   #copyright

Irish poetry

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Poetry & Opera

   A 1907 engraving of William Butler Yeats, one of Ireland's best-known
   poets.
   Enlarge
   A 1907 engraving of William Butler Yeats, one of Ireland's best-known
   poets.

   The history of Irish poetry includes the poetries of two languages, one
   in Irish and the other in English. The complex interplay between these
   two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English,
   has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult
   to categorise.

   The earliest surviving poems in Irish date back to the 6th century and
   the first known poems in English from Ireland date from the 14th
   century. Although some cross-fertilization between the two language
   traditions has always happened, the final emergence of an
   English-language poetry that had absorbed themes and models from Irish
   did not appear until the 19th century. This culminated in the work of
   the poets of the Celtic Revival at the end of the 19th and beginning of
   the 20th century.

   Towards the last quarter of the century, modern Irish poetry has tended
   to a wide range of diversity, from the poets of the Northern school to
   writers influenced by the modernist tradition and those facing the new
   questions posed by an increasingly urban and cosmopolitan society.

Early Irish poetry

   Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe. The
   earliest examples date from the 6th century, and are generally short
   lyrics on themes from religion or the world of nature. They were
   frequently written by their scribe authors in the margins of the
   illuminated manuscripts that they were copying. Another source of early
   Irish poetry is the poems in the tales and sagas, such as the Táin Bó
   Cúailnge. Unlike many other European epic cycles, the Irish sagas were
   written in prose, with verse interpolations at moments of heightened
   tension or emotion. Although usually surviving in recensions dating
   from the later medieval period, these sagas and especially the poetic
   sections, are linguistically archaic, and afford the reader a glimpse
   of prechristian Ireland.

Medieval/Early modern

Bardic poetry

   Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained,
   learned poets. The bards were steeped in the history and traditions of
   clan and country, as well as in the technical requirements of a verse
   technique that was syllabic and used assonance, half rhyme and
   alliteration. As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they
   performed a number of official roles. They were chroniclers and
   satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who
   crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire, glam
   dicin, could raise boils on the face of its target. However, much of
   their work would not strike the modern reader as being poetry at all,
   consisting as it does of extended genealogies and almost journalistic
   accounts of the deeds of their lords and ancestors.

Metrical Dindshenchus

   The Metrical Dindshenchas, or Lore of Places, is probably the major
   surviving monument of Irish bardic verse. It is a great onomastic
   anthology of naming legends of significant places in the Irish
   landscape and comprises about 176 poems in total. The earliest of these
   date from the 11th century, and were probably originally compiled on a
   provincial basis. As a national compilation, the Metrical Dindshenchas
   has come down to us in two different recensions. Knowledge of the real
   or putative history of local places formed an important part of the
   education of the elite in ancient Ireland, so the Dindshenchas was
   probably a kind of textbook in origin.

The poems of Fionn

   Verse tales of Fionn and the Fianna, sometimes known as Ossianic
   poetry, were extremely common in Ireland and Scotland throughout this
   period. They represent a move from earlier prose tales with verse
   interludes to stories told completely in verse. There is also a notable
   shift in tone, with the Fionn poems being much closer to the Romance
   tradition as opposed to the epic nature of the sagas. The Fionn poems
   form one of the key Celtic sources for the Arthurian legends.

The Kildare poems

   British Library Manuscript, Harley 913, is a group of poems written in
   Ireland in the early 14th century. They are usually jumped the Kildare
   poems because of their association with that county. Both poems and
   manuscript have strong Franciscan associations and are full of ideas
   from the wider Western European Christian tradition. They also
   represent the early stages of the second tradition of Irish poetry,
   that of poetry in the English language, as they were written in Middle
   English.

