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Irish Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Vona Groarke is new Ireland Professor of Poetry
In The Irish Times tomorrow, Austin Taylor tells Edel Coffey about her debut novel, Notes on Infinity, and there is a Q&A with James Rebanks about his new book, The Place of Tides. Reviews are Karlin Lillington on Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination by Karen Hao; Andrew Lynch on The Radical Thinking of Desmond Fennell & The Definite Article: Collected Writings of Michael McDowell; John Walshe on The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour by Peter K Andersson; Declan Burke on the best new crime fiction; Gemma Tipton on David Gentleman's Lessons for Young Artists; Mei Chin on Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson; Jessica Traynor on The Writings of Padraic Colum: 'That Queer Thing, Genius', edited by Pádraic Whyte and Keith O'Sullivan; John Boyne on Among Friends by Hal Ebbott; Ruby Eastwood on To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong; Miriam Balanescu on Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford; Sara Keating on children's fiction; and Colm McKenna on Larry: a New Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1912–1945 by Michael Haag. This weekend's Irish Times Eason offer is Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, just €5.99, a €6 saving. Eason offer Vona Groarke will be the 10th Ireland Professor of Poetry, taking over from Prof Paul Muldoon. The position will run from September to November 2028. READ MORE Groarke said: 'It may seem strange for the newly minted Irish Professor of Poetry to find herself (almost!) at a loss for words to describe the delight and honour of having been selected for a role some of our finest poets have graced and amplified. 'But I want to express my deep gratitude to the trust for this opportunity. I hope that my tenure will continue the service of my predecessors in highlighting the work of those who've chosen to put the practice of the art and craft of poetry at the very centre of our lives. 'I would like my time as Ireland Professor of Poetry to honour all those individuals and organisations, from teachers to libraries, readers to Irish publishers, whose attentions and efforts help to sustain the work of Irish poets. Together, we contribute to a sense that Ireland, north and south, is a place where poetry happens and continues to matter. I also look forward to engaging with as many aspiring poets and readers of all ages as possible during my time in the role.' Liam Hannaway, outgoing Chair of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and Chair of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust, said: 'I am delighted to witness Vona Groarke joining the great line of fantastic Irish poets who have held the position of Ireland Professor of Poetry. I wish her good fortune and I very much look forward to the freshness and energy which she will bring to the role. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the previous Ireland Professor of Poetry, Paul Muldoon, and thank him for his contribution over the past three years to the appreciation of poetry in Ireland and beyond. It has been a pleasure to have witnessed him at work in that time.' Maura McGrath, chair of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, and incoming Chair of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust said: 'The appointment of Professor Vona Groarke as the next Ireland Professor of Poetry is a moment of celebration for poetry in Ireland. Vona's work, marked by precision, insight and emotional depth, has long been a cornerstone of contemporary Irish literature. Her appointment recognises not only her outstanding poetic achievements but also her ongoing contribution to the life of the arts in Ireland and beyond. The Arts Council is proud to support the Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust in this important role and looks forward to the ways in which Vona's tenure will inspire readers, students, and fellow poets alike.' The Ireland Chair of Poetry Trust was established in 1998 following the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seamus Heaney. It was felt that this honour should be marked by choosing, every three years, a poet of honour and distinction to hold the Ireland Chair of Poetry. It is supported by Queen's University Belfast, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, as well as by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. * The Irish Writers Centre has launched its newly revamped International Debut Novel Competition (IDNC) – a global call-out for unpublished fiction writers ready to break through. Formerly known as the Novel Fair, the competition has helped launch dozens of writing careers since 2011, with alumni securing big literary awards and publishing deals. Entrants are invited to submit 5,000 words of their manuscript and a 500-word synopsis between August 1st and September 14th for the chance to pitch directly