Seán Ó Ríordáin

Life

He was born in Baile Mhúirne, County Cork, the eldest of three children of Seán Ó Ríordáin of Baile Mhúirne and Mairéad Ní Loineacháin of Cúil Ealta.

English was his first language. His mother spoke English; his father spoke Irish and English. His father's mother, a native Irish speaker, lived next door. His next-door neighbour on the other side also spoke Irish. It wasn't long before Ó Ríordáin gained some knowledge of Irish.

Seán was only ten when his father died of tuberculosis. Five years later, the family moved to Inniscarra, on the outskirts of Cork city. After settling there, Seán and his brother Tadhg were sent to school in the North Monastery Christian Brothers School, on Cork's northside. When he was a young man he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He lived to the age of sixty and was constantly in poor health.

Poet

Ó Ríordáin published four books: Eireaball Spideoige [A Robin's Tail] (Sáirséal Ó Marcaigh 1952, 1986), a volume of some hundred pages, and three subsequent booklets, Brosna [Kindling] (Sáirséal agus Dill 1964), Línte Liombó [Limbo Lines] (Sáirséal agus Dill 1971), and the posthumous Tar éis mo Bháis [After my Death] (Sáirséal agus Dill, 1978) .

The title of his first collection is borrowed from the first line of the final verse of Ó Ríordáin's more celebrated poem. A new frisson was created in Irish language poetry when this poem, Adhlacadh Mo Mháthar (My Mother's Burial), was first published in 1945. It celebrates the innocence, devoutness, and motherliness of the poet's dead mother.

Interpretation

Ó Ríordáin delineates his personal aesthetic and theology in the preface to his first collection of poetry, Eireaball Spideoige (A Robin’s Tail) (1952), in which he highlights the relationship between artistic expression, poetry in particular, and being. He argues that poetry is to be under the aspect of another and without that relationship one can only ever produce a prosaic narrative. In that same preface, Ó Ríordáin considers an appropriation of an infant's mind as a prerequisite for the poetic act. The poem An Peaca (The Sin) reveals that Ó Ríordáin's ability to write poetry is at once lost if his immediate relation to nature is interrupted.

Ó Ríordáin has been described as a European poet. The clash between traditional Irish and contemporary European influences was one of the most consistent conflicts in his work. As with all 'modernisers' of tradition, Ó Ríordáin received considerable opprobrium from traditionalists, most notably Máire Mhac an tSaoi. These attacks, particularly by Mhac an tSaoi on the standard of his Irish, did considerable damage to Seán's confidence and added to his already ill health. He never forgave Mhac an tSaoi. In a 1970 'Writer in Profile' television interview with Ó Ríordáin, Mhac an tSaoi phoned the station to say that she 'had never heard better Irish spoken than that by Seán Ó Ríordáin tonight'. Ó Ríordáin's response, as recorded by his biographer Seán Ó Coileáin: 'my bowels moved in disdain'.

As well as writing poetry, he wrote a column in The Irish Times during the latter years of his life in which he spoke vehemently about national affairs. A number of his poems have appeared in English translation, for example, Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (ed. Patrick Crotty).

Popular Poems

Ó Ríordáin's poems have enjoyed constant popularity, due in part to the exposure gained by the inclusion of his work in the standard Irish curriculum. Poems such as Fill Arís and Tost are widely known and Fill Arís was short-listed in the Favourite Irish Poems comptetions run by RTÉ in 2015. "Toil" is a contemplation on the limitations of human will.