Büro BDP Xmas Closing Party

Book launch: The Other Irish Tradition, edited by Rob Doyle (Dalkey Archive Press)

Readings: Rob Doyle, John Holten, James Joyce

December 16: 15-19h

Readings: 17h30

Raffle: 18h30

We would like to invite you one last time to our our much beloved space on Mareschstrasse 1 this Sunday for an afternoon of literature, reading and our annual BDP xmas raffle. We started this year with Rob Doyle’s ‘a book, a room’ so it’s fitting we close out the year with the German launch of the anthology he edited ‘The Other Irish Tradition’. Published by one of the world’s best English language publishers, Dalkey Archive Press, the book reaffirms the progressive, modernist and irreverent side of Irish literary history, the one often pandered to by tourist boards but rarely feted on its own terms.

About Büro BDP’s Past and Future

Ida Bencke and I made the decision four years ago to take on the Mareschstrasse, when we were facing uncertain financial prospects, but we made it work and we’re so glad we did: since January 2015 we have managed to host over 50 events in the space, ranging from readings, exhibitions, workshops, concerts, performances, dinners, roundtable discussions and book making sessions. In that time we were lucky enough that the programme was awarded twice the Berlin Senat’s Project Space Award.

We would like to thank all the contributors, artists, writers, collaborators, FuchsBorst, and all the members of the public who came to our events. Looking forward, in 2019 we will be in Kruezberg and other venues in Berlin and beyond, continuing to work to bring literature and the visual arts together, exploring the book as a potential space, and holding public events that are relevant, engaging and fun. We look forward to sharing exciting news about our new location in the very near future. In the meantime, please come by and say hello-goodbye, and do consider buying an independently published book from an independent bookseller this Christmas!

About The Other Irish Tradition

The Other Irish Tradition – edited by Rob Doyle and published by Dalkey Archive Press this month – is a colourful anthology that celebrates the experimental strain in Irish literature, from Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift to the bleeding-edge of contemporary writing. It juxtaposes the work of heralded masters such as Joyce, Beckett and Flann O’Brien, with the startling and innovative work of young and present day writers such as Mike McCormack, June Caldwell, Anakana Schofield and John Holten. Don’t miss the editor in conversation with contributors to discuss this refreshing and provocative collection of Irish writing.

‘It is peculiar that Irish writing fell into the habit of stolid conventionalism. The writers to whom we pay continuous cultural lip service are those who were most flagrantly unconventional and inventive: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien. As a nation we drop their names and celebrate our Bloomsdays and repeat how great they are, only to treat with suspicion contemporary writing that declines to play it safe, attempting to blaze new trails as O’Brien did with At Swim-Two-Birds, or Joyce with Ulysses.’  From the Introduction by Rob Doyle

Read a review here :https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-other-irish-tradition-review-a-timely-tome-1.3695268