Life
1922- [also Máire or Maire Mac Entee]; b. Dublin, dg. of Seán MacEntee and neice of Monsignor Padraig de Burca [Paddy Burke];
ed. Alexandra College, Dun Chaoin [Dunquin], and Beaufort, Rathfarnham;
ed. UCD (Celtic Studies & Mod. Langs., BA); King’s Inns; Bar,
1944; MA thesis on Pierce Ferriter; engaged at DIAS, published Two
Arthurian Romances (1946); studied at Institut des Hautes Études,
Sorbonne Paris; Foreign Office, 1947 (posts in Paris and Madrid, and Congo);
founding Sec. of Irish Cultural Relations Committee, 1951-52; worked on
compilation of English-Irish Dictionary (ed. Tomás de Bhaildraithe);
appt. to the International Desk of Foreign Affairs, 1956-61; joined Irish Delegation to UN
Gen. Assembly, 1957-60; became permanent representative of Ireland to Council of Europe,
Strasbourg; accompanied Conor Cruise O’Brien to Congo, and m. O’Brien, 1962, resigning from the Council;
lived in Ghana and in NY, where she taught the background of Anglo-Irish
literature at Queen’s College, with Liam and Máire de Paor;
visiting lect. in Folklore Dept. of Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1989; has edited Poetry Ireland Review;
won Oireachtas Prize, and read with Yevtushenko in Dingle, 1997; sought impeachment of Francis Stuart as saoi of Aosdana for wartime anti-semitism and resigned at adverse outcome, 26 Nov.; issued
autobiography as The Same Age as the State (2003).. DIW FDA OCIL
[ top ]
Works
Poetry, Margadh na Saoire [Hiring Fair, Market of Freedom]
(1956); A Heart Full of Thought (1959); Codladh an Ghailscígh
[The Hero’s Sleep] (1973); An Galar Dubhach [The
Black Sickness] (1980); An Cion go dtí Seo [The Amount
to Now] (1987); with Conor Cruise O’Brien, Concise History
of Ireland (London: Thames & Hudson 1972); Introduction to rep.
edn. of Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy (Shannon: IUP 1971); Trásladáil:
Danta Gaeilge roghnaitheagus aistithe ag/Irish-English [bilingual
edn.] (Belfast: Lagan 1997), 63pp.; Shao agus Dánta Eile (BAC:
Sáirséal & Ó Marcaigh 2000)]
Miscellaneous, ‘Scríobheoireacht sa Gaeilge Inniu’, in Studies, XXXXIV (1955), pp.86-91; “Do Nuala Ní Domhnaill”, “Muttercht”, and “Do Mo Bheairt Leasiníon” [poems], in Irish Review, No. 1 (1986), pp.74-75; ‘Writing in Modern Irish: A Benign Anachronism?’, in The Southern Review: Special Issue on Irish Poetry, v, 31, 3 (1995) pp.424-31.
Autobiography, [as Máire Cruise O’Brien,] The Same Age as the State (Dublin: O’Brien Press 2003), 376pp.
Discography, Mac a tSaoi recites poems from Margadh na Saoire on Omós do Scoil Dhún Chaoin (Claddagh Records, 1970); also Guth an Fhile (Cló Iar-Chonnachta 1993?), a tape of Mac an tSaoi reading her poetry from the earliest to the latest collection and incl. fifteen poems not yet collected.
[ top ]
Criticism
‘Seán O Tuama, ‘Saothar Teann Tíorthúil’,
Feasta (Márta 1957).
Mary O’Malley, ‘Language of the Heart’ [interview-article], in The Irish Times, Weekend (26 Feb. 2000).
Frank Sewell, ‘Between Two Languages: Poetry in Irish, English and Irish English’, in Matthew Campbell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry (Cambridge UP 2003), pp.149-68.
Maurice Harmon, ‘First Internationals’, review of The Same Age as the State, in Books Ireland (April 2004), p.79f.
Robert O’Driscoll, ed., The Celtic Consciousness [papers
of 1978 symposium at Toronto] (Dublin: Dolmen Press; Edinburgh: Canongate
Publ. 1982).
Mary O’Malley, ‘Language of the Heart’ [interview-article], in The Irish Times, Weekend (26 Feb. 2000).
[ top ]
Notes
Declan Kiberd & George Fitzmaurice, et. al. eds. An Crann Faoi
Bhláth/The Flowering Tree, Contemporary Irish Poetry with
Verse Translations (Wolfhound 1991). Also, Katie Donovan, AN
Jeffares, and Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s Women (Dublin:
G&M 1994), selects ‘The hero’s Sleep; also Grattan Freyer,
ed., Modern Irish Writing (1979), incl. poem, ‘No Compromise’.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed., (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, 817 [ed. comm, the scope of her early work is confined, but her common themes of friendship, love and sexual relations are treated in her best poems with a passionate intensity’; her collected poems, An Cion &c, 1987), reveals a wider range of concern and a sustained fluency of style’]; selections from An Cion Go Dtí Seo, ‘Inquistio 1584’ [an elegy for Sean MacEdmund MacUlick, hanged in Limerick]; ‘Finit’ [and trans]; Do Shíle’, ‘For Sheila’ [regarding a marriage contract of an older woman, ‘We doubt you or your like ever existed’, and the tradition, ‘there will tunes I’ll not hear ever..without your being agina there in the corner’]; Gniomhartha Corportha na Trócaire’, ‘The Corporal Works of Mercy’ [an old woman in hospital, nightdress hised up; tinker children; neighbours and nits (incl. allusion to her adopted son Patrick]; Cré na Mna Tí, ‘The Housewife’s Credo’ [duties, and ‘like Scheherazade, you will need to write poetry also’, ‘ach, ar nós Scheicheiriseáide,/Ní mór duit an fhilíocht chomh maith’]; Ceathrúiní Mháire I Ogáin’, ‘Mary Hogan’s Quatrains’ [‘I care little for people’s suspicions/I care little for priests’ prohibitions/For anything save to lie stretched/Between you and the wall’] [904-908]; BIOG 935, b. 1922, m.1962.
Anne Owen Weekes, ed., Attic Guide to Irish Women Writers (1993) cites Mac an tSaoi, ‘At Work, Poet as Housewife’, with page refs. 22-24, but no source.
Hugh Oram, in a review of Sean Lysaght’s life of Robert
Lloyd Praeger (1999), notes that Máire Mac an tSaoi visited
Praeger to insist that his language in a series on Ireland for Mercier
Press subvented by the Cultural Relations Committee should be politically
correct, avoiding any reference to ‘British Isles’ or ‘Londonderry’.
(Books Ireland, Summer 1999, p.183.)
“Letterlee”, a poem by her, is used as epigraph to Joseph Brady [pseud of Maurice Browne], The Big Sycamore (1958).
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)