Ireland: home of some of the best literature in the world

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Ireland: home of some of the best literature in the world

2 September 2024

Publication of Irish author Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, on 24 September 2024, nears. It promises to be quite the event. I don’t know about Australia, but in Ireland and the UK, some bookshops will open early on the day, so eager Rooney fans can get hold of her latest offering.

But Sally Rooney is only one of a cohort of popular Irish writers. The Emerald Isle* may not be the world’s most populous nation, yet it is up there with the best of them when it comes to literary output. Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch, and Edna O’Brien, are among Irish authors who are household names.

So, what’s the go? What makes Ireland a country of great writers? As Kate McCusker, writing for The Guardian discovered, the propensity to put pen to paper comes down to a number of factors.

One is the Irish love of entertaining and storytelling, of which I have some first-hand experience. Another is the diminishing influence of the Catholic Church. People no longer feel they need to restrain themselves, subsequently they can write about whatever they want, including divorce, gay marriage, and pre-marital sex. The things we all love to read about.

The Irish government is also arts-friendly. A few years ago they launched a three-year trial scheme that pays selected artists and creatives a basic weekly income. There’s an initiative that has to make a difference. Artists and writers can focus on being creative, and not getting distracted as they try to juggle day jobs and art.

* the term the Emerald Isle comes from a poem, written in 1795 by William Drennan, a doctor no less. Even non-professional writers make for great writers in Ireland…

Ireland to offer a weekly basic income to artists and creatives

17 September 2022

The Irish government will pay two thousand artists and creative arts workers a basic income of three hundred and twenty-five Euros (about four hundred and eighty Australian dollars) per week, as part of a trial being conducted over the next three years.

The Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme will examine, over a 3 year period, the impact of a basic income on artists and creative arts workers. Payments of €325 per week will be made to 2,000 eligible artists and creative arts workers who will be selected at random and invited to take part.

This is the sort of initiative that’s needed in Australia, where artists and writers seldom earn more than fifty-thousand dollars a year — likely well below that for many — compared to the average annual salary of about ninety-thousand dollars for other workers.

The 2021 Irish Film Festival Australia

7 September 2021

The 2021 Irish Film Festival Australia is on now until Sunday 12 September 2021. If the above trailer is anything to go by, there looks to be some top-notch lockdown movie viewing on offer.