Name Sean Tuama Role Poet | Awards American Book Awards | |
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Books An Duanaire Sixteen Hundred to Nineteen Hundred, Repossessions: Selected Essays on the Irish Literary Heritage | ||
Seán Ó Tuama (1926, Cork, Ireland – September 2006) was an Irish poet, playwright and academic.
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Life
Raised in the southern city of Cork and educated at the North Monastery (North Mon) school and University College Cork, Ó Tuama first came to prominence in 1950 with his anthology of modern Irish language poetry titled Nuabhéarsaíocht 1939-1949.
Notable academic works include An Grá in Amhráin na nDaoine, an analysis of medieval and Renaissance European influences on Irish song, which is credited as being a source for inspiration for poets including Liam Ó Muirthile and Gabriel Rosenstock. The anthology An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed, a collection of poems in the Irish language dating from the 16th to 19th centuries selected by Ó Tuama and accompanied by translations of the poems into English by Thomas Kinsella, was published in 1981.
Ó Tuama was the Professor of Irish Literature at University College Cork, and visiting professor at Harvard, Oxford and Toronto University. He was also chairman of Bord na Gaeilge for a time. and a member of the Arts Council of Ireland.