In The Irish Times tomorrow, Darragh Geraghty recommends 15 short books to get you back in the reading habit. Ruby Eastwood channels Maeve Brennan as she reflects on the Irish author’s New Yorker snapshots of city life and their relevance for city dwellers today. Jamie O’Connell advises against writers partnering up with fellow writers. Ray Burke reports on the return to Ireland of WB Yeats’ cherished lantern after decades in the US. And there is a Q&A with Polari Prize winning Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies and the just-out Disappoint Me.
Reviews are John Banville on Pierre Bonnard by Isabelle Cahn; Gemma Tipton on Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux and The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich’s Journey Through Time by Florian Illies, translated by Tony Crawford; Michael Cronin on The Philosophy of Translation by Damion Searls; Martina Evans on the best new poetry; Anthony Candon on Medieval Irish Kings and the English Invasion by Seán Ó Hoireabhárd; Mei Chin on Rachel Hope Cleves’ Lustful Appetites; Adrienne Murphy on A Silent Tsunami by Anthea Rowan; Mihir Bose on Hicky’s Bengal Gazette by Andrew Otis; Julia Kelly on Waiting for a Party by Vesna Main; John Boyne on The Party by Tessa Hadley; John Walshe on House of Huawei by Eva Dou; Neil Hegarty on The Tree Hunters by Thomas Pakenham; and Declan Burke on the best new scifi and fantasy novels.
This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is Displeasure Island by Alice Bell, just €5.99, a €6 saving.
Actor Anthony Boyle has been added to the cast of Three Ages of Yeats, a Dead Poets Live event at the Gate Theatre on January 31st. He will join the previously announced Olwen Fouéré and Peter McDonald. Boyle originated the role of Scorpius Malfoy in the West End and Broadway productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and recently appeared in the acclaimed Disney+ series Say Nothing. Boyle will make his Gate Theatre debut in this production, a dramatised retelling of Yeats’s poetic evolution.
The poetry of Yeats came in on the last wave of Romanticism and survived the Modernist backwash. It remained of the moment but out of step, just as the life he lived was intimately of its age and supremely out of time, guided by a mystical (often mystifying) inner life – an intricately personal vision of history, symbol and myth that also inspired his poems – a vision that Yeats enlarged and renewed throughout his life.
Yeats shed styles and convictions as he changed, leaving behind a series of contradictory selves. ‘Three Ages of Yeats’ dramatises those contradictions by separating Yeats’s life into three ages, each age played by a different actor: Early Yeats, the Republican in a velvet jacket, writing dreamy love poetry for Maud Gonne; the more direct lyric poet, Middle Yeats, writing out of heartbreak and public life; and Late Yeats, indecent, unbiddable, never more experimental.
On January 30th, using letters, poems and analysis, Dead Poets Live will dramatise the life and work of Emily Dickinson, starring Justine Mitchell. Dickinson, who died in 1886, wrote nearly 1,800 short poems: epigrammatic, metaphysical, tragic, funny, touching, terrifying, and her correspondence matches the complexity and artfulness of her lyrics. Using letters, poems and analysis, Dead Poets Live will dramatise the life and work of this mysterious, unknowable and unique genius.
Finally, on February 1st , actor Éanna Hardwicke will perform a thrillingly intimate setting of Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal.
The autumn of 1938 was, if you were British, arguably the most frightening moment of the 20th century. Louis MacNeice, a poet from the North, was turning 31 and working as a lecturer in London; Autumn Journal, his masterpiece, describes his response to a season of intense anxiety and uncertainty.
Autumn Journal is a diary poem, which frets and argues with itself and blends the personal – a love affair, the daily round in London, the leaves falling and Christmas coming – with the overwhelming and terrifying inevitability of an approaching war. There’s no other poem quite like Autumn Journal, and few which communicate that mixture of dread, distraction and incidental beauty which seems so uncannily descriptive of our own present moment.
These Dead Poets Live events form part of the Gate Theatre’s Gatecrashes series of events, part of its Gate’s strategic commitment to innovate new streams of programming across its spaces. As well as attracting people who have not yet been through its doors, it is the ambition of Gatecrashes to interrogate how the Gate uses its spaces.
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Renowned Egyptian author Omar El Akkad will discuss Western complicity in Gaza conflict in Dublin next month at a special Off the Page event organised by International Literature Festival Dublin.
