James Joyce fans aren’t put off by the 800-odd pages of Ulysses, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that a little thing like a global lockdown can’t dampen their spirits either. Bloomsday is an annual celebration marked around the world on 16 June, in honour of the day in 1904 when Leopold Bloom wandered the streets of Dublin in Joyce’s novel. But with fans prevented from walking in Bloom’s footsteps through the Irish capital on the anniversary, breakfasting out a la Bloom on “the inner organs of beasts and fowls”, or attending packed pub readings of Ulysses, they are instead turning to virtual celebrations, from Buenos Aires to Oslo. Artists, authors and readers are also coming together to mark the day in Athens, putting on theatrical events in Brazil and France, and hosting virtual readings in Toronto. An occasion of “subversive joy” is promised from actors and musicians in Lisbon, and in the US, late show host Stephen Colbert is kicking off a virtual Bloomsday on Broadway with a reading of Telemachus, with actors including Brian Cox, Fiona Shaw and Claire Danes joining in a day of music and readings. “It’s gone from Doomsday to Zoomsday,” said Darina Gallagher, who took over as interim manager of the James Joyce Centre in Dublin just before lockdown, and initially assumed that Bloomsday would have to take a year off in 2020. “We thought we’d have to cancel everything. We absolutely couldn’t encourage people to meet up, so how could we do this? And then there was just a kind of interesting momentum, and I guess a responsibility, that Bloomsday would happen anyway, that you’d dress up in your Edwardian garb and be at home and celebrate it in your own way.” With lockdown remaining strict in Ireland, the James Joyce Centre will be marking Bloom’s famous breakfast – “He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine” – with live performances and songs. The centre is also advising those staying home to “get into the Bloomsday spirit” by dressing as one of the characters. Bloom’s wife Molly spends the day in bed, so the centre recommends “a floor-length nightie with long sleeves in white or a pastel colour” and carrying a pear and tarot cards as props, while man about town Blazes Boylan “turns female heads in a straw boater, sky-blue bow tie and a red flower in his buttonhole”. There will be a Bloomsday hat workshop, where viewers can learn to make their own boaters to match Blazes Boylan’s, as well as other online readings, lectures, children’s activity books, maps, recipes, fashion tips, poetry, theatre and music tied to the day. And artists who were originally set to appear at a live event will instead take part in a live digital event broadcast on YouTube at 7pm, including author Colum McCann – who has said that “the book that I return to, when I return to Ireland, is always Ulysses” – and actors Aidan Gillen and Caitriona Balfe, who will read and sing extracts from Ulysses. And Sweny’s pharmacy on Dublin’s Lincoln Place, which Bloom visits to buy a bar of lemon soap for himself and some face cream for Molly, is celebrating with a Zoom reading of the whole novel, which will end at around 10pm on Tuesday. RTÉ will broadcast a 30-hour dramatisation of Ulysses, beginning when Bloom begins his peregrination through Dublin at 8am and ending at 1.45pm on 17 June. “This mad book that’s nearly 100 years old, that’s complicated and difficult and challenging, is somehow resonating, we’re finding things in it that have meaning now,” said Gallagher. “People are finding something in Molly, her feminism, in Bloom’s awkwardness and isolation, his own exile in his mind, even in Joyce’s longing for home when he’s off in Paris or Trieste.” Although lockdown is preventing the usual celebrations, Gallagher says that she believes more people will be taking part in Bloomsday than usual. “Absolutely there are more people,” she said. “You can be at work and take a few minutes and join a Ulysses reading group. It’s really democratising in a way. You’re not in isolation in Montreal doing your own little Bloomsday festival – if you live in Canada or Ireland or France you can all share the celebration. I don’t think there’s any going back – people are saying: ‘Please make your Zoomsday an annual thing.’ This is not just a Dublin celebration, this is a wonderful global event. It’s ridiculous really, that everyone dresses up and eats gorgonzola sandwiches, goes to the same places, sings the songs – we wanted to capture that online.”