to publishers and agents during a two-day hybrid event in November. An expert panel will review submissions anonymously, with 12 winners notified on November 7th. Writers such as Orla Mackey (Mouthing), Hesse Phillips (Lightborne), and Lauren Mackenzie (The Couples) all credit the competition with launching their careers. Details and entry via . Fee: €65 (€58.50 for members). Limited free entries available. * The Irish Times columnist, author and investigative journalist Kathy Sheridan will be in conversation with author and Sunday Independent columnist Máiría Cahill in the Bailey Allen Hall on Saturday, July 19th at noon as part of the Galway International Arts Festival. The event, Speaking Truth to Power, will cover several topics, including Cahill's book Rough Beast, which dealt with her sexual abuse by a republican, an IRA internal 'investigation' and her subsequent struggle for justice. Tickets are €10 and available from . * Echoes: the Maeve Binchy Literary Festival returns to Dalkey Castle and Heritage Centre from October 3rd-5th with an exciting line-up of events and speakers. On October 3rd, at 7.30pm, Binchy's award-winning play Deeply Regretted By ... directed by Conall Morrison will be performed. On October 4th from 9.30am to 5.30pm there will be an exciting day of conversations, interviews and readings featuring: Marian Keyes, Claire Keegan, Donal Ryan, Patricia Scanlan, Lisa Harding, Conall Morrison, Anne-Marie Casey, Gerard Stembridge, Sinead Moriarty, Roisin Ingle, Niall McMonagle, Oliver Callan, Anna Carey, Michael Harding, Catherine Dunne, Caroline Erskine, Ian Robertson, Sophie White, Andrew Meehan, Lise-Ann McLaughlin, Jessica Dromgoole, Sarah Binchy and Gordon Snell. On Sunday 5th at 11am, the Marvellously Maeve Guided Walk leaves from Dalkey Castle. At 3pm, there will also be a Rehearsed Reading of Tottenham Court Road, followed by a discussion with director Jim Culleton of Fishamble: The New Play Company and Gillian Binchy. Full programme and booking at . & Half & full day tickets available for Saturday. Booking fees apply * The Irish-American poet Fanny Howe has died in Boston, aged 84. She was the daughter of Dublin-born writer and director Mary Manning. Her daughter, the writer Danzy Senna, is married to fellow author Percival Everett. She was professor emerita of Writing and Literature at theUniversity of California, San Diego and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ireland was very important to her. Last year, although very frail, she flew over to see her mother's play Youth's the Season staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. She had long-standing friendships with Mark Patrick Hederman at Glenstal and Richard Kearney at Boston College. * Galway-based author Maura McHugh, who writes prose, theatre, film/TV, video games, non-fiction and comic books, has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the category of Best Short Fiction, for her story Raptor, from the anthology Heartwood, edited by Dan Coxon, and published by PS Publishing in the UK. The anthology of twenty stories is a tribute to the innovative and lyrical Mythago Wood novels by award-winning author Robert Holdstock (1948 – 2009). 'I'm honoured to be one of five nominees from an international field by a jury of renowned writers and editors. My thanks to my editor and publisher for including me in this beautiful volume.' The World Fantasy Awards are one of most prestigious annual honours in fantasy literature and this year's winners will be announced in November at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, UK. * Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and Ukrainian Action Ireland is hosting an event to celebrate Victoria Amelina (1986-2023) and her posthumously published Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary, which recently won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. It will take place on Tuesday, July 29th at 6pm in Books Upstairs, 17 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2. Speakers will include Yaryna Grusha (Editor) and Pádraig Hanratty (Co-Chair, Irish PEN). Admission is free but booking is required. On Wednesday, July 30th, at 7pmthere will be another celebration of Amelina's life and work held as part of Irish PEN's Freedom to Write programme with the John Hewitt Summer School in the Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre, Armagh. * The 2025 Kennedy Summer School taking place in New Ross from August 28th-30th has unveiled its programme details. The festival spotlights Colm Tóibín, celebrated novelist, who is featured in The Noel Whelan Interview, bringing his sharp narrative sensibilities to a rich literary discussion. Alongside him are several distinguished journalists whose writing shaped the event. Seán O'Rourke, former RTÉ presenter and long‑form podcaster, is the guest at the Kennedy Tea Party. Also present are columnist Brenda Power, Cal Thomas, an American commentator, and Sarah Churchwell, historian and writer whose work bridges US and Irish cultural narratives. Tony