Editor Michael Davitt Frequency Sporadic Country Ireland | Categories Irish poetry First issue 1970 Based in County Cork | |
Innti was an Irish language poetry movement, associated with a journal of the same name founded in 1970 by Michael Davitt, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Gabriel Rosenstock, Louis de Paor and Liam Ó Muirthile. These writers were students of University College Cork, drawing inspiration from Seán Ó Ríordáin and Seán Ó Riada, as well as American influences such as the Beat movement and counterculture. Their reception was mixed, with Gaelic-traditionalists resenting their urbanism, social liberalism and Anglo-American influences.
Background
Some prominent Gaelic poets in the generation prior to Innti were associated with the journal Comhar. Among these, who were of relevance to Innti were Seán Ó Ríordáin and the author of Nuabhéarsaíocht, Seán Ó Tuama. These writers were both from the County Cork area and Ó Ríordáin especially introduced European-styles into Irish-language poetry and themes of modern urban life. Ó Tuama held seminars on Irish poetry at University College Cork where Innti was founded in 1970.
Aside from these local Irish influences, Innti was also influenced by the American-led counterculture of the 1960s which spread throughout the Western World. Among these foreign (principally Anglophone American) influences were Beat poets such as Alan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac. Innti marked a counterpoint to the traditional Irish nationalist ideal of the Gaeltacht as a somewhat austere, rural Catholic bastion of Irish-Ireland, counter-posed to "English decadence" supposedly present in the cities. The Sexual Revolution, questioning of authority, a more cosmopolitan writing of Gaelicness and the arrival of pop music were innovations in Gaelic from Innti.
The eclecticism of Innti, drawing from non-Gaelic sources, also allowed for Oriental-influences, such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Japanese haiku poetry, to feature alongside Anglophone and French modernist ones such as E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Charles Baudelaire. This post-Christian environment even led to some, such as Rosenstock, exploring deeper Indo-European connections between Buddhism and pre-Christian Gaelic culture.