Homecoming: Selected Poems: An Bealach 'na Bhaile

by Cathal Ó Searcaigh

Cathal O Searcaigh is one of Ireland's foremost Gaelic poets. This extensive selection of his poems in a dual language edition should bring him the wider audience his work deserves. These distinguished translations, lovingly rendered into English by twelve leading Irish writers, are testimony to the sensuous appeal and the enduring beauty of the originals.

Genres: Poetry, Irish Literature

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Cathal Ó Searcaigh (born 12 July 1956) is an Irish poet who writes in the Irish language (specifically the Ulster dialect).

Ó Searcaigh was born in Gort a' Choirce, a town in the Gaeltacht region of Donegal, and lives at the foot of Mount Errigal. He is openly gay.

Ó Searcaigh was awarded the Seán Ó Riordáin Prize for Poetry in 1993 and the Duais Bhord na Gaeilge in 1995. He is a member of Aosdána and in 2006 won The American Ireland Fund Literary Award.

Reviews

[Eoghan Rua · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry to say that this kind of literature cannot be endorsed and questions about the authors personal life aside (some of it of questionable legality), contains subject matter in the actual poems which is completely alien to Gaelic culture and does not elevate the reader.

While you could argue that this isn't anything new in Irish literature, where the poet is expressing contradictions of having a foot in both worlds; the Gaelic world and the urbanite cosmopolitan world moulded by the Anglos and the French, Ó Ríordáin and Ó Direáin did this better without being consumed by the swamp themselves.

Irish literature, including Ó Searcaigh's poems, has in my opinion taken a wrong turn since the 1970s with the Innti poets. What is the point in reading Irish literature, if the authors are writing the same stuff as the all too familiar post-1950s American, British and French equivelents? This is mind colonisation. Irish literature should not only be in the Irish language but it should be a representation of the Gaelic mind.

The only way I could recommend this book in any way is for a non-native speaker trying to learn a Donegal centered dialect of Irish.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 5 out of 5]

This powerful collection translated from the Irish (which is shown on opposing pages) is a gravelly thick-textured tongue of particulars flecked with loneliness and deceitfulness and desire. In many ways it is marine: the rasp of an irish knit worn against the skin on a pebbled beach; the cry and lament like ocean birds on a lonely strand; a relentlessness like crashing of ocean waves.

After travels in the us and U.K., the poet has made a commitment not only to the Irish language, but to place that inheres in the coarse, smoky throats of these poems. He shows genuine love in his home language and geography, but there's nothing smooth or silky; the poems are guttural and wind-whipped and frostbit and like skin pink and scorched by sitting too close to the fire.

But deep within the language and geography is also a gay man longing not for an imaginary partner but for the curls and brown eyes of a particular man who's not sure he wants his name spoken: "Mouth pressed firmly to mouth, The salmon of knowledge —your tongue —Tonight will swim in me."

Though the poems with overt gay themes are few, they are the collection's beating heart, as in the poem "Lust:"

You bar boy, you —yes, any time, Your glowing heart is mine. When you speak flames flicker and glow, passionate poetry in your eyes of sloe. Your laughter smoulders, is bright surf is blue flame from dry turf. You ignite me with your gaze, lust encompasses all my days. Take me, take me to your bed. Who needs Nefertiti? She's dead!

[Dan Bain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible collection of Ó Searcaigh's poetry. Not only is the Irish modern, but it's sprinkled with English jargon to show how the bilingual Irish mind works. Even for the English monoglot, Ó Searcaigh's poetry connects on an intimate level of human pathos, that is conveyed by the translations provided by great poets such as Seamus Heaney. Ó Searcaigh's collection is a must for anyone in Irish or Celtic studies.

[CAG_1337 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mediocre poetry at best; I really don't understand the reputation he has received. There are such better Irish poets to read (Seán Ó Ríordáin's early work, for example) that one needn't waste time on Ó Searcaigh's attempts.

Cathal Ó Searcaigh has also been disgraced by scandal in recent years. It is hard to not read his work with that in mind (it colors the meaning of several poems).