Life
1941-1999 [or Harnett; Micheál Ó hAirtneide]; b. 18 Sept., Croom, Co. Limerick; son of Denis and Bridie Harnett [née Halpin], and erron. given as Hartnett on certificate; raised
in Camas [Newcastle West] by an Irish-speaking grandmother, Bridget Halpin, from Kerry; ed. local primary school, and then St. Ita’s, Newcastle West; worked as tea-boy on London building site; came to Dublin, 1963; studied for
one year at UCD, at behest of John Jordan who had been alerted to his talent by Paul Durcan; later collaborated
with Caitlín Maude on An Lasair Choille (1961); with James Liddy and Liam O’Connor, ed. Arena, 1963-65;
worked as postman, then curator of James Joyce Tower in Sandycove (professing to prefer
William Faulkner); moved to London; m. Rosemary Grantley, April 1966; dg. Lara b. 1968; returned to Ireland and settled at Marino, Co. Dublin; issued Anatomy of a Cliché (1968), ded. Rosemary; worked for some time on the Dublin telephone exchange
(Exchequer St.); poetry reviewer for Irish Times;
with Desmond Egan, co-ed. Choice (1973); moved to Templeglantine, Co. Limerick in 1974; issued
Farewell to English (1975), and wrote in Irish only, 1975-85 (“to court the language of his people”); winner of received
American Ireland Fund Literary Award, 1975 [var. 1974], 1980, and
1990; received Arts Council bursaries, 1975 and 1986; occasional
lecturer and teacher of creative writing at Thomond College, Limerick after 1976; acted as RTÉ presenter for ‘Poems Plain’, 1976-78; made frequent visits to Croom; moved to Inchicore, Dublin; issued Inchicore
Haiku (1985), once again in English; rendered the poetry of Dáithí Ó Bruadair in a modern idiom treating of the spoilation of a once noble culture by modern upstarts (Ó Bruadair, 1985); issued A Necklace of Wrens (1987), Poems to Younger Women (1989) and The Killing of Dreams (1992); also Selected and New Poems (1994); RTE documentary, “Michael Hartnett: Necklace of Wrens” (1999); suffered seizure in local hospital while attending Listowel Writers Week; d. 13th Oct.; Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, whose Selected Poems he had translated (1986); read at his funeral; survived by
his second partner, Angela Liston, and the three children; the Collected Poems, prepared sometime before
his death, were finally issued by Gallery in 2001; there is an annual poetry competition and festival in Newcastle West (“Eigse Michael Hartnett”). DIW DIL FDA OCIL
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Works
Poetry (in English), Anatomy of a Cliché [Ireland Editions 4] (Dublin: Dolmen
Press 1968), 26pp.; The Hag of Beare, trans. from Irish (Dublin: New Writers Press 1969); A
Farewell to English [Gallery Books, 21] (Oakdown Rd., Dublin: Gallery Press 1975), 3-35pp.; and Do. [enl. edn.] (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1978), 86pp.; Cúlú Íde/The Retreat of Ira Cagney (Kildare: Goldsmith Press 1975), 3-33pp., ill.; Poems in English (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1977); Prisoners (Oldcastle, Meath: Gallery Press; Mass.: Deerfield Booklets 1977); Adharca Broic (Oldcastle, Meath: Gallery Press 1978), 36pp.; An Phurgóid (Baile Átha Cliath: Coiscéim 1983), [2], 14pp.; Do Nuala, Foidhne Chuainn (Baile Átha Cliath: Coiscéim 1984); Inchicore Haiku (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1985), 35pp.; [as Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide,] An Lia Nocht (Baile Átha Cliath: Coiscéim 1985), 20pp. [longer poem]; A Necklace of Wrens: Poems in Irish and English (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1987), 123pp.; Poems to Younger Women (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1988), 33pp; The Killing of
Dreams (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1992), 39pp.; Selected and New Poems (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1994), 104pp.; Translations (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2002),
144pp.; A Book of Strays, ed. Peter Fallon (Oldcastle Gallery Press 2001), 68pp.
