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Apathy Is Out | Bloodaxe Books
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Seán Ó Ríordáin

Apathy Is Out

Ní Ceadmhach Neamhshuim

Seán Ó Ríordáin

TRANSLATED BY GREG DELANTY

Publication Date : 25 Mar 2021

ISBN: 9781780375366

Pages: 65
Size :216 x 138mm
Rights: World

SELECTED POEMS / ROGHA DÁNTA

Irish-English dual language edition

Seán Ó Ríordáin (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. As he reminds us in this book’s title-poem, ‘Apathy Is Out’:

            There’s not a place, stream or bush,
            however remote; or a flagstone
            north, south, east nor west
            that we shouldn’t consider
            with affection and empathy.
            No matter how far South Africa,
            no matter how distant the moon,
            they’re part of us by right:
            there’s not a single spot anywhere
            we’re not a part of. We issue from everywhere.

 

‘The latest anthology by the Cork poet Greg Delanty, Apathy is Out/ Ní Ceadmhach Neamhshuim, is a rendering into English of much of the poetry of Seán O’Ríordáin and it is also an ambitious attempt to tackle the lack of natural accord between Irish and English...  the work, which has taken years, will introduce O’Ríordáin to a wider audience.’ – Anne Lucey, Irish Examiner

‘Ó Rîordáin’s reputation will I am sure continue to grow through these translations in a renewal that echoes these resonant lines from Footprints (Rian nag Cos): ‘I die with every word,/but I rise with every breath’.’ - David Mark Williams, The Lake [on Apathy Is Out]

 

Mise Seán O Riordáin

In this TG4/BFI documentary, Louis de Paor takes us on a journey to trace the story of Seán Ó Riordáin, the man and the writer. He explores the wealth of his poetry, visit the sources of his inspiration, and talks to other key figures as we try to unearth the real story of the man.

 

Co-published with Cló Iar-Chonnacht

 

Ireland & EU: Click here to order from Books Upstairs in Dublin

USA: Click here to order from Indiebound or Bookshop.org

  

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Related News & Publicity

News & Publicity


Seán Ó Ríordáin's Apathy Is Out featured on The Poetry Programme

Seán Ó Ríordáin's Apathy Is Out featured on The Poetry Programme

Interviews with Greg Delanty about Seán Ó Ríordáin on RTE Radio 1's The Poetry Programme & in The Corkman; reviews in Irish Examiner & The Lake. Louis de Paor...

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