Connelly and Jim Acosta, both veteran correspondents, lend their reporting expertise. The programme offers a compelling blend of literary and journalistic voices, all contributing to an engaging exploration of contemporary culture, politics, and storytelling. * Inspired by the curious interplay of Irish words when translated to English, Aileen Crossley (author / illustrator) reimagines a world where dogs live in trees, eat acorns instead of bones, and pigs roam the oceans. In her whimsical Irish language picture book, a foxglove fairy finds a young girl Mollaí, overwhelmed by technology, and takes her on a magical journey through the Irish countryside. An Áit a nEitlíonn na Madaí Crainn (Where the Tree Dogs Fly), a luxurious hard-backed book of fine art lithographic prints, will be launched at Hodges Figgis, Dawson St, Dulbin on Friday, July 18th, at 6pm. All are welcome. * The Linen Hall has announced the launch of the Michael McLaverty Short Story Award 2025. McLaverty (1904 – 1992) was one of the foremost proponents of the Irish short story. The purpose of the award is to foster and encourage the short story. First prize is £2,000; with £250 each for two runners-up. The winning story will be published with the runners-up in a limited anthology. Renowned writer Neil Hegarty (The Jewel; Inch Levels; The Story of Ireland) and editor Emma Warnock, of No Alibis Press, are the judges. Entry guidelines can be found on the website . * Philip Casey was one of Ireland's most loved writers, evidenced by these tribute s published in The Irish Times when he died in 2018. Last week, he would have turned 75. One of Philip's quiet but enduring passions was a website created and curated: – a lovingly compiled directory of more than 700 Irish writers. Although the original site is no longer live, you can still view an archived version on the Wayback Machine here . Recently, his family recovered a backup of the site and restored most of the content to an unpublished version. They would love to find someone in the Irish writing community who might be interested in taking up the mantle: to update, edit, and relaunch the site under a new domain they have secured: Technical support is available if needed, but what's most important is a passion for Irish writing and a commitment to preserving and expanding this valuable resource. If you or someone you know might be interested in continuing Philip's legacy, please feel free to get in touch with Éamonn McGuinness, Philip's cousin and close friend, at eamonnmcguinness@ * Leila Aboulela has been awarded the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize. Judges praised Aboulela for her 'nuanced and rich perspectives on themes that are vital in our contemporary world: faith, migration, and displacement', calling her writing 'a balm, a shelter, and an inspiration'. Aboulela is an award-winning novelist celebrated for her distinctive exploration of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Aboulela's novels include Bird Summons, Minaret, The Translator and The Kindness of Enemies, which have been translated to over 15 languages. Aboulela's most recent works include the novella A New Year, selected as a World Book Night title in 2025, and River Spirit, shortlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award. The PEN Pinter Prize is awarded annually to a writer resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth or former Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter's Nobel speech, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving' gaze upon the world, and shows a 'fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies'. * There will be an audience with Priscilla Presley on October 1st at 7.30pm at the National Concert Hall. In this deeply personal conversation drawing from her forthcoming memoir Softly, As I Leave You, Presley will reflect on what it took to leave her husband Elvis, what she lost in the process, and what she ultimately found: strength, purpose, and a life beyond the legend. Tickets can be purchased here . Eason presents an evening with Sophie White at The Racketspace at The Bernard Shaw on August 26th at 8pm. Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, co-authors of the Aisling series, will launch White's new novel, Such a Good Couple. Tickets are €20.99 and include a copy of the book, which you will receive at the venue on the night. * Iceapelago, the ice-covered islands that were once Ireland, is the creation of Peter Brennan who is the author of several reports on climate change. The Iceapelago books straddle the thin line between fact and fiction. Iceapelago 3, the final book in his climate fiction trilogy, is a parable, a war story and a deep reflection of the environmental collapse of a nation. As a temperate climate return, Iceapelago becomes the target of climate refugees seeking a new home. It is a thought-provoking story of hard truths, impossible choices, high stakes and moral dilemmas. This dystopian thriller ends with a twist that may give our planet some comfort.