Spenser and Ireland

   Briton Rivière's vision of a scene from Edmund Spencer's poem The
   Faerie Queene
   Enlarge
   Briton Rivière's vision of a scene from Edmund Spencer's poem The
   Faerie Queene

   During the Elizabethan reconquest, two of the most significant English
   poets of the time saw service in the Irish colonies. Sir Walter Raleigh
   had little impact on the course of Irish literature, but the time spent
   in Munster by Edmund Spenser was to have serious consequences both for
   his own writings and for the future course of cultural development in
   Ireland. Spenser's relationship with Ireland was somewhat ambiguous. On
   the one hand, an idealised Munster landscape forms the backdrop for
   much of the action for his masterpiece, The Faerie Queen. On the other,
   he condemned Ireland and everything Irish as barbaric in his prose
   polemic A View of the Present State of Ireland.

   In A View, he describes the Irish bards as being,

     "soe far from instructinge younge men in Morrall discipline, that
     they themselves doe more deserve to be sharplie decyplined; for they
     seldome use to chuse unto themselves the doinges of good men, for
     the ornamentes of theire poems, but whomesoever they finde to bee
     most lycentious of lief, most bolde and lawles in his doinges, most
     daungerous and desperate in all partes of disobedience and
     rebellious disposicon, him they sett up and glorifie in their rymes,
     him they prayse to the people, and to younge men make an example to
     followe."

   Given that the bards depended on aristocratic support to survive, and
   that this power and patronage was shifting towards the new English
   rulers, this thorough condemnation of their moral values may well have
   contributed to their demise as a caste.

Gaelic poetry in the 17th century

   The Battle of Kinsale in 1601 saw the defeat of Hugh O'Neill, despite
   his alliance with the Spanish, and the ultimate victory in the
   Elizabethan conquest of Ireland came with his surrender to crown
   authority in 1603. In consequence, the system of education and
   patronage that underpinned the professional bardic schools came under
   pressure, and the hereditary poets eventually engaged in a spat - the
   Contention of the bards - that marked the end of their ancient
   influence. During the early 17th century a new Gaelic poetry took root,
   one that sought inspiration in the margins of a dispossessed
   Irish-speaking society.

   Although some 17th century poets continued to enjoy a degree of
   patronage, many, if not most, of them were part-time writers who also
   worked on the land, as teachers, and anywhere that they could earn
   their keep. Their poetry also changed, with a move away from the
   syllabic verse of the schools to accentual metres, reflecting the oral
   poetry of the bardic period. A good deal of the poetry of this period
   deals with political and historical themes that reflect the poets'
   sense of a world lost.

   The poets adapted to the new English dominated order in several ways.
   Some of them continued to find patronage among the Gaelic Irish and Old
   English aristocracy. Some of the English landowners settled in Ireland
   after the Plantations of Ireland also patronised Irish poets, for
   instance George Carew and Roger Boyle. Other members of hereditary
   bardic families sent their sons to the new Irish Colleges that had been
   set up in Catholic Europe for the education of Irish Catholics, who
   were not permitted to found schools or Universities at home. Much of
   the Irish poetry of the seventeenth century was therefore composed by
   Catholic clerics and Irish society fell increasingly under Counter
   reformation influences.

   By mid century, the subordination of the native Catholic upper classes
   in Ireland boiled over in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Many Irish
   language poets wrote highly politicised poetry in support of the Irish
   Catholics organised in Confederate Ireland. For instance, the cleric
   poet Padraigin Haceid wrote, Eirigh mo Duiche le Dia ("Arise my Country
   with God") in support of the rebellion, which advised that

   Cathifidh fir Éireann uile
   o haicme go haonduine...
   gliec na timcheall no tuitim

   ("All Irishmen from one person to all people must unite or fall")

   Another of Haceid's poems Moscail do mhisneach a Banbha ("Gather your
   courage oh Ireland") in 1647 encouraged the Irish Catholic war effort
   in the Irish Confederate Wars. It expressed the opinion that Catholics
   should not tolerate Protestantism in Ireland,,

   Creideamh Chriost le creideamh Luiteir...
   ladgadh gris i sneachta sud

   (The religion of Christ with the religion of Luther is like ashes in
   the snow")

