Taking the word "fearann", meaning "land" or "territory", as his rule, Greagoir O Duill, has reclaimed and replanted 100 years of Irish poetry. He has produced a huge tome of over 400 pages which covers all of the last century. The editor writes that he opted to include "a wide range of poems so that the reader can make his own choice".
This pick-and-mix approach - while seemingly generous - is problematic; for while O Duill is as good as his word, there is a real sense of how lacking poetry in Irish was until the publication of Mairtin O Direain's first collection, Coinnle Geala, in 1942. That lack is mirrored in this compilation. The first 40 pages or so read almost like footnotes. The reader is confronted with people who wrote the odd poem, but were not poets as such. Patrick Pearse and Douglas Hyde both get a look in - and while others featured, Tomas O Flannghaile, Una Ni Fhaircheallaigh and Aine Ni Fhoghlu, for example, may be recognisable to students of literary history, the work itself is not significant. Indeed, the inclusion of Seamus O Grianna's An Oiche Areir is astounding. O Grianna was a Donegal writer of some very luscious prose, but cannot by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as being central to the development of poetry.
It is after 40 pages that the reader finally meets O Direain. Only then does one get an idea of the power and passion of good, well-crafted, intelligent poetry. The shadow that O Direain casts - John the Baptist of 20th century poetry - obscures almost all who went before him. Similarly, the emergence of Sean O Riordain, Maire Mhac an tSaoi and Eoghan O Tuairisc swamps many who wrote in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond. That said, there were other strong voices and they are to be heard here. The work of Pearse Hutchinson and Sean O Tuama is well covered, and rightly so; both are fine artists, though not fashionable.
Modern poets of the Innti generation - Michael Davitt, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Liam O Muirthile, Gabriel Rosenstock, are here, as are other fine contemporaries - Biddy Jenkinson, Colm Breathnach, Cathal O Searcaigh and Louis de Paor - and give the reader a taste of current developments. Nonetheless, there is a sense that the compiler's generosity has padded the book out to the detriment of narrative. By including work by, say, Gearoid Stockman, one of a number here who has never produced a full collection or substantial body of work, O Duill fulfils his editorial promise while simultaneously damaging his enterprise.
The many individual poems and little pairings water down the book rather than making it more potent. Part-time poems from part-time poets - and being a poet isn't a question of professional payment; it's a question of attitude and application. Too much of the work included here shows little attitude or application.
A braver editor would have made difficult decisions and sculpted a story from the past century. Trying to satisfy everyone (and few living poets have been left out), might help the sales and make for an easy life, but there is a disappointing lack of critical overview, no sense at all that, well, there are poor poets in Irish and, yes, yes, yes, leave them out.
If to be anthologised is to mean anything it should be that the work is of good standard. I confess to a certain amount of confusion in this regard - I'm there with four poems. Should I be pleased? Surprisingly, O Duill has included eight poems of his own. Given that O Direain gets 11, O Riordain 15 and Mhac an tSaoi 10, it is a significant number. Is it permissible for a compiler to use the opportunity of such a volume to showcase his own work to this extent?
No.
Pol O Muiri is Irish Language editor of The Irish Times. His most recent collection of poetry, Is Mise Ismeael, has just been published by Lagan Press