Evening Standard
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Snow Patrol frontman to perform home city gig with a difference
Among the other author events scheduled, former Labour cabinet member Alan Johnson will talk about his new book, Harold Wilson, Chris Whitaker will be discussing his international best-selling novel All The Colours Of The Dark, and American writer Karen Hao will be talking about her new book Empire Of AI.
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The OpenAI empire
In 2019, before most of the world had heard of the company, the technology journalist Karen Hao spent three days embedded in the offices of OpenAI. What she saw, she tells Michael Safi, was a company vastly at odds with its public image: that of a transparent non-profit developing artificial intelligence technology purely for the benefit of humanity. 'They said that they were transparent. They said that they were collaborative. They were actually very secretive.' Hao spent the next five years following the growth of OpenAI, as it shifted to pursue – in her words – a growth-at-all-costs model. On the one hand, it has been spectacularly successful, with OpenAI now one of the largest companies in the world. On the other, she argues, it has come at a severe cost – to the people whose labour it relies on to operate, and to the planet. In fact, as she describes in her new book, Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination, it makes sense to think of OpenAI not as a company, but more akin to empires of old.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘Every person that clashed with him has left': the rise, fall and spectacular comeback of Sam Altman
The short-lived firing of Sam Altman, the CEO of possibly the world's most important AI company, was sensational. When he was sacked by OpenAI's board members, some of them believed the stakes could not have been higher – the future of humanity – if the organisation continued under Altman. Imagine Succession, with added apocalypse vibes. In early November 2023, after three weeks of secret calls and varying degrees of paranoia, the OpenAI board agreed: Altman had to go. The drama didn't stop there. After his removal, Altman's most loyal staff resigned, and others signed an open letter calling for his reinstatement. Investors, including its biggest, Microsoft, got spooked. Without talent or funding, OpenAI – which developed ChatGPT and was worth billions – wouldn't even exist. Some who had been involved in the decision to fire Altman switched sides and within days, he was reinstated. Is he now untouchable? 'Certainly he has entrenched his power,' says Karen Hao, the tech journalist whose new book, Empire of AI, details this saga in a tense and absorbing history of OpenAI. The current board is 'much more allied with his interests,' she says. Hao's book is a gripping read (subtitle: 'Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination'), featuring the unimaginably rich, as well as people in developing countries who are paid a pittance to root out the horrific sexual and violent content in the internet data that AI is trained on. The cast of characters that make up OpenAI have brilliant minds, and often eccentric behaviour. Elon Musk, after all, is one of its founders. Another founder and its chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever – who would be part of the failed attempt to remove Altman – dramatically illustrated his fears about the 'unaligned' AI they had created by burning a wooden effigy constructed to represent it in 2023 while his senior colleagues stood around a firepit at a luxury resort, wearing bathrobes. At the centre of it all is Altman, OpenAI's charismatic co-founder and CEO who is, depending how you view him, the villain who has put humanity on the path to mass extinction, or the visionary utopian who will bring us cures for diseases and a revolution in how we work. In the less than two years it has taken Hao to write her book, Altman, 40, appears to have outmanoeuvred his dissenters and has announced plans to raise $7tn. Hao describes Altman as a 'once-in-a-generation fundraising talent' and claims OpenAI's chances of winning the AI arms race depend on raising vast sums. 'He persuades people into ceding power to him, he doesn't seize it. The reason he's able to do this is because he's incredibly good at understanding what people want and what motivates them. I came to understand that … when he is talking to someone, what comes out of his mouth is not necessarily correlated as much with his own beliefs as it is with what he thinks the other person needs to hear.' It's why, she says, he was able to recruit so many talented people and get so much investment (and also what made some on his original board, and senior employees, nervous). 