4.2 Cúirt An Mheán Óiche

Cúirt An Mheán Óiche (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 Óiche, 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 Óiche is a unique document in the history of Irish poetry in either language.

4.3 Swift and Goldsmith

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.

5 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.

5.1 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 Irish Melodies, his most enduring work, 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 associates 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.

5.2 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 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.

5.3 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 destined to have much influence on the future course of Irish writing.

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.

6 The 20th century

6.1 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.

6.2 The 1916 poets

Another group of early 20th century Irish poets worth noting are those associates with the Easter Rising of 1916. Three of the Republican leadership, Patrick 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.

6.3 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.

6.4 Irish Modernism

6.5 Poetry in De Valera's Ireland

6.6 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 Gum, 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.

6.7 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), 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.

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.

These poets share a formal conservativeness and a willingness to engage with the difficult political situation in Northern Ireland.

6.8 Experiment

6.9 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.

6.10 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.

7 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 / An Chomhairle Ealaíon 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 an M.A. course in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin. The possible implications of these developments for the future of poetry in Ireland remain to be seen.

In contrast, contemporary poet Pat Ingoldsby makes a living exclusively from the sale of his books, both through bookshops, and on the streets of Dublin and Galway.

8 References

• Early poetry in Irish and English
• Swift
• Cuirt an Mheán Oíche
• Goldsmith poems
• More Goldsmith poems
• Mangan
• Moore
• Ferguson
• Wilde
• The Arts Council
• Poetry Ireland
• General biographical information

9 See also

• Irish literature
• Irish fiction
• Irish theatre
• List of Irish poets
• List of national poetries