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World Book Day: 23rd of April!
Cork City Libraries, along with Triskel Arts Centre and other arts organizations in the city, organised a Catalan-style celebration of the book and literature on 23rd April, 2005, with an extensive programme of literary and related events. In Catalunya, the ‘Dia de Sant Jordi’ is a long established tradition which includes giving a book and a rose to friends . . .
In Cork this year the festival took over the Grand Parade, filling it with people, books, flowers and food, free events on Grand Parade, in Bishop Lucey Park, the Central Library, Triskel and the English Market. The project was a collaboration between Cork City Libraries, Cork 2005, Triskel Arts Centre, Munster Literature Centre, Tigh Filí Arts Centre, Meridian Theatre Company, and the English Market.
To get everyone into the right mood, the Central Library on Grand Parade hosted readings by internationally known Irish writers Colm Tóibín (on Thursday 21st), and Anthony Cronin, (Friday 22nd), and was open around the clock, from 10.00 a.m. on Friday 22nd to 5.30 p.m. on Saturday 23rd, featuring readings, and music and other performances. Cork’s first World Book Day on Saturday 23rd l included stalls of books, flowers and food on Grand Parade directly in front of the Central Library; a marquee on Grand Parade where readings from Irish and European writers took place; with films, readings and other events at the Library; a literary stall in the English Market;
street performers, storytellers, local community art groups, and ‘Poetry in the Park’, an installation in Bishop Lucey Park;
Munster Literature Centre hosted the 3rd Annual Cork Children's Literature Festival at Triskel, April 21st to 24th;
To conclude the celebration of World Book Day, the fourth book in the Cork 2005 Translation Series by Slovenian poet Barbara Korun, translated by Theo Dorgan, was launched in the Central Library on Saturday evening 23rd.
Programme for World Book Day in Cork
Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd Thursday City Library
8.00 p.m. Colm Tóibín and Victor Aldea
Friday
City Library
Beginning at 8.00 p.m. and continuing through
until 5.30 p.m. on Saturday
8.00 p.m. Anthony Cronin
9.15 p.m. ‘Be Natural’ barber-shop quartet
9.30 p.m. Jim McKeon and Mary Condon ‘Frank O’Connor
followed by Opera 2005 and Be Natural
1.00 a.m. Maureen Prendergast ‘Shakespeare’ followed by
3.15 a.m. Marion Wyatt and Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa Cliff Wedgbury
All through the night: book-based films on show,
storytellers and more . . .
Saturday 23rd
Saturday 23rd Grand Parade City Library
Morning
From 11.00 Street performers,
Cork Community Circus; books, flowers, food
Readings begin by various Irish language groups and continue through the morning
10.00 Kristiina Ehin & Leanne O’Sullivan
Afternoon
Street performers, Cork Community Circus; books,
flowers, food Until 4.30pm
1.00 Tanja Dückers and Marta Pessaradona and Ponç Pons
2.00 Launch of The Unfinished Book a project by 5 teenage writers groups from Cork.
3.00 Carol Ann Duffy and Gina Moxley
4.00 Launch of fourth book in the Cork 2005 Translation Series by Slovenian poet Barbara Korun, translated by Theo Dorgan
Readings by the ‘New Corkonians’: European and African writers’ groups based in Cork
World Book Day 23rd of April - a Catalan tradition
Disfruteu de la Festa Catalana dels Llibres i la Literatura a Cork! Or to you and me, Enjoy a Catalan celebration of books and literature in Cork
In Catalunya, the ‘Dia de Sant Jordi’ is a long established tradition which includes giving a book and a rose to friends. The 23rd April is the Catalan national day, the feast of Sant Jordi (the local name for a legendary figure also called St. George), the national patron, as well as the date on which both Shakespeare and Cervantes died. Thus in Barcelona and the other cities and villages of Catalunya, the day is both a religious and national feast day, which celebrates love through the gift of a rose and culture through the gift of a book. The Catalans have celebrated this day for many centuries but it was only in the early part of the 20th century that the 23rd April was designated the ‘Dia del llibre’ or ‘Day of the Book’ in Catalunya and the rest of Spain, because of its association with Cervantes and Shakespeare. Since then other countries in Europe have followed the Iberian example, and this year Cork people have a chance to join in.
On 23rd April in Cork this year the festival took over the Grand Parade, filling it with people, books, flowers and food, free events on Grand Parade, in Bishop Lucey Park, the Central Library, Triskel and the English Market. The project was a collaboration between Cork City Libraries, Cork 2005, Triskel Arts Centre, Munster Literature Centre, Tigh Filí Arts Centre, Meridian Theatre Company, and the English Market. The Catalan cultural exchange agency - Institut Ramon Llull - funded the appearance of Catalan writers while the Goethe-Institut did the same for the German writer Tanja Dückers.
The celebration began earlier, though, with readings by Colm Tóibín and young Catalan writer Victor Aldea on Thursday night in the City Library. On Friday the Library was open round the clock featuring a reading by renowned Irish poet Anthony Cronin (at 8.00 p.m.) and a host of events centred on the book.
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín
www.colmtoibin.com was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955 to a family strongly rooted in the area. The Tóibíns were a Republican family; his grandfather fought in 1916, and his father Micheál, a schoolteacher, and uncle Pádraig were involved in the Fiona Fail party in Enniscorthy.
Colm is the second youngest of five children. Having finished his education - in Enniscorthy, St Peter’s in Wexford, and UCD -in 1975 he left for Barcelona where he stayed for three years, making a brave effort to learn Catalan. His experiences and the Catalan landscape and culture were central to his first novel The South and to Homage to Barcelona. He is thus an ideal choice to begin Cork’s own Dia de Sant Jordi / World Book Day celebration.
Colm's first novel The South was finished in 1986 but not published until 1990, being turned down in the meantime by most English publishers. In 1988 he returned for a year to Barcelona where he wrote Homage to Barcelona and renewed his acquaintance with the city and with villages in the Pyrenees where Homage to Barcelona is set and where he has since spent a great deal of time. In the 1990s Colm Tóibín published two more novels, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, along with travel books, numerous essays and reviews, as well as editing several anthologies.
His most recent novel The Master is undoubtedly his most acclaimed, having been nominated for the Man Booker Prize. This wonderful novel is the story of the New England-born writer Henry James, who lived most of his life in Europe - London, Italy, Paris - and tells of the sacrifices a writer or artist must often make when putting writing or art before other things in life. James, in Colm Tóibín’s story, passes up the possibility for love and intimacy of any kind, partly because of his stiff New England upbringing, but also because he recoiled from anything which would take him away from his writing. Truly a master work, and one which will surely attract a huge audience for Tóibín’s reading at 8.00 p.m. on Thursday 21st in the City Library.
Other featured writers included
Carol Ann Duffy, born in Glasgow in 1955, whose poetry collections include Standing female nude, Selling Manhattan, The other country, Mean time and The World’s wife. Last year she published Out of fashion a quirky anthology where a poet contributes a poem of his/her own on the theme of fashion or clothing and selects a favourite classic poem on the same theme. Duffy is also a playwright and has had plays performed in London and Liverpool.
Gena Moxley from Cork, who worked as an actor for many years before getting more seriously into playwriting with such plays as Dog House, Danti-Dan, and the film Snakes and ladders.
Leanne O’Sullivan, the youngest of the featured writers, had her first collection Waiting for my clothes published in 2004. Leanne is from West Cork.