   Following the defeat of the Irish Catholics in the Cromwellian conquest
   of Ireland 1649-53, and the destruction of the old Irish landed
   classes, many poets wrote mourning the fallen order or lamenting the
   destruction and repression of the Cromwellian conquest. The anonymous
   poem an Siogai Romanach went,

   Ag so an cogadh do chriochnaigh Eire
   s do chuir na milte ag iarri dearca...
   Do rith plaig is gorta in aonacht

   ("This was the war that finished Ireland and put thousands begging,
   plague and famine ran together")

   Another poem by Eamonn an Duna is a strange mixture of Irish and
   English,

   Le execution bhios suil an cheidir
   costas buinte na chuine ag an ndeanach
   (The first thing a man expects is execution, the last that costs be
   awarded against him [in court]")
   Transport transplant, mo mheabhair ar Bhearla
   ("Transport transplant, is what I remember of English")
   A tory, hack him, hang him, a rebel,
   a rogue, a thief a priest, a papist

   After this period, the poets lost most of their patrons and protectors.
   In the subequent Williamite war in Ireland Catholic Jacobites tried to
   recover their position by supporting James II. Daibhi O Bruadair wrote
   many poems in praise of the Jacobite war effort and in particular of
   his hero, Patrick Sarsfield. The poets viewed the war as revenge
   against the Protestant settlers who had come to dominate Ireland, as
   the following poem extract makes clear,

   "You Popish rogue", ni leomhaid a labhairt sinn
   acht "Cromwellian dog" is focal faire againn
   no " cia sud thall" go teann gan eagla
   "Mise Tadhg" geadh teinn an t-agallamh

   ("You Popish rogue" is not spoken, but "Cromwellian dog" is our
   watchword, "Who goes there" does not provoke fear, "I am Tadhg" [an
   Irishman] is the answer given") From Diarmuid Mac Cairthaigh, Cead
   buidhe re Dia ("A hundred victories with God").

   The Jacobite's defeat in the War, and in particular James II's
   ignomiinous flight after the Battle of the Boyne, gave rise to the
   following derisive verse,

   Seamus an chaca, a chaill Éireann,
   lena leathbhrog ghallda is a leathbhrof Ghaelach

   ("James the shit has lost Ireland, with his one shoe English and one
   shoe Irish")

   The main poets of this period include Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (David O
   Bruadair) (1625?–1698), Piaras Feiritéar (1600?–1653) and Aogán Ó
   Rathaille (1675–1729). Ó Rathaille belongs as much to the 18th as the
   17th century and his work, including the introduction of the aisling
   genre, marks something of a transition to a post Battle of the Boyne
   Ireland.

The 18th century

   The 18th Century perhaps marks the point at which the two language
   traditions reach equal weight of importance. In Swift, the English
   tradition has its first writer of genius. Poetry in Irish now reflects
   the passing of the old Gaelic order and the patronage on which the
   poets depended for their livelihoods. This, then, is a period of
   transition writ large.

Gaelic songs: the end of an order

   As the old native aristocracy suffered military and political defeat
   and, in many cases, exile, the world order that had supported the
   bardic poets disappeared. In these circumstances, it is hardly
   surprising that much Irish language poetry and song of this period
   laments these changes and the poet's plight. The following verse from
   Caoine Cill Chais (The Lament for Kilcash) serves as an example. The
   old house of Cill Chais stands empty, its woods gone to serve the needs
   of the British navy:

   Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad,
   tá deireadh na gcoillte ar lár;
   níl trácht ar Chill Chais ná a teaghlach,
   is ní bainfear a cling go bráth;
   an áit úd ina gcónaíodh an deighbhean
   a fuair gradam is meidhir tar mhná,
   bhíodh iarlaí ag tarraing tar toinn ann,
   is an tAifreann binn á rá.

