Life
1943- ; b. Dungarvan, Co. Waterford; ed. UCD, and Gregorian University,
Rome, ord. as Augustinian priest; Augustine, Letter to God (1978),
pamphlet; poetry collections, Nowhere But in Praise (1978); This
Day’s Importance (1981), A Celibate Affair (1984); Out
of Silence (1993); The Last Dreamers (1999). DIL OCIL
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Works
Poetry, Out by the Side of Things (Dublin: Anthos 1975),
12pp.; Augustine, Letter to God, a poem by Padraig J Daly (Dublin:
John and Barbara Deane, 1978), 16pp.,[ ill. St Beuno’s handprinted
limited eds. No.4, 120 copies]; Nowhere but in Praise (Dublin:
Profile 1978), 42pp.; Poems: Selected and New (Dublin: Dedalus
1988), 100pp.; The Voice of the Hare (Dublin: Dedalus 1997), 71pp.;
The Last Dreamers (Dublin: Dedalus 1999), 150pp. Translations,
Edoardo Sanguineti, Libretto, trans. from the Italian by Padraig
J. Daly (Dublin: Dedalus 1998), 17pp.
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Commentary
[Q.a.], review of The Last Dreamers in Books Ireland
(Feb. 2000): ‘Many of his pieces seem to be in a walking, spoken
mode, without the rhythms or special phrase potency that seems finally
to distinguish poetry from prose. So is it pedestiran and impotent? We
tried “Place of Death” (about a hospice) from his last collection,
The Voice of the Hare, and were delighted to hear unconventional
noises from a priest.’ (p.40.)
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, review of The Last Dreamers: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus), in The Irish Times (25 March 2000) [Weekend]: b. Co. Waterford; Nowhere but Praise (1978). The dreamers of his title are Tadgh Gaelach (devotional poems in Dungarvan area), Raftery, Seamus Dall MacCuarta, et al. ‘Daly is straining to see what they saw rather than to reproduce what they said.’ ‘He imagines old customs reconciling grief and hope, while appropriately his language contains words which, originally Gaelic […] have passed into spoken English.’; ‘Religious poetry now seems desperately, difficult to write but Daly is often successful. His best poems on religious themes have, an air of being fragments faithfully recorded and detached from a context, remaining, mysterious and luminous’; ‘Daly’s combination of Gaelic scholarship, long memory and a fresh vision recalls Michael Hartnett. He draws on and contributes to the same Munster tradition but presides over his own distinct parish within it.’ Quotes: “Leagh”: ‘The sleek greyhounds/The marvellous horses that raced the fields,.The tall spectacular foals …’; “Easter”: ‘People carry water home to bless the fields, / Mourners move towards graveyards / With glaums of daffodils’; “Divine Fox”: ‘The fox comes close to the house / On sunlit mornings of Summer / Before the ladies of the convent finish prayer / He is there also in Winter / When darkness covers the earth / And everywhere.’ “A Thought from Tauler”: ‘Set the butterflies free, / Let the birds follow, out from their cages, / And the small exuberant pups.’ (p.10.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)