Lines from the soul of the language

POETRY:THE GREAT Irish-language writer Seosamh Mac Grianna noted early in the last century that "literature was the soul of the language".

His observation still holds true in these days of strategic language planning, grants and nauseating language politics. How encouraging it is to see coming to the fore early in this century young poets who still value Mac Grianna’s assertion and who produce literature of and for the soul.

Caitríona Ní Chléirchín, Aifric Mac Aodha, Simon Ó Faoláin and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh are in their mid 20s to early 30s, and all have first collections in print that raise the artistic spirits.

They are university educated and draw from contemporary Irish poets and Old Irish; they are well travelled and, em, well versed in other languages: Ní Chléirchín spent a year in France studying French literature; Ní Ghearbhuigh also studied in France, and a Fulbright scholarship took her to New York; Ó Faoláin, an archaeologist, worked in Wales; and Mac Aodha, a lecturer at UCD, looks to ancient Irish and Greek mythology for inspiration. Two Dubs, a Monaghan native and a Kerry one, all speaking the language of poetry.

Not surprisingly, given their closeness in age, there are thematic similarities – though the enigmatic titles of each collection speak of different approaches.

Ní­ Chléirchín writes in her collection, Crithloinnir(Shimmer, Coiscéim, €7.50), of Cathair Rúnda(A Secret City) in which she and her companion are "deaf to noise, to traffic. / We only hear the wind blowing softly". It is an understated lyric, and one that could be missed by a rushed reading but there is an emotional depth beneath the simplicity of her lines. There is a quiet eroticism in her work as well. That, perhaps, is no surprise, given that she quotes Neruda in this collection and has translated some of his work into Irish in other publications. In Cuimhne (Memory) there is a joyful, lustful caress in "the old memory of my limbs on your body / and your limbs around me" and, so important as a counterbalance, a shadow in "my soul's memory of your love / no matter what else happens".

Love and loss also feature in Aifric Mac Aodha's Gabháil Syrinx(The Capture of Syrinx, An Sagart, €15). Here we find the loss of family explored with some deeply felt meditations on the deaths of a much-loved father and mother. In Réalta(Star) Mac Aodha remembers: "Her father told her that a star fell / From the sky above into an urn / She had arranged on the window ledge. / Even today, she will not take the lid off / In case it might escape her." Once again the language is lucid, clear as water from a well, but carries such an emotional charge that the reader cannot but be moved. It is a theme that Mac Aodha approaches again, full of humanity, in the series of poems Seachtar Dílleachtaí­ (Seven Orphans), in which a bereaved sibling talks to those who share her grief.

The physical abandonment of Scotland's Hiort island provides Simon Ó Faoláin with his title poem and a chance to explore what the loss of residents does to a place, its culture and its wildlife in Anam Mhadra(A Dog's Soul, Coiscéim €7.50).

The loss of community, once permitted, once encouraged, is irreversible; there is no going back. Photographs carry the memory but not the joy and pain of existence. The islanders leave a terrible legacy when they depart: “The deed done, they left forever. / Weeks later the harbour / Was still full of drowned dogs.”

It is heartening too to see Ó Faoláin's wry salute to that great Welsh poet RS Thomas in Ómós agnóisíoch do R.S. Thomas(An agnostic homage to RS Thomas) and his use of humour in another, Coibhneasacht(Relativity), in which a Welsh speaker bemoans the poor state of Irish only for Ó Faoláin to be reminded of a patient on a cancer ward who happily tells one fellow sufferer: "You will only be here for a month or two and I am hoping for three."

Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh is another true voice, and Péacadh(Germination, Coiscéim, €7.50) is an accomplished and imaginative collection. She sees significance in those quiet moments of living that many miss. In Ag Léamh ar an Tram(Reading on the Tram) she "hides / in the concertina of life / in the folds / between two carriages", reading and seeing "jewels in the tarmac".

There is a darkness too to her observations, a recognition of the fragility of human existence and language in her poems such as Maidin Domhnaigh i Rennes(Sunday Morning in Rennes) and Laethanta Lagmhisnigh (Days of Discouragement): "I am sick of being rooted / to the bedside / of this violated language / praying for her recovery / carefully watching her / entreating for her life again".

All in all, four very impressive debuts, and, one hopes, as the creative pulse deepens there will be even better to come.

Pól Ó Muirí is Irish Language Editor of The Irish Times