Studies in Irish Gaelic Poetry

In these critical studies of modern and contemporary Irish-language poetry, literary critic and translator Frank Sewell explores the work of Máirtín Ó Direáin, Seán Ó Ríordáin, and Gabriel Rosenstock, and also selects and freshly translates ten poems by Cathal Ó Searcaigh. Chapter one focuses mostly on Ó Direáin’s poems after Ár Ré Dhearóil (1962), which have been comparatively neglected, and examines pointedly recurring images and themes in the Aran poet’s later work. Turning to Ó Ríordáin, chapter two provides a useful introduction to the poet’s oeuvre and identifies his seven main themes. Next, taking Rosenstock’s poem ‘Mussolini ag dul ar Neamh’ [‘Mussolini going to Heaven’] as an example of why poetry matters in itself and in (what Seamus Heaney calls) our ‘human chain’, chapter three examines this apparently minor poem in relation to the poet’s work as a whole, to comparable works by others, and to Heaney’s concept of the possible ‘redress of poetry’. Finally, Donegal poet Ó Searcaigh is here represented not with a critical essay but with a new selection of ten of his poems accompanied by fresh translations which have never before been gathered in one publication.