In past years, we’ve written about the legend of St. Patrick, the food of Ireland, Irish beers and famous Irish writers. This year, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to recognize a few of the great poets of Ireland. This is no small task because some of the world’s best poets happen to be Irish. The ten poets selected are excellent and in no particular order, but let me apologize if I’ve missed any of your favorite Irish poets.
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1938)
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”
Yeats was born at Sandymount in County Dublin, Ireland. He was interested in poetry from an early age and fascinated by Irish folklore and the occult. Yeats wrote his first poems in high school, but decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and go to art school. Yeats's early poetry was influenced by Irish myth and folklore. His later work dealt with contemporary issues. In his middle period, Yeats attempted social irony. Though he was a modernist, Yeats did not favor free verse and his style remained traditional. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His major works include “Byzantium,” “Adam’s Curse,” “A Drinking Song,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” “He and She,” “The Peacock,” “Under Ben Bulben,” “When You are Old,” and “To Ireland in the Coming Times.”
George William Russell (1867 – 1935)
“After the spiritual powers, there is no thing in the world more unconquerable than the spirit of nationality. The spirit of nationality in Ireland will persist even though the mightiest of material powers be its neighbor.”
Russell used the pseudonym Æ. He was an Irish writer, poet, editor, critic, painter and Irish nationalist.
His work is part of the Irish Literary Revival. His poems are known for their deeply spiritual nature, mystical tone and delicate melodious style.
He supported the talents of young writers such as James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh and Frank O’Connor and introduced them to other Irish literary figures, including William Butler Yeats. He designed the Starry Plough which was the flag for the Irish Citizen Army flown during the Easter Rising.
Russell regularly held Sunday evening gatherings his home at 17 Rathgar Avenue in Dublin for writers, artists and other creatives interested in the economic and artistic future of Ireland. During his lifetime, Russell published 17 poetry collections, two novels and numerous essays. Some of his best known poems include: “The Silence of Love,” “Om,” “Janus,” “The Master Singer,” “And Day by Day,” and “Naught We Knew.”
Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (1821 – 1896)
“Human nature is a mystic duality, half animal, half angel; a worm, a God; and the contrast and strife between the two natures is never so marked as in the gifted.”
Lady Wilde was an Irish poet and accomplished literary translator. Her pen name "Speranza," is the Italian word for hope. She was a feminist and a supporter of the nationalist movement. In addition to poetry, Lady Wilde had a special interest in Irish folktales; she and her husband collected them in an effort to preserve their place in Irish literature.
Lady Wilde hosted salons in Dublin and later in London which were frequented by noted literary giants of her time. Her son, Oscar Wilde, often attended these gatherings. Many of her poems were published in The Nation – the journal of Young Ireland, a revolutionary movement for Irish independence from England.
Her poems, “The Famine Year,” “the Voice of the Poor,’ “The Enigma” and “A Supplication,” protest the injustices of food grown in Ireland being exported to England during the potato famine of the 1840s while millions of Irish people starved.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
Wilde was born in Dublin. He is best known as a poet and a playwright. Wilde was a spokesman for aestheticism, a late 19th-century European arts movement which contended that all art exists for the sake of its beauty alone; it does not have to serve a political, didactic, or other purpose.
Wilde who was married with two children became embroiled in a scandal in London with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde sued the Marquess for libel, but during the trial it was revealed that Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas were having a sexual relationship. Charges were dismissed against the Marquess and Wilde was arrested. After being acquitted, he was later convicted of indecency and received the mandatory sentence of two years of hard labor in prison. He died penniless at the age of 46.
His best known poem is “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” which was written during his time in prison. Though he drew from his own impressions of prison, Wilde wrote the poem about a soldier who was being executed for murdering his wife. It contains the famous line, “Each man kills the thing he loves.” Other notable poems by Wilde include “The Sphinx,” “The Garden of Eros,” “Her Voice,” “My Voice,” “Requiescat,” and “Endymion.”
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”
Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. Though he received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, Heaney is considered one of the principal contributors to poetry during his lifetime. In interviews, Heaney credited his decision to write poetry to finding a copy of Ted Hughes's Lupercal, while a student at Queens University Belfast.
