23/11/2023 – Clíona Ní Ríordáin: “The Hybrid Music of Contemporary Irish Poetry”

Professor Cliona Ní Ríordáin (University of Notre Dame, USA) is a specialist of translation studies as well as Irish poetry, focusing on works written both in the English and the Irish language. Her presentation, entitled ‘The Hybrid Music of Contemporary Irish Poetry’ explored the variety within the Irish literary tradition, mainly due to the plurality of languages, whether Latin, Irish or English. An emphasis was made on the fact that until very recently, the only poets who were praised and analysed were mostly white men and solely English speakers. Cliona Ní Ríordáin argued that a change has occurred in the contemporary literary landscape, notably through a recent recognition of multilinguism in Irish poetry. Her presentation mainly focused on 5 Irish poets: Doireann Ni Ghríofa, Paddy Bushe, Louis de Paor, Michael Davitt and Maurice Riordan. 

Doireann Ni Ghríofa (1981-) is part of the new generation of Irish female poets, highlighting a gender shift in the landscape of contemporary Irish poetry. Like many poets of this ‘new generation’ she had an Irish-medium school education, also known as ‘gaelscoil’, which enabled her to acquire fluency and confidence in a country still highly marked by the history of colonialism. Her poem “A Jaw Ajar” was inspired by a poem by Sean O’Riordan. Ni Ghríofa’s poem raises the question of the relation of Irish people with their languages. When reflecting on the polysemy of the languages (Irish and English) in the poem, Clíona Ní Riordáin drew on what Jacque Lacan said about languages in La Langue: ‘Et ce qu’on sait faire avec lalangue dépasse de beaucoup ce dont on peut se rendre compte au titre du langage.’

The coinciding use of Irish and English is also explored in Paddy Bushe’s (1948-) poems, especially in his collection Double Vision, in which he translated into Irish some of the poems he formerly published in the English language. Bushe has reflected on the choice of the language in his poems and put forth the fact that different contexts call for different languages, concluding that ‘perhaps it would be better to admit that the writer doesn’t choose the language, but the language chooses and incites the writer sooner or later.’ 

Louis de Paor and Michael Davitt, on the other hand, wrote poems collections solely in Irish. De Paor (1961-) works first in the Irish language and didn’t allow for a translated version of his work to be published until the 1990s. However, he doesn’t translate his own work and agrees for translated publications under the condition that they appear in bilingual collections. Michael Davitt (1950-2005) was a major actor in this new generation of Irish poets. Regarded as the Bob Dylan of poetry, his poems were rooted in musicality, and innovation within Irish poetry. As de Paor highlighted in the preface of Michael Davitt’s Freacnairc Mhearcair / The Oomph of Quicksilver, Rogha Dánta,1970-1998: Selected Poems, his work intertwined notions of modernity and traditions, tying in Diarmuid Ó Giolláin’s regarding Irish folklore: ‘[…] capitalism, imperialism and the widening and deepening of the state were reformulated again and again, as primitive and civilised, as periphery and centre, as underdeveloped and developed. As such the only possible future seemed to be the absorption of the traditional by the modern.’ (D. O Giollain, “Rethinking (Irish) Folklore in the Twenty-first Century”, Béaloideas, 2013, Iml. 81 (2013), pp. 37-52)

Maurice Riordan, the last poet analysed by Clíona Ní Riordáin wrote poetry in English but included Irish lexicon in his work. The question of nature, domestic life and rural Ireland were a reoccurring theme in his poetry, notably in the collections The Finest Music and The Water Stealer. These works feature instances of translanguism, as did previously mentioned poets: the play on the languages and the polysemy whether in the meaning, oral or aural sense allow the poets to play with their bilingualism and insert subtextual meaning to their text. Maurice Riordan was especially wary of translating the Irish words in his poetry. He refused to translate them so as to give readers solely fluent in English a taste of what is a lost altogether with language loss. The Irish language being deeply rooted in folklore and connected with the Irish landscapes, some nuances and definitions are impossible to translate into English and the loss of the Irish language is a direct impact of British colonialism, hence the refusal to translate some of the terms. 

This generation of Irish poets chose to give a political dimension to their work, as the choice of the Irish language, is, in itself, political. The decline of the Irish language has been gradual over the centuries, despite numerous attempts at reviving the language over time, English remains the most spoken language in the country, while fluency in Irish is only achieved by a minority of Irish citizens. Therefore, by publishing works solely in Irish or in bilingual editions, these poets are countering an English hegemony. The new generation of Irish poets amongst who Doireann Ni Ghríofa is part of, contribute to yet another shift in Irish poetry, and with this spreading of contemporary works in the Irish language, touching on present-day subject, emerges a new readership in Ireland.

A recording of the conference is available here: https://nextcloud.univ-lille.fr/index.php/s/NofpHjLGtqGkrHA

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