   (What shall we do from now on without timber?
   The last of the woods is gone.
   No more of Kilcash and its great house
   And the bells that will ring no more.
   The place where that great lady waited
   Who for grace put all women to shame
   When earls came by sea to meet her
   And the Mass was sweetly proclaimed)

   However, being practical professionals, the poets were not above
   writing poems in praise of the new English lords in the hope of finding
   a continuity of court patronage. This was not generally a successful
   tactic, and Gaelic poets tended to be folk poets until the Gaelic
   revival that began towards the end of the 19th century. However, many
   of the poems and songs written during this period of apparent decline
   live on and are still recited and sung today.

Cúirt An Mheán Oíche

   Cúirt An Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court) by Brian Merriman (1747–1805)
   is something of an oddity in 18th century Irish poetry in Irish.
   Merriman was a teacher of mathematics who lived and worked in the
   Munster counties of Clare and Limerick. Cúirt An Mheán Oíche,
   effectively his only poetic work, was written around 1780. The poem
   begins by using the conventions of the Aisling, or vision poem, in
   which the poet is out walking when he has a vision of a woman from the
   other world. Typically, this woman is Ireland and the poem will lament
   her lot and/or call on her 'sons' to rebel against foreign tyranny.

   In Merriman's hands, the convention is made to take an unusual twist.
   The woman drags the poet to the court of the fairy queen Aoibheal.
   There follows a court case in which a young woman calls on Aoibheal to
   take action against the young men of Ireland for their refusal to
   marry. She is answered by an old man who first laments the infidelity
   of his own young wife and the dissolute lifestyles of young women in
   general. He then calls on the queen to end the institution of marriage
   completely and to replace it with a system of free love. The young
   woman returns to mock the old man's inability to satisfy his young
   wife's needs and to call for an end to the celibacy among the clergy so
   as to widen the pool of prospective mates.

   Finally, Aoibheal rules that all men must mate by the age of 21, that
   older men who fail to satisfy women must be punished, that sex must be
   applauded, not condemned, and that priests will soon be free to marry.
   To his dismay, the poet discovers that he is to be the first to suffer
   the consequences of this new law, but then awakens to find it was just
   a nightmare. In its frank treatment of sexuality and of clerical
   celibacy, Cúirt An Mheán Oíche is a unique document in the history of
   Irish poetry in either language.

Swift and Goldsmith

   Jonathan Swift
   Enlarge
   Jonathan Swift

   In Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Irish literature in English found its
   first writer of real genius. Although best known for prose works like
   Gulliver's Travels and A Tale of a Tub, Swift was a poet of
   considerable talent. Technically close to his English contemporaries
   Pope and Dryden, Swift's poetry evinces the same tone savage satire and
   horror of the human body and its functions that characterises much of
   his prose. Interestingly, Swift also published translations of poems
   from the Irish.
   Oliver Goldsmith
   Enlarge
   Oliver Goldsmith

   Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774) started his literary career as a hack
   writer in London, writing on any subject that would pay enough to keep
   his creditors at bay. He came to belong to the circle of Samuel
   Johnson, Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds. His reputation depends
   mainly on a novel, The Vicar of Wakefield, a play, She Stoops to
   Conquer, and two long poems, The Traveller and The Deserted Village.
   The last of these may be the first and best poem by an Irish poet in
   the English pastoral tradition. It has been variously interpreted as a
   lament for the death of Irish village life under British rule and a
   protest at the effects of agricultural reform on the English rural
   landscape.

The 19th century

   During the course of the 19th century, political and economic factors
   resulted in the decline of the Irish language and the concurrent rise
   of English as the main language of Ireland. This fact is reflected in
   the poetry of the period.

Irishing English

   Paradoxically, as soon as English became the dominant language of Irish
   poetry, the poets began to mine the Irish-language heritage as a source
   of themes and techniques. Probably the first significant Irish poet to
   write in English in a recognisably Irish fashion was Thomas Moore
   (1779–1852). Moore's most enduring work, Irish Melodies, was extremely
   popular with English audiences and the poet became the toast of London.
   The poems are, perhaps, somewhat overloaded with harps, bards and
   minstrels of Erin to suit modern tastes, but they did open up the
   possibility of a distinctive Irish English-language poetic tradition
   and served as an exemplar for Irish poets to come.

