Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh
It seemed appropriate today to share a list of some of my favorite Irish writers.
My love for Seamus Heaney’s poetry is no secret. Today, I’d like to specifically mention his translation of the medieval Irish poem Buile Suibhne, Sweeney Astray. King Sweeney was cursed into madness and birdform, and this is the story of his subsequent wanderings. It’s a beautiful, haunting, rich work.
I grew up in a family that sang all the rebel songs, so it’s perhaps no surprise that my first introduction to W.B. Yeats was his political poetry. But rather than linking to “Easter, 1916” I’m going to link to “Sailing to Byzantium.” I can’t read the poem without getting chills at the glory of the third stanza.
For me, Eavan Boland is one of the great poets of Ireland as place. She writes with an honesty of emotion and all its complexity, resisting the ease of sentimentality. Here is the title poem from her collection, The Lost Land.
Poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s prose debut, A Ghost in the Throat, is the story of a poem, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. It’s also the story of Ní Ghríofa’s relationship with that poem and its translation, with history, with motherhood. It is an astounding, gorgeous firework of a book.
My favorite mystery writer is Tana French. She does excellent work with character and voice, and isn’t afraid to leave questions unanswered and things unsettled. Start with her terrific debut, In the Woods.
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