A Cork Alternative to Bloomsday
31.01.2012

The writer James Joyce’s Cork connections are perhaps not too well known. Joyce’s father was brought up in Cork and later visited with his son, James, staying on one noted occasion in the Victoria Hotel. On Thursday, 2nd February, to mark the 90th anniversary of the publication of his most well-known novel, Ulysses, UCC Library and the Graduate School, College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Science will host the writer and poet Iain Sinclair who visits UCC to launch an exhibition marking the anniversary and to give a public lecture and reading. The lecture will take place in the Council Room at UCC at 6pm, following the launch of the exhibition at 5.00pm in the Boole Library. All are welcome with RSVPs to c.odoibhlin@ucc.ie.

Thursdays’ public lecture, is intriguingly titled “Riding the Swan: Homeric voyages in an age of absurdity”, in which Sinclair will “weave aspects of Ghost Milk (his latest publication on the impact of the London Olympics on his home borough of Hackney), and the issue of the Grand project philosophy”.

The writer and poet, Iain Sinclair was born in 1943 in Cardiff, and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and the Courtauld Institute of Art. His early writing was poetry, published by his own Albion Village Press. The city of London is central to his work, and his books tell a psychogeography of London involving characters including Jack the Ripper, Count Dracula and Arthur Conan Doyle. His non-fiction works include Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London (1997); and London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25 (2002).

In recent years UCC library has added to its Joyce collection, notably with the acquisition of the library of Gerald Goldberg, an avid collector of Joycean materials and someone particularly conscious of the Cork-Joyce connection. It is the purpose the exhibition to introduce readers anew to Ulysses, and also raise awareness of related items in Special Collections available to readers.

Picture: Iain Sinclair

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