O'Siadhail, Micheal 1947-

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O'Siadhail, Micheal 1947-

PERSONAL:

Name is pronounced "Mee-hawl O'Sheel"; born January 12, 1947, in Dublin, Ireland; married Brid Carroll, July 2, 1970. Education: Attended Clongowes Wood College; Trinity College, Dublin, B.A. (with first-class honors), 1968, M.Litt., 1971; attended University of Oslo, 1968-69.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Booterstown, County Dublin, Ireland. E-mail—[email protected]

CAREER:

Trinity College Dublin, lecturer, 1969-73; Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, professor, 1974-87; University of Iceland, visiting professor, 1982. Full-time writer, 1987—.

MEMBER:

Aosdana (Academy of Distinguished Artists; founding member 1982—), Arts Council of the Republic of Ireland (1988-93), Advisory Committee on Cultural Relations (1989—), Dublin International Writers' Festival (member of the board), ILE (Ireland Literature Exchange; founding chair, 1992-99).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Irish-American Cultural Prize for Poetry, 1982; Sunday Tribune Poetry Book of the Year, 1992; Marten Toonder Prize for Literature, 1998.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Springnight, Bluett (Dublin, Ireland), 1983.

The Image Wheel, Bluett (Dublin, Ireland), 1985.

The Chosen Garden, Dedalus Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1990.

Hail! Madam Jazz: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle, England), 1992.

A Fragile City, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle, England), 1995.

Our Double Time, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle, England), 1998.

Poems 1975-1995, Dufour Editions (Chester Springs, PA), 1999.

The Gossamer Wall, Time Being Books (St. Louis, MO), 2002.

Love Life, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle, England), 2005.

Globe, Bloodaxe Books (Newcastle, England), 2007.

OTHER

Learning Irish, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (Dublin, Ireland), 1980, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1988, 2nd edition, 1995, published as Lehrbuch der Irischen Sprache, Helmut Buske Verlag, (Hamburg, Germany), 1985.

Modern Irish, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Editor of Poetry Ireland Review, 1989-91.

SIDELIGHTS:

The highly respected Irish poet Micheal O'Siadhail was born in Dublin in 1947. His education took place not only at the world-renowned Trinity College Dublin but at Norway's Oslo University. He has been a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, but he is best known for his many poetry collections, which include Springnight, The Image Wheel, The Chosen Garden, Hail! Madam Jazz: New and Selected Poems, and the 1995 work, A Fragile City.

Springnight received favorable notice in a Times Literary Supplement review. Writing about the collection, the critic compared O'Siadhail to famed early twentieth-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats and noted the poetry's conversational and abstract nature. Springnight was perceived to be, at times, "over-written," but the poems of the volume were also described as containing frequent "brilliant flashes of observation."

O'Siadhail's later poetry collections have been widely praised. Of his collected volume, Hail! Madam Jazz, Michael Smith in the Irish Times noted that O'Siadhail has a "deserved reputation as a poet for tremendous verve and style." Reviewing A Fragile City in the Dublin Sunday Independent, Madeleine Keane noted that A Fragile City is a "lyrically beautiful book."

In an interview with O'Siadhail and an overview of his work in the Dublin Trinity News, Andrew Lynch observed that the poet's work is "highly individual in both content and tone." Jeff O'Connell in the Galway Advertiser summarized that the poet's work is "among the finest now being written in Ireland." About his own work, O'Siadhail told John O'Mahony of the Irish Post that the impulse to be a poet comes from an "absolute and deep need to express a certain intensity of feeling."

O'Siadhail has also published the poetry collections Love Life in 2005 and Globe in 2007. The poems in Love Life tell of the poet's long love affair with his wife, Brid. They begin with the young, passionate feelings the poet experiences early on in their relationship, which mature as their relationship grows. To tell of this love, O'Siadhail employs a wide variety of poetic forms, putting his own mark on them. For instance, he uses haiku in the poem "Watch," yet the form is not immediately apparent, but subtle. The poems in Love Life also are notable for their rich and vivid imagery, like that in "Dwelling" and "Watch." An avid sailor, he frequently uses images of the sea and sailing. As with most of O'Siadhail's other collections, Love Life was met with much praise and critical acclaim by reviewers and readers. Many critics found the poetry to be skilled and well-crafted, yet easy for all readers to digest. The poems are "intricately complex yet accessible," wrote Richard Dilworth Rust in a review for the Irish Literary Supplement. Others also felt that with this book, O'Siadhail sets himself apart from other poets as a significant craftsman and voice of this era of literary work. Love Life is a "rare and delightful book," noted Booklist contributor Patricia Monaghan.