'It's also why he was able to pull off something that most people would not be able to do, which is to get the public to buy into this premise that he's doing something profoundly good for society, just long enough to get away with it.' Within OpenAI, Hao points out, 'every single person that has ever clashed with him about his vision of AI development has left – Musk has left, Dario Amodei has left, Sutskever has left [the three were early leaders in OpenAI] and a whole host of other people. Ultimately, they had a different idea of how AI should be developed. They challenged Altman, and Altman won.' In 2021, Altman's sister Annie made the shocking allegation on what was then Twitter that he had sexually abused her as a child (he is nine years older). In January this year, she filed a lawsuit against him. In a statement released by Altman, his mother and his two brothers, they described the allegations as 'utterly untrue' (his father died in 2018). Hao had several conversations with Annie, piecing together how her life unravelled. A bright child who planned to go to medical school, she suffered with poor mental health, and then developed a series of chronic physical health issues as a young adult. After her father's death, her health declined even further and, as her family started cutting off financial help, she became estranged from them. Annie, says Hao, 'is such a perfect case study of why we need to be sceptical of what Sam Altman says about the benefits of AI'. Altman claims AI is going to solve poverty and improve healthcare, but Annie – who lives in poverty and has health issues – hasn't seen any of the benefits, says Hao. 'She's representative of more people, and how they live in the world, than he is, and it just so happens that this perfect case study is also his sister.' Despite agreeing to speak to Hao for her book, OpenAI pulled out when they found out she was in touch with Annie. 'This should be a family thing,' says Hao. 'Why is a company representative now making this their top issue? That illustrated to me how important Sam, the man, is to the company.' It highlighted to her, she says, that Silicon Valley companies, particularly when faced with criticism, 'can bring their full power to bear to quash that dissent.' Hao studied mechanical engineering at university and moved to San Francisco after graduation to work for a startup. 'I thought that was going to be my career, to be in Silicon Valley and do that whole journey,' she says, when we speak over Zoom. 'I pretty much realised within the first year that the incentives within Silicon Valley for technology development were not aligned with the public interest.' So she moved into journalism and, writing for the magazine MIT Technology Review, became fascinated by AI. 'I was primarily spending all my time talking with researchers within companies that were operating in academic-like environments, where they didn't really have any commercial objectives. There was so much diversity of research happening.' There were also healthy debates. This was in 2016, around the time Donald Trump won his first election, and there had been a lot of criticism of the tech industry. 'There was emerging research on AI and its impact on society. What are the harms? What are the biases embedded in models that lead to potential widespread discrimination and civil rights issues? That's kind of where the AI world and discourse was before it got derailed by ChatGPT.' Within days of the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, it had one million users. Within a couple of months, it had 100 million users and had become the fastest growing consumer app in history. Hao felt its dazzling success had overshadowed those kind of debates, at least in the mainstream. 'People were just buying what OpenAI and other companies were spoon-feeding in terms of narratives, like: this is going to cure cancer, this is going to solve the climate crisis, all these utopic things that you can't even dream of.' She started working on what would become her book, looking at the history of OpenAI and its competitors. 'Only when you have that context can you begin to understand that what these companies say should not be taken at face value.' Before Hao started following OpenAI more closely, she says she had a 'pretty positive impression. I was curious about them; they were not a company, they were a non-profit, and they talked about how they were going to be transparent, open their research, and were focused on benefiting society'. Then, in 2019, things started to change; OpenAI developed a 'capped-profit' structure (investors would have their returns capped at a very generous 100 times), Altman became CEO, they signed a billion-dollar deal with Microsoft, and started to withhold their research. 'It seemed like quite a significant shift,' says Hao. 'That is one of the reasons why OpenAI has had so much drama, but it's also emblematic of AI development – it's so much driven by ideology,' she says. 