PAUL MULDOON was awarded the 1997 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry for his New and Selected Poems 1968-1994.

After eight years as a highly successful Chairman of the Royal Society of Literature, JOHN MORTIMER is stepping down, to be replaced by the biographer MICHAEL HOLROYD.

 In October, at the age of 93, A.L. (ALFRED LESLIE) ROWSE C.H., the historian, polemicist and teacher, died in his native Cornwall. His eccentric and emphatic views - on the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, for example - clouded his real achievements as an interpreter of the Elizabethan world. He was our last direct link with the stable world of 'Q' (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch), his Cornish patron whose kindness made it possible for him to have a career at Oxford. He longed to be a poet and wrote poems that would have distinguished him in Georgian circles.

The Glasgow-born Anglo-Argentinian poet WILLIAM SHAND - died in Buenos Aires in October in his 95th year. He wrote his later poems in Spanish and was a leading anthologist and translator of modern Argentinean poetry. He translated the English poetry of the Spanish Civil War into Spanish. He also translated Donne and various American poets. Borges wrote the preface to his second volume of poems and the great novelist Ernesto Sábato was a partner in his advertising agency in Buenos Aires.

One of the great editors of our time, CATHERINE DEFRANCE CARVER, died in November. She worked with e.e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, Saul Bellow and a host of other writers, a trusted and meticulous worker who understood what each of her writers was trying to do and helped them achieve their ends. She was a warm and selfeffacing individual, an invisible ingredient in many great modern classics.

The American poet WILLIAM MATTHEWS died in November at the age of 55. A professor and functionary in the American arts establishment (one-time chairman of the literature panel of the NEA, former president of the Poetry Society of America, etc). His volume Time and Money received the Book Critics Circle Award in 1995.

As PNR 119 was going to press, the death of poet and editor of Stand JON SILKIN was announced. A report on his life and work will appear in a future issue.

The Folio Society sponsors the KEATS SHELLY PRIZE, with £2000 in prizes for essays or poems. The poems should 'focus on a Romantic theme' and may run up to 50 lines; the essay should be original and written in jargon-free English. A fee of £5 per submission is required. The judges are Andrew Motion, Duncan Wu, Vicki Feaver and Angus Graham-Campbell. Entries should be sent before 31 March 1998 to the Folio Society, 44 Eagle Street, London WC1 4FS.

The Purdy Hicks Gallery, 65 Hopton Street, Bankside, London SE1 9GZ, is devoting space until 31 January 1998 to an exhibition of drawings, prints and other works associated with ENITHARMON's brilliant collection of collaborations between writers and artists including Paula Rego, R.B. Kitaj, Jim Dine, Victor Pasmore and others. Drawings by John Berger will go on display at the gallery in January, his first exhibition in London.

The British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literary Translation (School of Modern Languages, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ) announce their continued joint sponsorship of a TRANSLATION COMPETITION for 1997-8. prizes will be awarded for the best unpublished literary translation from any language into English, and categories include poetry, prose or drama. Entries may be up to 25 pages in length. There are modest cash awards and the promise of publication in Comparative Criticism. The closing date is 31 January 1998.

In Janet Montefiore's report on the Jerusalem Poetry Festival (PNR 118), the name of HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER was mis-spelt; our apologies.