Upon learning of Heaney’s death, former President Bill Clinton commented, “His uniquely Irish gift for language made him our finest poet of the rhythms of ordinary lives and a powerful voice for peace...His wonderful work, like that of his fellow Irish Nobel Prize winners Shaw, Yeats, and Beckett, will be a lasting gift for all the world.”
Some of Heaney’s most notable poems are “Personal Helicon,” “Digging,” “Blackberry-Picking,” “Borland,” and “Requiem for the Croppies.”
Patrick Kavanagh (1904 – 1967)
“In the country places of Ireland, writing is held in certain awe: a writer was a dangerous man from whom they instinctively recoiled.”
Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. He used everyday and commonplace occurrences to depict Irish life. Though his work was initially panned by critics for its realistic depiction of Irish lives without the romanticism of the period, Kavanagh’s poems gradually gained favor for their honesty and intensity. His poems influenced the work of Seamus Heaney.
Kavanagh struggled with depression and failing health. He started drinking heavily before he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1954. Following treatment, Kavanagh got his life and career in order and began writing some of his best work. He married his long-term companion Katherine Barry Moloney in 1967, shortly before his death.
Some of his best-known poems include "On Raglan Road," "The Great Hunger," “Epic,” “April Dusk,” and “Canal Bank Walk.”
Eavan Boland (1944)
“Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.”
Boland is an Irish poet, author, and professor. She is currently a professor at Stanford University in the United States. Her work deals with the Irish national identity and the role of women in Irish history.
She is one of the few women considered to be among the best Irish Poets. She has published 35 poetry collections, and is still writing. Boland draws on her experiences as a wife and mother to explore everyday life in contrast to bigger themes such as politics and history.
Some of her best known poems include “And Soul,” “The Lost Land,” “Becoming Ann Bradstreet,” “Domestic Violence,” “Irish Interior,” and “The War Horse.”
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
“The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
Beckett was an Irish poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, theater director, and literary translator. He spent considerable time in Paris and was greatly influenced by Dante, Rene Descartes, and James Joyce. He wrote in both English and French. Beckett found success was as a playwright. His works contain elements of dark humor and are considered as part of the “Theater of the Absurd,” a term coined by Martin Esslin which referred to Albert Camus’ concept of the absurd.
Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
Poems by Beckett include “Ascension,” “Untitled,” and “Cascando.”
James Joyce (1882 – 1941)
“Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”
Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland into a middle class family. He excelled at school and studied English, French and Italian at University College Dublin. Though he spent most of his adult life abroad, Joyce's fictional universe centers on Dublin. His characters closely resemble family members, friends and enemies from Dublin.
Joyce, who was better known as a novelist, was a lyric poet and based some of his poems on songs. In turn, several of his poems have been set to music by Irish composer Geoffrey Moyneux Palmer, American composers, Ross Lee Finney and Samuel Barber, English singer/songwriter Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, and the American rock band, Sonic Youth. Despite his poetic success, Joyce stopped writing poetry in 1932.
Some of his best known poems are “A Flower Given to my Daughter,” “Alone,” “Lightly Come or Lightly Go,” “In the Dark Pine – Wood,” and “Love Came to Us.”
Thomas Kinsella (1928)
“It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; (from “Mirror in February”)
Kinsella is an Irish poet, translator, editor, and publisher. His early poems were influenced by W. H. Auden and reflect a more urban landscape with questions of romantic love which differed significantly from the mainstream of 1950’s/60’s Irish poetry.
In the 70’s, Kinsella’s poems were influenced by American modernism and the poetry of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Robert Lowell.
Some of Kinsella’s best known poems include “Another September,” “Mirror in February,” Butcher’s Dozen,” “The Good Fight,” “Wormwood,” and “First Light.”
Photo of Seamus Heaney:
Flickr user Sean O'Connor / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Photo of Eavan Boland: wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eavan_Boland_in_1996.jpg#/media/File:Eavan_Boland_in_1996.jpg
Photo of Thomas Kinsella by Bryan O’Brien used with no intention of copyright infringement