   In 1842, Charles Gavan Duffy (1816–1903), Thomas Davis, (1814–1845),
   and John Dillon (1816–1866) founded The Nation to agitate for reform of
   British rule. The group of politicians and writers associated with The
   Nation came to be known as the Young Irelanders. The magazine published
   verse, including work by Duffy and Davis, whose A Nation Once Again is
   still popular among Irish Nationalists. However, the most significant
   poet associated with The Nation was undoubtedly James Clarence Mangan
   (1803–1849). Mangan was a true poète maudit, who threw himself into the
   role of bard, and even included translations of bardic poems in his
   publications.

   Another poet who supported the Young Irelanders, although not directly
   connected with them, was Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886). Ferguson once
   wrote: 'my ambition (is) to raise the native elements of Irish history
   to a dignified level.' To this end, he wrote many verse retellings of
   the Old Irish sagas. He also wrote a moving elegy to Thomas Davis.

   William Allingham (1824–1889) was an important figure in the
   Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Day and Night Songs was illustrated by
   Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Millais.

Folk songs and poems

   During the 19th century, poetry in Irish became essentially a folk art.
   One of the few well-known figures from this period was Antoine Ó
   Raifteiri (Anthony Raftery) (1784–1835), who is known as the last of
   the wandering bards. His Mise Raifteiri an file is still learned by
   heart in some Irish schools.

   In addition, this was one of the great periods for the composition of
   folk songs in both languages, and the majority of the traditional
   singer's repertoire is typically made up of 19th century songs.

The Celtic revival

   Probably the most significant poetic movement of the second half of the
   19th century was French Symbolism. This movement inevitably influenced
   Irish writers, not least Oscar Wilde (1845–1900). Although Wilde is
   best known for his plays, fiction, and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, he
   also wrote poetry in a symbolist vein and was the first Irish writer to
   experiment with prose poetry. However, the overtly cosmopolitan Wilde
   was not to have much influence on the future course of Irish writing.

   W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) was much more influential in the long run.
   Yeats, too, was influenced by his French contemporaries but consciously
   focused on an identifiably Irish content. As such, he was responsible
   for the establishment of the literary movement known as the Celtic
   Revival. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

   Apart from Yeats, much of the impetus for the Celtic Revival came from
   the work of scholarly translators who were aiding in the discovery of
   both the ancient sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent folk
   song tradition in Irish. One of the most significant of these was
   Douglas Hyde (1860–1949), later the first President of Ireland, whose
   Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired.

The 20th century

Yeats and modernism

   In the 1910s, Yeats became acquainted with the work of James Joyce, and
   worked closely with Ezra Pound, who served as his personal secretary
   for a time. Through Pound, Yeats also became familiar with the work of
   a range of prominent modernist poets. He undoubtedly learned from these
   contacts, and from his 1916 book Responsibilities and Other Poems
   onwards his work, while not entirely meriting the label modernist,
   became much more hard-edged than it had been.

The 1916 poets

   Another group of early 20th century Irish poets worth noting are those
   associated with the Easter Rising of 1916. Three of the Republican
   leadership, Padraig Pearse (1879–1916), Joseph Mary Plunkett
   (1879–1916) and Thomas MacDonagh (1878–1916), were noted poets.
   Although much of the verse written by them is predictably Catholic and
   Nationalist in outlook, they were competent writers and their work is
   of considerable historical interest. Pearse, in particular, shows the
   influence of his contact with the work of Walt Whitman.

After Yeats: Clarke, Higgins, Colum

   However, it was to be Yeats' earlier Celtic mode that was to be most
   influential. Amongst the most prominent followers of the early Yeats
   were Padric Colum (1881–1972), F. R. Higgins (1896–1941), and Austin
   Clarke (1896–1974). In the 1950s, Clarke, returning to poetry after a
   long absence, turned to a much more personal style and wrote many
   satires on Irish society and religious practices.

