(Via UB Poetics)
The waspish Mr Eagleton has an entertaining swipe at Irish reviewing
policies in his New Statesman diary:
http://www.newstatesman.com/200501310003
It seems that I've been dropped as a book reviewer by the Irish Times for
daring to criticise Seamus Heaney. He lent his bardic seal of approval to an
unctuously self-congratulatory ceremony in Dublin some months ago, at which
a handful of new members were triumphally admitted to the EU on second-class
terms. The Phoenix Park was full of beaming, backslapping Irish political
boyos; and army officers shouted orders in Irish, just to prove that the
nation cherishes its unique identity at the very moment when it's busting a
gut to look exactly like Switzerland. Meanwhile, the Gardai were beating up
protesters outside. Irish writers haven't on the whole marched or spoken out
on Iraq (they come to London for posh dinners, not demos), but they'll
declaim poems celebrating a club that cripples the world's poor with its
tariffs, because that's not political, you see.
So I wrote a poem for the Irish Times 's literary pages satirising this
grisly event, which they published, I suspect, only because they hadn't a
clue what it was about. Once the penny dropped, all review copies and
telephone calls ceased instantly. This is a splendid thing. In the old
Ireland, you were censored for criticising the Virgin Mary. Now it's Seamus
Heaney. That's progress.
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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