Micheal O'Siadhail ( ga, Mícheál Ó Siadhail ; born 12 January 1947) is an Irish poet. Among his awards are The Marten Toonder Prize and The Irish American Culture Institute Prize for Literature.

Early life

Micheal O'Siadhail was born into a middle-class

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

family. His father, a chartered accountant, was born in

County Monaghan County Monaghan ( ; ga, Contae Mhuineacháin) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Ulster and is part of Border strategic planning area of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Monaghan. Monaghan County Cou ...

and worked most of his life in Dublin, and his mother was a Dubliner with roots in

County Tipperary County Tipperary ( ga, Contae Thiobraid Árann) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. The county is named after the town of Tipperary, and was established in the early 13th century, shortly after th ...

. Both of them are portrayed in his work in several poems such as "Kinsmen" and "Promise". From the age of twelve, O'Siadhail was educated at the Jesuit boarding school

Clongowes Wood College Clongowes Wood College SJ is a voluntary boarding school for boys near Clane, County Kildare, Ireland, founded by the Jesuits in 1814, which features prominently in James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Yo ...

, an experience he was later to describe in a sequence of poems "Departure" (''The Chosen Garden''). At Clongowes he was influenced by his English teacher, the writer Tom McIntyre, who introduced him to contemporary poetry. At thirteen he first visited the

Aran Islands The Aran Islands ( ; gle, Oileáin Árann, ) or The Arans (''na hÁrainneacha'' ) are a group of three islands at the mouth of Galway Bay, off the west coast of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, with a total area around . They constitute the histo ...

. This pre-industrial society with its large-scale emigration had a profound impact on him. His earlier work reflects this tension between his love of his native Dublin and his emotional involvement with those outlying communities and which features in the sequence "Fists of Stone" (''The Chosen Garden'').

Career

Micheal O'Siadhail studied at

Trinity College Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

(1964–68) where his teachers included

David H. Greene David Herbert Greene (November 4, 1913 – July 9, 2008) was an author and professor at Harvard University, Boston University, The College of New Rochelle, the U.S. Naval Academy and New York University, where he was chairman of the English ...

and

Máirtín Ó Cadhain Máirtín Ó Cadhain (; 1906 – 18 October 1970) was one of the most prominent Irish language writers of the twentieth century. Perhaps best known for his 1949 novel ''Cré na Cille'', Ó Cadhain played a key role in reintroducing literary mod ...

. He was elected a Scholar of the College and took a First Class Honours Degree. His circle in Trinity included David McConnell (later professor of genetics),

Mary Robinson Mary Therese Winifred Robinson ( ga, Máire Mhic Róibín; ; born 21 May 1944) is an Irish politician who was the 7th president of Ireland, serving from December 1990 to September 1997, the first woman to hold this office. Prior to her electi ...

and

David F. Ford David Frank Ford (born 23 January 1948) is an Anglican public theologian. He was the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, beginning in 1991. He is now an Emeritus Regius Professor of Divinity. His research interests incl ...

(later Regius Professor of Divinity at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

). O'Siadhail subsequently embarked on a government exchange scholarship and studied folklore and Icelandic at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

. He has retained lifelong contacts with Norwegian friends and sees

Scandinavian literature Scandinavian literature or Nordic literature is the literature in the languages of the Nordic countries of Northern Europe. The Nordic countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway (including Svalbard), Sweden, and Scandinavia's assoc ...

as a major influence. In 1970 he married Bríd Ní Chearbhaill, who was born in

Gweedore Gweedore ( ; officially known by its Irish language name, ) is an Irish-speaking district and parish located on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of County Donegal in the north-west of Ireland. Gweedore stretches some from Glasserchoo in the ...

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ga, Contae Dhún na nGall) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Donegal in the south of the county. It has also been known as County Tyrconne ...

. She was for most of her life a teacher and later headmistress in an inner-city Dublin primary school until her retirement in 1995 due to

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

. She has been a central figure in O'Siadhail's oeuvre, celebrated in the sequence "Rerooting" in ''The Chosen Garden'' and in ''Love Life'', which is a meditation on their lifelong relationship. ''One Crimson Thread'' travels with the progression of Bríd's Parkinson's Disease. Bríd died on 17 June 2013. For seventeen years, O'Siadhail earned his living as an academic; firstly as a lecturer at Trinity College (1969–73) where he was awarded an MLitt in 1971, and then as a research professor at the

Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) ( ga, Institiúid Ard-Léinn Bhaile Átha Cliath) is a statutory independent research institute in Ireland. It was established in 1940 on the initiative of the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, in Dub ...

. During these years he gave named lectures in Dublin and at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and was a visiting professor at the

University of Iceland The University of Iceland ( is, Háskóli Íslands ) is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' s ...

in 1982. In 1987 he resigned his professorship to devote himself to writing poetry which he described as "a quantum leap". He served as a member of the Arts Council of the Republic of Ireland (1987–93), of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Relations (1989–97), and was editor of ''

Poetry Ireland Review ''Poetry Ireland Review'' is a journal of Irish poetry published three times a year by Poetry Ireland, the national Irish poetry organisation. ''Poetry Ireland Review'' publishes the work of both emerging and established Irish and internationa ...

