Ó Direáin, Máirtín

Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, The, January, 2000 by ROBERT WELCH

Ó Direáin, Máirtín (1910–1988), poet; born in the Irish-speaking community of Inishmore, Aran Islands, and educated locally. He left the island in 1928 to work in the Post Office in Galway city, and there became involved in Irish-language theatre through the Gaelic League .

He transferred to the Civil Service in Dublin in 1938 and began to write poems, publishing two collections, Coinnle Geala (1942) and Dánta Aniar (1943), at his own expense. Rogha Dánta (1949) is a landmark in modern poetry in Irish, while Ó Morna agus Dánta Eile (1957) established him as a poet with a powerful and distinctive voice. Ó Direáin's work advances from nostalgic recollections of life in Aran to a later exploration of an...

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