Dublin? Chris

Binchy writes about yuppies Sunday-drinking,

Roddy Doyle shows an immigrant’s reaction to

Temple Bar, Iris Murdoch describes run-down

northside Georgian squares, Joseph O’Connor

considers the southside suburbs, and Australian

tourist, Evan McHugh, gets a look at the Floozie

in the Jacuzzi (before they took her away – the

last we heard, she was under tarpaulin in St

Anne’s Park). There’s a section called ‘Streets

Broad and Narrow’, a section called ‘Dubliners’

and a section called (of course) ‘Publin.’ The pint

of plain is very much featured; Pete McCarthy,

who famously went round Ireland fi rst with a

fridge and then in search of other McCarthys,

begins his extract: “There’s always a lot riding

on your fi rst pint in Dublin.” (That would be

‘riding’ in the American, not Irish sense.)

 

The selection is wide-ranging – I’m

delighted to see the excellent Keith Ridgway

so well-represented and there is a charming

extract from an American student culled from

a travel blog. It’s all perhaps a little recent

– only one extract is taken from before the

20th Century, and only a quarter are pre-1990.

It’s very much recognisable, contemporary

Dublin being described, which probably suits

most readers, but less so those looking for

authentic, historic Dublin – the section ‘All in

the Past’ isn’t really taken from past writers

but features contemporary writers’ take on

the past. And there’s the curious absence of

the most famous Dubliner of all. He’s on the

front cover, and four of the extracts are about

him, but James Joyce never gets to talk for

himself. Joseph O’Connor, Brian Lalor, Frank

Delaney and David Norris circle round him,

but he remains muted. The editor explains,

somewhat helplessly, that the task of choosing

a ‘representative’ Joyce passage was hopeless

and impossible. Maybe (probably) she thought

Norris was as good as; maybe (probably) she

couldn’t face the Joyce estate – who would

blame her? Anyway, Joyce makes a good

Banquo’s Ghost at this occasionally delicious,

quirky feast – definitely a tasting menu…

 

 

 

  

city-pick Dublin: 'great craic at Essex Book Festival'

city-pick Dublin: 'yet another goody bag of essential reading' Aer Lingus Cara

‘The latest in this publisher’s city-pick series (other titles include London, Berlin and Paris) is yet another goody bag of essential reading literary gems. The idea is to provide insiders’ views of what Dublin is like, but inherent to these is a specific about-face on what normally constitutes an insider’s guide. So we have a journey to Dublin’s so-called Little Africa, a German’s perspective on St Patrick’s Cathedral, an emigrant returning to the phenomenon known as the Celtic Tiger, and an intriguing insight into the workings of James Joyce.. Over 100 extracts from more than 60 writers (including Euan Boland, Anne Enright, William Trevor, Joseph O’Connor and Roddy Doyle) prove that there is perhaps more to Dublin than meets the usual travel writer’s eye’ Cara, Aer Lingus Magazine

 

city-pick Dublin: 'this book is excellent for the armchair traveller as well as the literary tourist' Chris Mills, Hackwriters

City-Pick Dublin edited by Heather Reyes, introduced by Orna Ross, published by Oxygen Books • Chris Mills This is the latest publication in a new series of literary city travel guides. It is a wide ranging guide divided into themed sections including excerpts from fiction, memoir and travel writing.

We can compare Thackeray’s Dublin of 1843 with Chris Binchy’s Dublin of the twenty first century. There are sections on Dublin’s streets and buildings, Dubliners themselves and the history of the city. You could probably guess what the section entitled ‘Publin’ is about and of course you couldn‘t have a portrait of the fair city without mentioning the pubs and their place in popular culture. And anyway as Michael Cronin so rightly remarks, directions to foreigners often use pubs as landmarks. The section called ‘The good, the bad and the (just a little bit) ugly’ deals with a few of the contrasting aspects of the city. Some authors take a look at the seamier side of the city and poke at the underbelly of the fine Georgian buildings and elegant squares. Writers have looked at the poverty in the city of the past, pre-Celtic Tiger prosperity.

