Chapter 13 - Crisis and Renewal: Irish-Language Poetry in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Summary

Modern women poets writing in the Irish language occupy a unique place, historically, between the vibrancy of the Irish folk tradition and the frequently encountered sense that they are lonely workers in a dying language. Their place in the canon of modern Irish poetry thus differs subtly from that of writers in English, but their contribution to the tradition has nevertheless been central. In mid-century, Máire Mhac an tSaoi writes poems of startling modernity and outspokenness at a time of proverbial cultural conservatism, belying conventional identifications of the language with patriarchy and puritanism. The emergence of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Biddy Jenkinson in the 1980s marked another dramatic moment. In a satirical poem, Jenkinson inverts the conventions of the aisling and speaks from the position of the female apparition, or embodiment of the nation. In both Jenkinson’s and Ní Dhomhnaill’s work what was static comes unexpectedly to life, bristling with submerged, unruly energy. Their contemporary successors, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Aifric Mac Aodha, have ensured that women remain in the forefront of the contemporary tradition.