Apathy Is Out: Selected Poems: Ní ceadmhach neamhshuim: Rogha Dánta [Bilingual Irish-English]

by Seán Ó Ríordáin, Greg Delanty (Translator)

Sean O Riordain (1916-77) was the most important and most influential Irish-language poet of modern times. He revitalised poetry in Irish, combining the world of Irish literature with that of modern English and European literature, thus adding to the Irish tradition from the other side. His poems ‘seek to answer fundamental questions about the nature of human existence and the place of the individual in a universe without meaning’ (Gearóid Denvir).  Many of Ó Ríordáin’s poems came out of his struggle with the isolation, guilt and loneliness of life in mid-century Catholic Ireland experienced in Cork, the native locale also of the poet Greg Delanty, translator of Apathy Is Out . Ó Ríordáin’s poems have been translated by many poets, but until now no single writer has translated the majority of the poems. This collection gives a much more unified sense of Ó Ríordáin’s work, catching the poetry’s verve, playfulness and range and also ‘the music you still hear in Munster,/even in places where it has gone under’. It includes the dark, sorrowful poems Ó Ríordáin has usually represented with in anthologies but also poems of exuberance and celebration, notably ‘Tulyar’, one of the funniest satirical critiques of the Irish Church’s attitude to sex which matches any similar attack by Patrick Kavanagh or Austin Clarke. Seán Ó Ríordáin renewed poetry in Irish by writing out of the modernist sense of alienation, fragmentation and identity, but he also saw beyond Modernism’s confines to the connective matrix of our world.

176 pages, Paperback

Published May 4, 2021

About the author

Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916–1977) was an Irish language poet during the twentieth century. He completed four volumes of poetry, the last—Tar Éis Mo Bháis—published posthumously. He also wrote powerful opinion pieces for the Irish Times during his later years.

Reviews

[Kelvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been trying to get back into poetry, and into the language half mine, so this book was perfect for me. The translations make the work accessable, yet encouraged me to work on the Irish side as well.

The translations are great, but I thoroughly enjoyed Ó Ríordáin's habit of creating words, and the music in his verse. Wonderful poetry, wonderful translations.

[Tiarnán · Rating 5 out of 5]

Níl gealt i ngleann na ngealt,
Nár chuí dhúinn suí lena ais,
Á thionlacan an fhaid
A iompraíonn thar ár gceann,
Ár dtinneas-ne ’na mheabhair.

[Caitríona O' · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the selection to show a very broad range of Ó Ríordáin's poetry and I appreciated the diversity in theme. The translations were accessible and enjoyable in themselves. A worthy read for any poetry fan.