'There's this clash of egos and ideologies that's happening, to try to seize the direction.' Within OpenAI, whether boomer (those who want to scale as fast as possible) or doomer (those who believe AI is a threat to humanity), the finish line was the same: to develop, and therefore control, AI first. Does Hao think AI poses an existential threat? 'The biggest and most pressing threat is that AI is going to completely erode democracy and, if you understand that, the conclusion is then we should just stop developing this technology in the way that these companies are developing it.' The funnelling of resources 'is a completely different scale than previous tech companies … They're trying to justify raising the largest private investment rounds again and again – OpenAI having just raised $40bn in the latest round'. That kind of concentration of wealth, she says, 'is in and of itself a threat. We are already seeing that play out with the US government, with the takeover by unelected tech billionaires.' The apocalyptic visions of a superintelligent AI turning against humanity have been a distraction, she thinks. 'Ultimately, what's going to cause catastrophe is people, not rogue AI, and we need to watch what the people are doing.' However, she has met people who genuinely believe AI will destroy humanity. 'I spoke to people whose voices were literally quivering in fear, that is the degree to which they believe, and if you truly believe that, that's terrifying.' Then there are those who use the idea of how AI could become so powerful as 'a rhetorical tool to continue saying: 'That's why we good people need to continue controlling the technology and not have it be in the hands of bad people.'' But as far as Hao can see, 'we've not gotten more democratic technologies, but more authoritarian ones.' Neither does Hao have much sympathy for the argument that the development of AI requires huge investment. 'I don't think it needs the level of investment these companies say it needs,' she says. 'They have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars on developing a technology that has yet to achieve what they said it's going to achieve,' says Hao. 'And now you expect us to spend trillions? At what point do we decide that actually they've just failed? 'When I was covering AI pre-ChatGPT and the wide range of research that was happening, there were such exciting ideas … ChatGPT erased people's imaginations for what else could be possible.' Generative AI has taken over – not just OpenAI, but at other tech companies including Google's DeepMind – and this, says Hao, 'has distorted the landscape of research, because talent goes where the money goes.' The money doesn't flow equally, though. Hao interviews people working for outsourced companies in Kenya, Colombia and Chile, who annotate the data that generative AI is trained on, sifting out harmful content for low pay and without much thought for their mental health. The AI, meanwhile, is powered by vast datacentres, buildings packed with computers, that require a huge amount of energy to run, and whose cooling systems require a huge amount of water. In the near future there will be even bigger datacentres known as 'mega-campuses'. Just one of these could use more energy than three cities the size of San Francisco. The premise of her book is that the AI giants are running an empire. But history shows us that empires can and do fall. Hao sees each step of the supply chain as a potential site of resistance. Artists and writers, for instance, are pushing back against their work being used to train generative AI (the Guardian has a deal with OpenAI for the use of its content). Enforcing data privacy laws, 'are also ways to contain the empire', as is forcing companies to be transparent about their environmental impact, from their energy consumption to where and how the minerals needed for hardware are extracted. Tech companies, says Hao, 'want their tools to feel like magic' but she would like more public education to make people realise that each AI prompt uses resources and energy. Hitting these pressure points and more means, she says, 'we can slowly shift back to a more democratic model of governing AI'. Compelling though he is, this isn't just about Altman, the reigning emperor of AI. 'It will take a far more concerted effort now to remove him,' she says, but adds, 'we fixate a bit too much on the individual'. If, or when, Altman chooses to step down or is successfully ousted, will his successor be any different? 'OpenAI is ultimately a product of Silicon Valley.' And anybody who may one day replace Altman, says Hao with foreboding, is going to pursue the same objective: 'To build and fortify the empire.' Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination by Karen Hao is published by Allen Lane, Penguin (£25). To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at
