The road to God knows where

[First posted on MyT]

Michael Hartnett was a poet and translator from Croom, Co. Limerick (where I was born) who had a great way with language – Irish, which he preferred, as well as English. He was a harsh critic of the mores of the Irish state – particularly its failures in relation to the language and culture – and of what he saw as bourgeois complacency and mediocrity. His own culture was a very old one.

Hartnett lived in Madrid (he was a great admirer of Lorca), London and Dublin before returning to his base in rural Limerick, and translated poetry from Hungarian as well as seventeenth-century Irish. (more…)