''. He was the founding chairman of ILE (Ireland Literature Exchange). As a founder member of

Aosdána Aosdána ( , ; from , 'people of the arts') is an Irish association of artists. It was created in 1981 on the initiative of a group of writers with support from the country's Arts Council. Membership, which is by invitation from current member ...

(Academy of Distinguished Irish Artists) he is part of a circle of artists and has worked with his friend, the composer

Seóirse Bodley Seóirse Bodley (first name pronounced ; born 4 April 1933) is an Irish composer and former associate professor of music at University College Dublin (UCD). He was the first composer to become a Saoi of Aosdána, in 2008. Bodley is widely regarde ...

, the painters Cecil King and Mick O'Dea, and in 2008 he gave a reading as part of

Brian Friel Brian Patrick Friel (c. 9 January 1929 – 2 October 2015) was an Irish dramatist, short story writer and founder of the Field Day Theatre Company. He had been considered one of the greatest living English-language dramatists. (subscription req ...

's eightieth birthday celebration. He represented Ireland at the

Poetry Society The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry". The society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society ...

's European Poetry Festival in London in 1981 and at the

Frankfurt Book Fair The Frankfurt Book Fair (German: Frankfurter Buchmesse, FBM) is the world's largest trade fair for books, based on the number of publishing companies represented. It is considered to be the most important book fair in the world for internationa ...

in 1997. He was writer-in-residence at the

Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

Summer School in 1991 and writer-in-residence at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

in 2002. He is now married to Christina Weltz, who is a native of New York, and assistant professor of surgical oncology at Mount Sinai. They reside in New York. In 2018, Micheal was included in ''The Tablet'' magazine's ′Fifty Minds That Matter′ – fifty men and women who are ″adding some Catholic salt to the contemporary cultural soup″. Included on this list is Pope Francis, Martin Scorsese and Bruce Springsteen. During his years as an academic, O'Siadhail, writing under the Irish spelling of his name, published works on the

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

of Irish and a textbook for learners of Irish.

Content and context

David F. Ford points out in ''Musics of Belonging'' (Carysfort Press, Dublin 2007) how "beside the new architectonics since the move to full-time writing there has also been an alternation between more personal and more public themes". Ford lists the characteristic themes in O'Siadhail's work which emerge from early on as: "despair, women, love, friendship, trust, language, school, vocation, music city life, science, Irish and other cultures and histories". He adds that "there is a wrestling for meaning, with no easy solutions – both the form and the content are hard-won". Several critics have highlighted how O'Siadhail uses a vast variety of classic forms including

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

s, ''

terza rima ''Terza rima'' (, also , ; ) is a rhyming verse form, in which the poem, or each poem-section, consists of tercets (three line stanzas) with an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: The last word of the second line in one tercet provides the rh ...

'',

villanelle A villanelle, also known as villanesque,Kastner 1903 p. 279 is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet rep ...

haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...

s etc. alongside an array of new intricate forms as befits his themes. His work has been compared by some commentators to

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...

and

Patrick Kavanagh Patrick Kavanagh (21 October 1904 – 30 November 1967) was an Irish poet and novelist. His best-known works include the novel ''Tarry Flynn'', and the poems "On Raglan Road" and "The Great Hunger". He is known for his accounts of Irish life th ...

but most often to

John Donne John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...

. Recent criticism has drawn attention to the depth and range of his intellectual engagements. Mary O'Donnell traced the influence of the philosopher

Emmanuel Levinas Emmanuel Levinas (; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to me ...

in ''A Fragile City'' and the academic and critic Eugene O'Brien, editor of ''The Irish Book Review'', described his work as "that rare combination of the intellectual and the emotional".

Development

The trajectory in O'Siadhail's work first moves beyond the sense of despair which haunted his youth, through the collections of once-off poems into the architectonics of his larger thematic books. In 1978, O'Siadhail published his first poetry collection ''The Leap Year'' (originally written in Irish), which was a meditation on healing and nature set against an urban background. This was followed in 1980 by ''Rungs of Time'' (originally in Irish) which in an almost Edda-like style announced many of the characteristic themes that would dominate his work; and in 1982 ''Belonging'' (the last of this trio originally written in Irish) emphasised, by its title, relationships as a major theme. There were two more collections which contain a few of his best known poems, ''Springnight'' in 1983 and ''The Image Wheel'' in 1985, before he went full-time and began a series of books based on broad themes. ''The Chosen Garden'', which appeared in 1990, he himself described as "an effort to face my own journey, to comprehend and trace one's own tiny epic". In 1992 he published ''Hail! Madam Jazz: New and Selected Poems'' which includes the new sequence ''The Middle Voice''. In 1995 came ''A Fragile City'', which is a meditation in four parts on the theme of trust. ''Our Double Time'', published three years later in 1998, explores the liberation of facing human finitude in a way that allows a greater intensity of living. Then in 2002 ''The Gossamer Wall'' was published. It evokes the Holocaust from its origins to its aftermath in a book-length sequence of stark intensity and was shortlisted for the

Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize The Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize is an annual British literary prize inaugurated in 1977. It is named after the host ''Jewish Quarterly'' and the prize's founder Harold Hyam Wingate. The award recognises Jewish and non-Jewish writers r ...

