Ó Direáin, Máirtín, << oh DIHR awn, MAHR teen >> (1910-1988), was one of the leading Irish-language poets of the 1900’s. In many of his poems, he nostalgically recalled the values he saw in rural life being undermined by the spread of urbanization in the 1900’s. Relying on a simple vocabulary, Ó Direáin’s style shows strong powers of observation.
Much of Ó Direáin’s poetry has not been translated from the Irish. However, his Selected Poems was published in dual Irish and English editions in 1984 and 1992. His collections Rogha Dánta (Selected Poems, 1949) and Ár Ré Dhearóil (Our Dreadful Times, 1962) both portray the individual uprooted from the security of traditional rural life and cast adrift in modern, urban society. Ó Direain’s work also drew on modern philosophy and literature. He was influenced by such writers as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Ó Direáin published one of his most important poetry anthologies, Ó Mórna agus Dánta Eile (Ó Mórna and Other Poems) in 1957. Feamainn Bhealtaine (The Seaweed in May) (1961) is a collection of autobiographical essays. Two of his best-known poems are “Fear Lásta Lampaí” (“The Lamplighter,” 1928) and “An tEarrach Thiar” (“Springtime in the West,” 1949). In the first poem, the poet recognizes the everyday miracle of the man who carries light with him from streetlamp to streetlamp. The second poem is a touching portrait of life by the sea.
Ó Direáin was born on Nov. 26, 1910, at Sruthán on the island of Inishmore in the Aran Islands, off the western coast of Ireland. His father was a farmer. Some of Máirtín Ó Direáin’s finest verse re-creates the atmosphere of the bleak landscape of the islands. Ó Direáin spoke only Irish until he was in his mid-teens. He left his home in 1928 to work in the post office in Galway, on the Irish mainland. There he became involved with Irish-language theater and the Gaelic League, an organization dedicated to preserving the Irish language. Ó Direáin transferred to the civil service in Dublin in the late 1930’s and began to write poetry. He retired from the civil service in 1975. Ó Direáin died on March 19, 1988.