Irish Modernism

   In fact, Irish poetic Modernism took its lead not from Yeats but from
   Joyce. The 1930s saw the emergence of a generation of writers who
   engaged in experimental writing as a matter of course. The best known
   of these is Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), who won the Nobel Prize in
   Literature in 1969. Beckett's poetry, while not inconsiderable, is not
   what he is best known for. The most significant of the second
   generation Modernist Irish poets who first published in the 1920s and
   1930s include Brian Coffey (1905–1995), Denis Devlin (1908–1959),
   Thomas MacGreevy (1893–1967), Blanaid Salkeld (1880–1959), and Mary
   Devenport O'Neill (1879–1967). Coffey's two late long poems Advent and
   Death of Hektor. are widely held to be the most important works in the
   canon of Irish poetic Modernism.

Poetry in De Valera's Ireland

   While Yeats and his followers wrote about an essentially aristocratic
   Gaelic Ireland, the reality was that the actual Irish Free State of the
   1930s and 1940s was a society of small farmers and shopkeepers.
   Inevitably, a generation of poets who rebelled against the example of
   Yeats, but who were not Modernist by inclination, emerged from this
   environment. Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967), who came from a small farm,
   wrote about the narrowness and frustrations of rural life. John Hewitt
   (1907–1987), whom many consider to be the founding father of Northern
   Irish poetry, also came from a rural background but lived in Belfast
   and was amongst the first Irish poets to write of the sense of
   alienation that many at this time felt from both their original rural
   and new urban homes. Louis MacNeice (1907–1963), another Northern Irish
   poet, was associated with the left-wing politics of Michael Roberts's
   anthology New Signatures but was much less political a poet than W. H.
   Auden or Stephen Spender, for example. MacNeice's poetry was informed
   by his immediate interests and surroundings and is more social than
   political.

Poetry in Irish

   With the foundation of the Irish Free State it became official
   government policy to promote and protect the Irish language. Although
   not particularly successful, this policy did help bring about a revival
   in Irish-language literature. Specifically, the establishment in 1926
   of An Gúm ("The Project"), a Government sponsored publisher, created an
   outlet both for original works in Irish and for translations into the
   language. Since then, a number of Irish-language poets have come to
   prominence. These include Máirtín Ó Direáin (1910–1988), Seán Ó
   Ríordáin (1916–1977), Máire Mhac an tSaoi (born 1922), Gabriel
   Rosenstock (born 1949), and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (born 1952). While all
   these poets are influenced by the Irish poetic tradition, they have
   also shown the ability to assimilate influences from poetries in other
   languages.

The Northern School

   The Northern Irish poets have already been mentioned in connection with
   John Hewitt. In the 1960s, and coincident with the rise of the Troubles
   in the province, a number of Ulster poets began to receive critical and
   public notice. Prominent amongst these were Michael Longley (born
   1939), Derek Mahon (born 1941), Seamus Heaney (born 1939), and Paul
   Muldoon (born 1951).

   Heaney is probably the best-known of these poets. He won the Nobel
   Prize in Literature in 1995, and has served as Boylston Professor of
   Rhetoric and Oratory and Emerson Poet in Residence at Harvard, and as
   Professor of Poetry at Oxford.

   Derek Mahon was born in Belfast and worked as a journalist, editor, and
   screenwriter while publishing his first books. His slim output should
   not obscure the high quality of his work, which is influenced by
   modernist writers such as Samuel Beckett.

   Muldoon has been Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor in the Humanities at
   Princeton University. In 1999 he was also elected Professor of Poetry
   at the University of Oxford.

   Some critics find that these poets share some formal traits (including
   an interest in traditional poetic forms) as well as a willingness to
   engage with the difficult political situation in Northern Ireland.
   Others (such as the Dublin poet Thomas Kinsella) have found the whole
   idea of a Northern school to be more hype than reality.