. In ''Love Life'' in 2005, O'Siadhail reflects on and rejoices in a long marriage. This was followed in 2007 by ''Globe'', which ponders the dynamics of history in a fast-changing world, its tragedies and achievements as well as its potential.

Bibliography

Books

;Poetry *1978: ''The Leap Year''/''An Bhliain Bhisigh'' (An Clóchomar, Dublin ) *1980: ''Rungs of Time''/''Runga'' (An Clóchomhar, Dublin ) *1982: ''Belonging''/''Cumann'' (An Clóchomhar, Dublin) *1985: ''Springnight'' (Bluett, Dublin) *1990: ''The Image Wheel'' (Bluett, Dublin) *1990: ''The Chosen Garden'' (Dedalus, Dublin) *1992: ''Hail! Madam Jazz : New and Selected Poems'' including ''The Middle Voice'' (Bloodaxe, Newcastle upon Tyne) *1995: ''A Fragile City'' (Bloodaxe, Newcastle upon Tyne 1995) *1998: ''Our Double Time'' (Bloodaxe, Newcastle, upon Tyne) *1999: ''Poems 1975–1995'' (Bloodaxe, Newcastle upon Tyne) *2002: ''The Gossamer Wall'' (Time Being Books (North American publisher) and Bloodaxe, Tarset) *2005: ''Love Life'' (Bloodaxe, Tarset) *2007: ''Globe'' (Bloodaxe, Tarset) *2010: ''Tongues'' (Bloodaxe, Tarset) *2014: ''Collected Poems'' (Bloodaxe, Tarset) *2015: ''One Crimson Thread'' (Bloodaxe, Tarset; Baylor University Press in US) *2018
''The Five Quintets''
(Baylor University Press, US) ;Linguistics and language pedagogy *1978: ''Téarmaí tógálá agus tís as Inis Meáin'' (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) *1983: (with Arndt Wigger) ''Córas Fuaimeanna na Gaeilge'' (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) *1988: ''Learning Irish'' (Yale University Press) *1989: ''Modern Irish: Grammatical Structure and Dialectal Variation'' (Cambridge University Press)

Limited editions

*1989 ''Four Poems'' (with artist Cecil King) Editions Monica Beck

About O'Siadhail and his work

*2007:
The Musics of Belonging: The Poetry of Micheal O'Siadhail
' Ed. Marc Caball and David F. Ford, Carysfort Press, Dublin *2008:
A Hazardous Melody of Being: Seóirse Bodley's Song Cycles on the Poems of Micheal O'Siadhail
' Edited by Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Carysfort Press, Dublin *2009:
An Unexpected Light: Theology and Witness in the Poetry and Though of Charles Williams, Micheal O'Siadhail and Geoffrey Hill
', David C. Mahan, Pickwick Publications Eugene

Works set to music

*1987: ''The Naked Flame'', poem suite (music: Seóirse Bodley) RTÉ commissioned for performance and broadcasting *1993: ''Summerfest'' poem suite (Music: Colman Pearce) RTÉ commissioned for performance and broadcasting *2000: ''Earlsfort Suite'' song cycle (Music: Seóirse Bodley) commissioned for Irish Government Department of Arts, the Gaeltacht, Heritage and the Islands as part of the Millennium Frozen Music celebration *2000: ''A Fall'' set by Dan Tucker, commissioned by the Chicago Humanities Festival, *2002: ''Dublin Spring'', poem suite (music: James Wilson) commissioned for performance. *2006: ''Twee gedichten van Micheal O'Siadhail'' for Choir 2006 by Kees van Ersel *2007: ''Squall'' set by Seóirse Bodley

Discography

*''The Naked Flame'', poem suite (music: Seóirse Bodley) recorded by Aylish E. Kerrigan accompanied on piano by the composer Seóirse Bodley and available from ''Ein Klang'', Christophestaße, Stuttgart 70178 *''Cosmos'' from ''Hail! Madam Jazz'' recorded by Helen Shapiro on Jazz Poetry ABM

References

External links

Personal homepage

Page at Bloodaxe Books

Page at Timebeing

Page at Aosdána
{{DEFAULTSORT:Osiadhail, Micheal Academics of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Irish poets 1947 births Living people People educated at Clongowes Wood College Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Scholars of Trinity College Dublin 21st-century Irish poets