Crooked Love / Grá fiar: Grá fiar

By Louis de Paor

Louis de Paor is one of Ireland's leading Irish-language poets, and was a key figure in the Irish language poetry renaissance of the 1980s and 90s. His dual-language selection The Brindled Cat and the Nightingale’s Tongue was published in 2014, following his selected poems, Rogha Dánta (2012), voted one of the top ten collections in Irish since the turn of the millennium. This new dual-language selection is mainly drawn from two other collections, Cúpla Siamach an Ama/The Siamese Twins of Time and Grá fiar/Crooked Love, with translations made by Louis de Paor with Kevin Anderson and Biddy Jenkinson. It shows a paring back of language and a greater flexibility of form in his poetry, as well as a preoccupation with the passage of time and its implications for both familial and sexual love. His narrative skill and inventiveness come together in the sequence 'Lá dá raibh/One day', which follows a day in the life of an imaginary village in the west of Ireland where the living and the dead, the real and the unreal, collide. This was adapted for a dual-language radio feature with music by Dana Lyn broadcast on RTÉ Lyric FM and Raidió na Gaeltachta in 2021, which can be heard while reading the sequence in either language by scanning QR codes printed in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781780375953

Louis de Paor

Louis de Paor was born in 1961 in Cork, and educated at Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh. He is one of Ireland's leading Irish-language poets, and was a key figure in the Irish language literary renaissance of the 1980s and 90s, editing the influential Irish-language journal Innti for a time. He spent time as a lecturer in Irish at University College Cork and Thomond College, Limerick, before moving to Australia in 1987, where he worked in local and ethnic radio in Melbourne and taught evening classes in Irish language and literature at Melbourne University and the Melbourne Council for Adult Education. He was Visiting Professor of Celtic Studies at Sydney University in 1993 and Visiting Fellow in 1992. He returned to Ireland in 1996 and worked as proof editor of the Irish language newspaper Foinse before being appointed Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway in 2000. He was Jefferson Smurfit Distinguished Fellow at the University of St Louis-Missouri in 2002 and received the Charles Fanning medal from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 2009. His most recent dual language editions of his own poetry are Ag greadadh bas sa reilig / Clapping in the cemetery (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2005), agus rud eile de / and another thing (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2010), The Brindled Cat and the Nightingale's Tongue (Bloodaxe Books / Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2014), and Crooked Love / Grá fiar (Bloodaxe Books / Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2022). De Paor has collaborated with the Cork singer John Spillane under the name Gaelic Hit Factory, with uilleann piper Ronan Browne and Brooklyn based composer Dana Lyn. He has also published an anthology of 20th-century poetry in Irish, Coiscéim na haoise seo (1991), co-edited with Seán Ó Tuama; a bilingual edition of the selected poems of Máire Mhac an tSaoi, An paróiste míorúilteach / The miraculous parish (2011); and a critical edition of the selected poems of Liam S. Gógan, Míorúilt an chleite chaoin (2012). His bilingual anthology Leabhar na hAthghabhála / Poems of Repossession was published by Bloodaxe Books with Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 2016, continuing the line of Irish-language poetry where Thomas Kinsella's earlier anthology An Duanaire, 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed (1981) left off.

Book preview

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Louis de Paor

GRÁ FIAR | CROOKED LOVE

Translated by Louis de Paor

with Biddy Jenkinson and Kevin Anderson

Louis de Paor is one of Ireland’s leading Irish-language poets, and was a key figure in the Irish language poetry renaissance of the 1980s and 90s. His dual-language selection The Brindled Cat and the Nightingale’s Tongue was published in 2014, following his selected poems, Rogha Dánta (2012), voted one of the top ten collections in Irish since the turn of the millennium.

This new dual-language selection is mainly drawn from two other collections, Cúpla Siamach an Ama/The Siamese Twins of Time and Grá fiar/Crooked Love. It shows a paring back of language and a greater flexibility of form in his poetry, as well as a preoccupation with the passage of time and its implications for both familial and sexual love.