Experiment

   In the late 1960s, two young Irish poets, Michael Smith (born 1942) and
   Trevor Joyce (born 1947) founded the New Writers Press publishing house
   and a journal called The Lace Curtain. Partly this was to publish their
   own work and that of some like-minded friends, and partly it was to
   promote the work of neglected Irish modernists like Coffey and Devlin.
   Both Joyce and Smith have published considerable bodies of poetry in
   their own right.

   Among the other poets published by the New Writers Press were Geoffrey
   Squires (born 1942), whose early work was influenced by Charles Olson,
   and Augustus Young (born 1943), who admired Pound and who has
   translated older Irish poetry, as well as work from Latin America and
   poems by Bertolt Brecht.

   Younger poets who write what might be called experimental poetry
   include Maurice Scully (born 1952), and Randolph Healy (born 1956).

Outsiders

   In addition to these two loose groupings, a number of prominent Irish
   poets of the second half of the 20th century could be described as
   outsiders. These include Thomas Kinsella (born 1928), whose early work
   was influenced by Auden. Kinsella's later work exhibits the influence
   of Pound in its looser metrical structure and use of imagery but is
   deeply personal in manner and matter. He is Professor of English at
   Temple University, Philadelphia. Kinsella also edited the poetry of
   Austin Clarke, who, in his later work at least, could also be included
   with the outsiders in Irish poetry.

   Michael Hartnett (1941–1999) was unusual amongst Irish poets in that he
   was equally fluent in both Irish and English. As well as original work
   in both languages, including haiku in English, he published
   translations in English of bardic poetry and of the Tao Te Ching.

   Eoghan Ó Tuairisc (Eugene Watters) (1919–1982) was another bilingual
   poet. His The Weekend of Dermot and Grace (1964) is one of the most
   interesting Irish long poems of the second half of the 20th century and
   one of the few examples of the application of the lessons of T. S.
   Eliot's The Waste Land in any work by an Irish poet.

   Patrick Galvin (born 1927) worked mainly with the ballad tradition and
   his poetry displays his left-wing politics. He has also written several
   volumes of memoirs, one of which, Song for a Raggy Boy, has been made
   into a film.

   Cathal Ó Searcaigh (born 1956) writes exclusively in Irish. Many of his
   poems are candidly homoerotic in their subject matter. He has also
   written plays, such as Oíche Ghealaí ("Moonlit Night"), whose
   homosexual content created controversy when it opened in Letterkenny in
   2001.

Women poets

   The second half of the century also saw the emergence of a number of
   women poets of note. Two of the most successful of these are Eavan
   Boland (born 1944) and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (born 1942). Boland has
   written widely on specifically feminist themes and on the difficulties
   faced by women poets in a male-dominated literary world. She is
   professor of English at Stanford University. Ní Chuilleanáin's poetry
   reflects an interest in Celtic spirituality. She is a Fellow of Trinity
   College Dublin.

Irish poetry now

   As can be seen, there has been a tendency for Irish poets to become
   academics and teachers of poetry. In recent years, and thanks partly to
   the activities of the Arts Council and of Poetry Ireland, this tendency
   has widened out to include a network of writers' workshops spread
   around the country with funding provided to employ writers to
   facilitate. These bodies also support and fund poetry readings. In
   addition, most local authorities and many schools, prisons,
   universities, and other institutions employ writers-in-residence.

   These opportunities for employment have tended to lead to the
   professionalisation of poetry in Ireland and this is probably most
   clearly demonstrated by the establishment in recent years of M.A.
   courses in Creative Writing at National University of Ireland, Galway,
   and Trinity College Dublin. The possible implications of these
   developments for the future of poetry in Ireland remain to be seen.

   Among the significant Irish poets to have emerged in recent years are
   Pat Boran, Enda Wyley, Patrick Chapman, Conor O'Callaghan, Vona
   Groarke, Justin Quinn, John Hughes, Sinead Morrissey and Caitriona
   O'Reilly.

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