Tributes paid to poet, critic and broadcaster Pearse Hutchinson

TRIBUTES HAVE been paid to poet, broadcaster and critic Pearse Hutchinson who died in Dublin on Saturday aged 84.

During a long career, he published several volumes of poetry, was a frequent broadcaster on RTÉ radio, wrote an Irish language column for the RTÉ Guideand was also a contributor to The Irish Timesand other publications. He was a member of Aosdána.

Poet Macdara Woods, who knew Hutchinson for 50 years, said he “had the storyteller’s magic in his poems, his translations, in the fascinating, idiosyncratic and multilingual notes to the poems and, most wonderfully, in conversation”.

Academic and poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin said he was a poet of great seriousness and integrity.

“His poetry is not preoccupied with the literary, but it explores all the resonances and realities of words and languages,” she said.

Broadcaster, poet and dramatist Vincent Woods, presenter of the Arts Tonightprogramme on RTÉ Radio 1, described Hutchinson as "a hugely gifted poet and a remarkable inspirational presence in Irish literature and in life".

Dr Philip Coleman of Trinity College Dublin said from the beginning of his writing career, and long before, his work “was marked by a profound generosity of interest in and engagement with the art of poetry in English, Irish and over a dozen other languages”.

Hutchinson, who lived in Rathgar, Dublin, was born in Glasgow, to which his grandparents had emigrated from Dublin and Donegal. The family moved to Dublin when he was aged five, and he attended Synge Street CBS and UCD.

His poems were first published in The Bellin 1945. He later visited Spain, which marked the beginning of a long love affair with the country – where he lived intermittently – and its poets. He also worked in Geneva as a translator.

In the early 1950s he became interested in Irish language poetry, having been influenced by writers such as Piaras Feirtéar. His first Irish language poems were published in Comhar. His first collection of poems in English, Tongue Without Hands,was published in 1963. In the early 1970s he took up the Gregory fellowship in poetry at the University of Leeds.

The high point of his broadcasting career was his weekly RTÉ Radio 1 programme of Irish poetry, music and folklore, Óró Domhnaigh, which ran from 1977 to 1978.

Collected Poemswas published in 2002 to mark his 75th birthday, followed a year later by Done Into English, which featured many of the works he had translated over the years.