His narrative skill and inventiveness come together in the sequence ‘Lá dá raibh/One day’, which follows a day in the life of an imaginary village in the west of Ireland where the living and the dead, the real and the unreal, collide. This was adapted for a dual-language radio feature with music by Dana Lyn broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm and Raidió na Gaeltachta in 2021, which can be heard while reading the sequence in either language by scanning QR codes printed in this book with a phone.

‘A great deal of narrative play and wit… The poetry can turn to darkness and the public world as well as to the intimate village or street.’ – George Szirtes, Poetry Ireland Review, on The Brindled Cat and the Nightingale’s Tongue

‘A body of work where sight and touch and smell are often invoked and where intense moments or intimate states are exposed by flashes of light or by dramatic physical contrast… a poet who is now in his prime and still producing fresh and challenging poems that speak to and across different generations.’ – Máirín Nic Eoin

Cover photograph: Josh Gordon on Unsplash

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LOUIS DE PAOR

Crooked Love

Grá fiar

WITH TRANSLATIONS BY

KEVIN ANDERSON

BIDDY JENKINSON

LOUIS DE PAOR

CLÁR | CONTENTS

Title Page

Acknowledgements

I

Don gcéad ghlúin a mhairfidh tréis bhás na Gaeilge

For the first generation to survive the death of Irish

Caora finiúna

Grapes

Fuarán

Fountain

Iascaire is ea m’athair le ceart

My father is a fisherman by right

Cloigíní

Bells

Luascáin

Swings

II

Multi-tasking

Multi-tasking

Hataí

Hats off

Bóithre

Chaos theory

Matamaitic

Mathematics

Lánúintí

Couples

Bratacha

Flags

Iníon Deichtine

Deichtine’s Daughter

III

Lá dá raibh…

One day…

IV

Luck

Luck

Ar Oileán Bruny

On Bruny Island

Garbhach, Inis Cara

Garbhach, Inis Cara

Aesthetics

Aesthetics

Mise agus an leabhar i gCafé na Beatha

The Book and I in Café de la Vie

V

Macalla

Echoes

Pluaiseanna

Caverns

Ar cuairt

Visiting

Rósanna

Roses

Téada

Strings

Paidir Ameiriceánach

American prayer

Notai | Notes

About the Author

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Poems in this collection are taken from agus rud eile de (Coiscéim 2002), Cúpla Siamach an Ama (Coiscéim 2006), Uimhir a Seacht: Ón gCroí nach dTuigeann (Coiscéim, 2010), and Grá fiar (Coiscéim, 2016).

Lá dá raibh…/One day… was first performed live at the Irish Arts Center in New York. It was adapted for a dual-language radio feature with music by Dana Lyn and broadcast on RTÉ lyric fm and Raidió na Gaeltachta on 14 March 2021. This was a Rockfinch Production for The Lyric Feature on RTÉ lyric fm made with support from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. Special thanks are due to Eoin O’Kelly and Claire Cunningham for their help in making the two recordings permanently available online enabling readers of this book to access them easily using the QR codes printed on page 56.

All English translations are by Kevin Anderson [KA], Biddy Jenkinson [BJ] and Louis de Paor. Where the translation is predominantly the work of a particular translator, his/her initials are given at the end of the English version of the poem.

I

8

Don gcéad ghlúin a mhairfidh tréis bhás na Gaeilge

(claonaithris ar dhán le Billy Collins)

Ní fiú mórán dua a chaitheamh leis an dán so.

Ní bheidh tusa ábalta é a léamh pé scéal é

is tá nithe thairis sin ar m’aire ar maidin

m.sh. dán réasúnta slachtmhar a scríobh dóibhsean

gur féidir leo fós Gaeilge a thuiscint.

Cé chreidfeadh go bhfaighfí slí di

i Reilig na mBalbh?

Shamhlaíos uair amháin í

ag cur bláthanna ar uaigh a sinsear:

Laidin, Fraincis, Lochlannais, Béarla

ach is féidir libhse anois dul ar cuairt

go dtí a huaigh féin tráthnóintí Domhnaigh

má tá Domhnach is Satharn fanta

sa domhan ina maireann sibhse ina diaidh.

Is cuimhin liom scéal

fén gcainteoir deireanach Meiriceánaise

á thaifeadadh ar leaba a bháis