El Akkad, who has spent years reporting on wars, climate change, racial injustice and global conflict, will discuss his new book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which explores his understanding of the West in the 21st century and was born out of his viral post on X in response to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
In conversation with literary journalist Alex Clark, El Akkad will reflect on his own journey as an immigrant and his disillusionment with the West. How can we in the West go on living in a world of genocide and terror? Is the West truly a place of freedom and justice for all? This and other topics will be discussed. He will be discussing his new book which is a searing critique of Western governments and media and reflects on his own experiences as a Western citizen and parent. The book chronicles what it means to also carve out hope and desire for a better world during times of global conflict and devastation.
Off the Page: Omar El Akkad will take place on Thursday, February 13th, at 7pm in the Pepper Canister Church, Dublin 2.
El Akkad was born in Egypt and lives in the US. His writing explores war, migration and identity in a fractured world. He has received critical acclaim for his novels American War and What Strange Paradise. His debut, American War, was named by the BBC as one of the 100 novels that shaped our world, and What Strange Paradise won the 2021 Giller Prize.
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The latest membership numbers released by Bookselling Ireland, the committee of Irish members of The Booksellers Association (BA) of the UK and Ireland, which represents the vast majority of Irish bookshops, has revealed that in 2024, 10 bookshops closed while one new independent bookshop opened, The Little Lane Bookshop in Waterford.
Bookselling Ireland’s Christmas trading survey of independent bookshops across Ireland painted a picture of resilience, tempered by mounting concern for 2025 over the launch of Amazon.ie, changes to the school book supply system and slowing supply chains due to the closure of the port of Holyhead following Storm Darragh.
Dawn Behan, chair of the Bookselling Ireland committee, said: “Although it has been a challenging year for Irish bookshops, particularly those who sell schoolbooks, it is heartening to see new bookshops continue to open and thrive.
“Bookshops make a huge cultural, social and financial contribution to their communities and play an important role in promoting Irish writers, illustrators and publishers, thanks to the efforts and dedication of enthusiastic booksellers throughout the country. However, bookshops face the same challenges as all other small businesses and in order for bookshops to be sustainable and to continue to enrich their local communities, this contribution needs to be recognised and supported.”
The T S Eliot Prize 2024 is looming! The shortlist readings - the biggest poetry event in the UK - will take place at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday evening, and the winner will be announced at the Wallace Collection on the evening of Monday 13th.
There is Irish interest in the shortlist as Gustav Parker Hibbett, a Black poet, essayist and MFA dropout, born in the US is currently residing in Ireland and his collection has an Irish publisher. They are a 2023 Obsidian Foundation Fellow, a 2024 Djanikian Scholars Finalist, and featured in 32 Poems as an Emerging Poet. High Jump as Icarus Story, published by Banshee Press in 2024, is their first poetry collection. They are currently pursuing a PhD in Literary Practice at Trinity College Dublin, where they are an Early Career Research Fellow at the Long Room Hub.
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The 41st Limerick Literary Festival will take place from February 21st to 23rd.
It is a festival run by readers for readers and a celebration of books and authors in multiple genres. This year will have the very special Heaney in Translation event introduced by Niall MacMonagle and featuring John McIntyre and Zoe Conway as well as Eleanor Methven. The main speaker this year is David McWilliams.
The festival began in 1984 as the Kate O’Brien Weekend, set up to mark the 10th anniversary of the distinguished Limerick writer whose books were banned during her lifetime and who died in England. Kate wrote a regular column for the Irish Times. The name was changed to the Limerick Literary Festival in honour of Kate O’Brien in 2015 to broaden the reach of the festival and to ensure that it was not thought of as an academic weekend.
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Submissions for the 2025 Dingle Lit Short Story Competition are currently open. The competition invites writers from across Ireland to submit original, unpublished work in both English and Irish. Open to all writers who are residents on the island of Ireland at the time of submission, the competition aims to discover new literary voices and celebrate the art of storytelling.
This year, John Patrick McHugh will judge the English-language entries. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne will judge the Irish-language entries. There will be a 1st prize, runner-up, and highly commended stories in both Irish and English categories.
Interested writers are encouraged to visit dinglelit.ie for full details and to submit their stories. The deadline for entries is midnight on February 28th.
