Dear ian davidson,

Many thanks for your e-mail response of May 15th, which I found
thoughtful, agreeable, and stimulating.  My apologies for the delay in
responding.

Perhaps I should report an update concerning my protest to the Dublin
Writers' Festival.  I sent my protest-message (each sending copied to
the Festival itself) to 16 e-lists.  A number of people on the lists
re-circulated the protest to blogs and news-groups.  Most people were
supportive of the protest.  I know of only one blog that was not
supportive.  In addition, I was interviewed by two newspapers, one of
these in Michigan, and two wire-services.  Then I received the
following message direct from the Festival (please note, I did NOT
e-mail the Festival from my Hotmail address) ...

_______________


Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 17:26:01 +0100
Subject: Re: Controversy in Dublin, Ireland
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]

Dear Séamas,

Thank you for your email to the festival.  I was sorry to hear that
you were disappointed by the absence of Irish language events in the
programme.  This is not a policy decision as such but we have had
great difficulty in past years in achieving respectable numbers for
Irish language events.  The failure may be ours in terms of our
marketing and promotion but, as I'm sure you can appreciate, having to
apologise to the writers for the small audience numbers is
embarrassing for the festival (and it also puts the writers in an
embarrassing situation).  We're not interested in holding a token
Irish language event within the festival but are very open to meeting
with individuals and organisations who, were we to develop an Irish
language strand, could advise and support our efforts to boost
audience numbers.  If you'd like to discuss this further please do get
in touch.

With kind regards

Liam Browne
Programme Director
Dublin Writers Festival

_______________


To be sure, I am forwarding this message to Irish-language writers in
Dublin.  If Mr. Browne wants discussion, certainly he should receive
it.

Bestwishes,

Séamas

_______________


On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 5:11 AM, ian davidson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> One of the reasons I got really excited about finding out and reading more
> experimental writing, and why the work of a number of modernist poets and
> the Language poetry project made immediate sense to me, was because it
> helped me to work with my experience of growing up in a place with two
> official languages in an unequal relationship. Still does, although poetic
> practices may be different.
>
> This is not to give primacy to one language over another (or others). The
> language practice of people, outside of the confines of legalistic and state
> practices and official literatures, was in neither language, but always
> different combinations of the two. Relationships between languages, people
> and geography (or places) are never direct, but always constructed out of a
> negotiation that subverts and critiques a nationalist rhetoric and the kind
> of public language it is made up of.
>
> The more languages the better in my view.
>
> Ian
>