"HE gave them their heads"; that is how poet Theo Dorgan describes fellow poet Sean O Tuama's relationship with the circle of young poets who published in the influential journal, Innti, 20 years ago. Sean O Tuama, teaching in the Department of Modern Irish, writing poetry and criticism, provided them a whet stone which produced magnificent sparks.
Some of the Innti generation are represented in the line up of poets who will read at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin tomorrow night in celebration of Sean O Tuama's 70th birthday. Omos don Tuamach will feature Gabriel Rosenstock, Liam O Muirthile, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Michael Davitt, joined by the magnificent sean nos singers, Iarla O Lionaird and Padraig O Cearbhaill.
Dorgan witnessed the Innti phenomenon, but did not do Irish at UCC and so did not benefit directly from O Tuama's brave new vision: "O Tuama was so different", he says. "Even the Irish being taught at that time in schools was backward and reactionary, and was not linked in any way with everyday life. He wasn't uncritical, either, however, he didn't think something was good just because it was new, which was the thinking at the time."
O Tuama's own poetry has been highly influential, as has his anthology of Irish poetry, An Duanaire, published in collaboration with Thomas Kinsella. His play Gunna Cam Agus Slabhra Oir which showed the breaking of the Gaelic Order through "surrender and regrant" has been the Leaving Certificate study of a generation, and his recent collection of critical essays, Repossessions, published by Cork University Press, is testimony to an endlessly questioning intellect.
"O Tuama has been, more than anyone else, the guardian of the tradition," concludes Dorgan.