Pen name Eithne Strong Nationality Irish | Occupation Poet, Writer | |
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Died 1999, Monkstown, County Dublin, Republic of Ireland | ||
Eithne Strong (née O'Connell, 1923–1999) was a bilingual Irish poet and writer who wrote in both Irish and English. She was a founder of Runa Press, noted for the publication in 1943 of Marrowbone Lane by Robert Collis which depicts the fierce fighting that took place during the Easter Rising of 1916.
Life and work
Strong was born in Glensharrold, Co. Limerick to school teachers, John and Kathleen(Lennon) O'Connell. She went to the Irish speaking school Scoil Muiris in Ennis. Strong moved to Dublin but was not able to afford college at the time. She worked in the Civil Service for a year.
She met her husband while in Dublin. Psychoanalyst Rupert Strong was twelve years her senior and though against the wishes of her family she stayed there and married him on November 12, 1943. She founded Runa Press, a small poetry press and worked there. They had nine children the last of whom required full-time care due to a mental handicap.
She went to college in Trinity College, Dublin in her forties where she got a B.A in 1973. She was encouraged and admired in her poetry by Brendan Kennelly, Padraic Colum, Hilton Edwards and Kevin Casey. She taught creative writing and did lecture tours in the USA.
Author and poet Mary O'Donnell in her forward-essay to Strong's poems suggested that “ diversity of thought and impulse makes these poems radiate humanity, belief and a revelatory sense of justice.” The editor of Poethead Wordpress, Christine Elizabeth Murray has linked the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, Padraic Colum and Eithne Strong, describing their work " as an example of the triumph of art and literature providing an amazing root-system for new writers in terms of earthly estate, land and language".
In 1991 she won the Kilkenny Design Award for Flesh – The Greatest Sin. She was a member of Aosdána. She died in Monkstown, Dublin in 1999.
The Dún Laoghaire Annual Arts Festival awards the Rupert & Eithne Strong Poetry Prize. On International Women's Day 2000, an event was held to commemorate the life and work of Eithne Strong at the Irish Writer's Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin and a room was named in her honour in 2012.
http://irishwriterscentre.ie/collections/our-venue-your-event