Student Bloggers

When I first confirmed Dublin as my destination for study abroad, one of the main reasons for that decision was the literary tradition of Dublin and Ireland as a whole. Authors I have admired since I was young like Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats, and authors I began to admire as I aged such as James Joyce, Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett, all occupied spaces in and around Dublin.

What I didn't expect or even consider was the new emerging literary tradition developing in contemporary Dublin. I first discovered some of these new authors occupying Ireland by attending the Mountains to Sea Book Festival in Dún Laoghaire.

It was an act of chance and arbitrary decisions that I found this festival. I was in a bookstore near Trinity and began to read Object Lessons a book of prose by the well-known Irish female poet, Eavan Boland, writer in residence at Trinity College Dublin. I then saw a flyer for the festival in the bookstore saying she would be speaking at the Mountains to Sea Book Festival.

The Mountains to Sea Book Festival is an investigative and celebratory gathering. On the one hand, it celebrates all brands of literature, and all sorts of Irish authors. However, the celebration is enriched by an investigative quality of the production and creative process of literature. That is what Eavan Boland was partly interviewed about. Her interview was inspiring. She spoke about women and poetry, the difference between country and people, politics, feminism, Irish immigration, history, teaching in America, being published, read some poems, and finally answered questions.

After the festival, I again cast away my expectations of very personal interactions with literature, and resumed my looking back to the historic authors of Dublin. However, yet again I was wrong to do so, and was shown that by the beginning of the school year. I am a part of Trinity College, Dublin's Literary Society, which does many things in the way of activities, one of them being bringing authors from all over in for a reading and question and answer session.

This last Friday I had the privilege of attending a talk by David Levithan, an american and primarily young adult author, who has collaborated with well-known author John Green, co-authored Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and wrote one of my favorite books, The Lover's Dictionary (a dictionary formatted book that describes the course of relationships through definitions of words). Levithan did a reading, and mostly conversed with the crowd of students who came to see him. It was personal, informative, and inspiring. Although not Irish, Levithan still came to Ireland. He was in front of me, and not in America, and he was engaging with a primarily Irish audience.