Life
1950- [Micheál Davitt]; b. Cork; ed. North Monastery, Co. Tipperary,
and UCC; fnd. Innti, 1970; conducted Slógadh Youth Festival
1974-78; moved to RTÉ as a reporter and presenter; poetry collections,
Gleann ar Ghleann (1982); Bligeard Bráide (1983),
and An Tost á Scagadh (1993); friend of Seán Ó
Riordáin; responds poetically to influence of Beat generation and
popular culture; ed., Innti 14 (1994); his poems have been translation
by Paul Muldoon and Dermot Bolger; Lipstick on the Host (London:
Vintage 1998), 304pp., pb., stories; producer-director of ‘Undercover’,
RTE books programme; Scuais (1998), poems; issued Fardoras (2004) [anglic lintel]. OCIL FDA
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Works
Dermot Bolger, ed., Padraic Pearse, Rogha Dánta/Selected Poems
(New Island Bks. 1994), with foreword by Eugene MacCabe and afterword
(‘Iar-fhocal le’) by Michael Davitt [reviewed Poetry Ireland,
41, Spring 1994]; contrib. to Gabriel Rosenstock and Gearailt Mac
Eoin, eds., Byzantium (Indreabhán: Cló Iar-Chonnachta
1991) [poems of W. B. Yeats]; Fardoras (Cló Iar-Chonnachta 2004), 101pp.
New Poems, “Revival”; “Marcaíocht roimh Aifreann”; “Slán; Tina G”; “Faoi Anáil”; “File gan Seift”; in Fortnight 333, Nov. 1994, p.49; marginal notes records that Alan Titley spoke of the pungency and sass of his style and wordhoard; for Sean Ó Tuama, ‘when Irish poets were engaged in a type of abstract writing such as practised by many Latin authors in the middle ages, Davitt led the young poets in another direction, he was their pied piper’ also Sruth na Maoile (Coiscéim; [q.d.]).
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Criticism
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.
Pól Ó Muirí reviews An Tost a Scagadh (Coiscéim), and Davitt with Iain MacDhomhnaill, eds., Sruth an Maoile: Modern Gaelic Poetry from Scotland and Ireland Coiscéim/Canongate), in Fortnight, Dec. 1994, p.46.
Máirín Nic Eoin, review of Fardoras, in The Irish Times (4 Sept.2004), Weekend.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)