There are also reminders of a time not so long ago when fish would be eaten on Fridays and it was hard to find a delicatessen. The final section, ‘All in the past’ covers in just a few extracts some of the critical periods in Dublin’s recent history, from a snapshot by Edward Rutherford of Dublin under the Protestant Ascendancy to the 1916 Easter Rising as described by Kathleen Clarke, the first woman Lord Mayor of Dublin.

I have now been living in Dublin for around six years and so have a reasonable working knowledge of the city, but I found it fascinating to read snippets of the life and history of Dublin from differing viewpoints. For me though, part of the attraction is in finding familiar street names and locations in some of the accounts. I almost feel like a real Dub. This book is excellent for the armchair traveller as well as the literary tourist. I think it probably works best to dip in and out of the text. To read straight through would be too much like doing literature homework. You’d be expecting to have to do a comprehension exercise afterwards. Zipping from one decade and one writer to another as the fancy takes you is the best way to appreciate the literary nuggets this book has to offer. Full details of the original publication of the extracts are given at the back of the guide so it is easy to follow up anything of particular interest.

I started reading this guide a few days after finally making it to the Dublin Writer’s Museum in Parnell Square. It’s only taken me years to get there, but the museum’s well worth a visit, particularly if you have this anthology to accompany you. I had some of the images from the museum floating round in my head as I leafed through the list of authors included in the guide. Some writers chosen can be said to come under the heading of ‘the obvious suspects’ such as Beckett, Behan and O’Casey but there are also contemporary writers such as Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle and Joseph O‘Connor. Though as Orna Ross points out in her introduction, Dublin’s relationship with its writers has often been a vexed one. She bluntly says ‘Dublin used to like its writers dead. For the first fifty years of the Irish state, any living author who wrote a worthwhile word was censored and, often, hounded out’. Dublin is also seen through the eyes of its visitors. I have already mentioned Thackeray, but Eric Newby, V.S. Pritchett and Heinrich Böll have also stayed and observed. One of my favourite topics covered in the book is that well known Dubliner James Joyce, who not surprisingly pops up in more than one extract. I am not quite a Joycean virgin since I have at least read The Dubliners but that’s as far as I have gone as yet. One day I may even unlock the mysteries of Ulysses. I am undecided about the merits of the Bloomsday activities entertainingly reported here by Brian Lalor, but I am probably going to come down on the side of the enthusiasts. It’s just another form of book group, only with dressing up and Guinness to add to the literary pleasures. All good, clean fun.

In a collection such as this it is customary for someone to be picky about what has been included and what left out and I’m afraid I can’t resist one quibble about a missing author. I regret the lack of an extract from Ferdia Mac Anna’s The Last of the High Kings which I recently discovered in a charity shop. The only difficulty I fear, would have been in selecting just one extract to include. I did however particularly like Keith Ridgway’s wonderful evocation of a contradictory Dublin, ‘mother Dublin, culchie Dublin, Muslim Dublin, the wind ripped rain at eleven o’clock in the morning on Pearse Street Dublin, drunken Dublin, hungry Dublin [...] Bono’s Dublin, Ronnie Drew’s Dublin, Bloomsday Dublin [...]’ And in another piece I loved the description of Molly Malone’s breasts as ‘a brace of butternut squash’. I shall never look at the poor woman in the same way again. In our house she has always been known as ‘the lady with the baskets’ thanks to our young daughter, but now I can’t get butternut squashes out of my head thanks to Neil Hegarty. Despite being left with this unfortunate mental image, the guide is well worth a read, even you are not planning a trip to Dublin in the near future. In fact, I might yet work my way through the whole series. Armchair travelling at its best.

© Chris Mills March 23rd 2010
cdmillsratel at hotmail.com

www.hackwriters.com/CityPickDublin.htm