Translations & versions,
Tao: A Version of the Chinese Classic of the Sixth Century (Dublin:
New Writers Press 1971), 10pp.; Gypsy Ballads: A Version of the Romancero Gitano of Frederico Garcia Lorca (Newbridge: Goldsmith Press 1973), 43pp. [ill., port. by Edward Maguire]; Ó Bruadair (Oldcastle,
Meath: Gallery Press 1985), 53pp.; Selected Poems of Nuala Ní Domhnaill
(Oldcastle, Meath: Gallery Press 1986); [as Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide,] An Damh-Mhac, trans.
from Hungarian of Ferenc Juhász (Baile Átha Cliath: Coiscéim 1987), 24pp.; Dánta Naomh Eoin na Croise, trans. from St. John of the Cross (Baile Átha Cliath: Coiscéim 1991), 67pp.; Haicéad (Oldcastle, Meath:
Gallery Press 1993), 89pp. [versions of poems of Pádraigín
Haicéad]; Ó Rathaille: The Poems of Aodhaghán Ó Rathaille (Dufour Edns. 1998;
rep. Gallery 1999), 78pp.; Translations, edited by Peter Fallon (Oldcastle: Gallery Press
2003), 127pp.
Selected & Collected edns., Selected Poems [Zozimus Ser.] (Dublin: New Writers’ Press 1970), 61, [3]pp.; Collected Poems, Vol. 1 (Dublin: Raven Arts Press; Manchester: Carcanet Press 1984), 168pp.; Collected Poems, Vol. II (Dublin: Raven Arts Press; Manchester: Carcanet Press 1987),104pp.; Collected Poems (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2001), 255pp. [infra]. Also Gabriel Rosenstock, Portrait of the Artist as an Abominable Snowman: Selected Poems, trans. by Michael Hartnett, and new poems trans. by Jason Sommer (London: Forest 1989), 108pp.
In translation, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, The Purge, a translation of “An Phurgóid” by Michael Hartnett (Dublin: Beaver Row Press 1989), [n.p.]. Also Seminando: a cura di Edoardo Zuccato [I Testi di testo a fronte, 15] (Milano: Crocetti 1994), 92pp.
Anthologies, Ed., with Desmond Egan, Choice: an anthology of Irish poetry selected by the poets themselves with a comment on their choice, edited by Desmond Egan and Michael Hartnett (Kildare: Goldsmith Press 1973), 119pp.; Sel. & Ed., Dundalk Urban District Council Arts Committee and Dundalk Democrat Poetry Anthology (Dundalk U.D.C. 1987), 54pp.
Contributions, “An Giorria/The Hare”, in Michael Davitt & Iain Mac Dhímhnaill, eds., Sruth na Maoile/Modern Gaelic Poetry from Scotland and Ireland (Canongate Press 1993), p.138.
Collected Poems (Oldcastle: Gallery press 2001), 255pp. Contents: ‘Whom I ask for no gift …’ [xiii]. Poems 1958-1970: A Small Farm [15]; Sickroom [16]; Sad Singing in Darkness [17]; Poor Actaeon [18]; Will [19]; Sulphur [20]; from Short Mass [21]; ‘The river is the conscience ...’ [22]; ‘I will rise with the hawk …’ [23]; Charleville Mall Sestina [24]; ‘It is nine of the night …’ [26]; Poor Sailor [27]; As in a Roman Garden [28]; ‘Her diadem, pain ...’ [29]; ‘All that is left and definite …’ [30]; ‘Beside the vulgar chairs ...’ [31]; ‘“Yes,’ she screamed ...’ [32]; ‘This friend, an old man ...’ [33]; ‘“Don’t go,’ they said …’ [34]; Green Room [35]; ‘I have exhausted the delighted range…’ [36]; ‘I was volcanic …’ [37]; ‘I have heard them knock …’ [38]; ‘I have managed to keep …’ [39]; ‘I heard him whistle ...’ [40]; Fairview Park: 6 a.m. [41]; ‘I think sometimes …’ [43]; ‘Base to the smaller …’ [44]; ‘There will be a talking ...’ [45]; Crossing the Iron Bridge [46]; The Lord Taketh Away [48]; For Edward Hartnett [49]; ‘All the death-room needs …’ [50]; ‘How goes the night, boy? …’ [51]; For My Grandmother, Bridget Halpin [52]; Bread [53]; Secular Prayers (1967) [54]. Anatomy of a Cliché (1968): Mo ghrá thú …’ [62]; Te quiero [63]; Je t’aime [64]; Ich liebe dich [65]; ‘Beside an Attic column ...’ [66]; ‘Ask if I should mourn you …’ [67]; ‘I was sent away ...’ [68]; ‘I will pay court to you …’ [69]; ‘I want you to stand with me …’ [70]; ‘Remember we stood on the steps ...’ [71]; ‘Remember the ghosted gale? …’ [72]; ‘As if you were porcelain ...’ [73]; ‘Into Dublin in a lovely dawn …’ [74]; ‘Moon says it so late …’ [76]; Hands [77]; ‘It was a new and pagan dawn …’ [78]. Thirteen Sonnets (1968): ‘I have been stone, dust of space, sea and sphere …’ [79]; ‘I am not free. I am bound by bread ...’ [80]; ‘We can foretell the rising tide, the green ...’ [81]; ‘Again, the coming round of time, the War ...’ [82]; ‘Something is blessed. I can tell my mind ...’ [83]; ‘Polyzoic demon, in truth thou art ...’ [84]; ‘A haphazard blue fire as Phoebus dies ...’ [85]; ‘Take this salve, Pamphila, oil of ages ...’ [86]; ‘I saw magic on a green country road ...’ [87]; ‘A soft internal music of his own ...’ [88]; ‘To the vulgar speak only vulgar things ...’ [89]; ‘Here be the burnings, all for wizardry ...’ [90]; ‘Lamplight makes all trees circular, in streets ...’ [91]. Notes on My Contemporaries (1969): Prologue [92]; The Poet Down [93]; The Poet as Mastercraftsman [94]; The Poet as Black Sheep [95]; The Person: Nox Agonistes [96]; The Poet as Woman of Ireland [97]; The Person as Dreamer: We Talk about the Future [98]; The Person as Spirit of the River [99]; The Poet Dreams and Resolves [100]; The Poet as Exile [101]. Maiden Street (1967) [102]; Maiden Street Wake [103]; Epitaph for John Kelly, Blacksmith [104]. ‘The island sparkles industry ...’ [105]; ‘The island was being secretive ...’ (1973) [106]. Prisoners (1968) [107]; The Retreat of Ita Cagney (1975) [109]. From A Farewell to English (1975): The Buffeting [115]; Struts [118]; Signal from the World [119]; Horse Breaking Loose [120]; Early One Morning [121]; USA [122]; The Oat Woman [123]; Pigkilling [125]; The Horse Catcher [126]; The Perpetual Moment [127]; Staghorn Whistle [128]; The Possibility that has been Overlooked is the Future [129]; Sally Gap [130]; Death by the Santry River [131]; Dryad [133]; The Final Rendezvous [134]; Theory [135]; A Visit to Castletown House [136]; Mrs Halpin and the Lightning [138]; Death of an Irishwoman [139]; Visit to Croom, 1745 [140]; Farewell to English [141]. Inchicore Haiku (1985) [148]. From Poems to Younger Women (1988): Vengeance is Mine [166]; Pavane for a Drowned Girl [167]; Somewhere in France [168] Water Baby [169]; Tidying up [170]; Mother Earth [171]; One Word [172]; Creatrix [173]; Pombé [174]; No Avail [175]; Dal Riada [176]; Belladonna in the Bar [177]; Retro Me [178]; Sapphics [179]; Für Marja [180]; For A.C. [181]; Small Hope [182]; Homecoming [183]; Unfinished Novel [184]; Fräulein [185]; For My God-daughter, B.A.H. [186]. From The Killing of Dreams (1992): Antihex [187]; Orphans [188]; Cartomancy [189]; The Old Lady Says Yes [191]; A Falling Out [192]; Impasse [194]; Trapped in Shelley [195]; The Killing of Dreams [196]; Poets Passing [197]; Didactic [198]; Celtic Sacrifice [200]; Public Art [201]; In the Landscape [202]; Talking Verses [203]; Mountains, Fall on US [205]. From Selected and New Poems (1994): That Actor Kiss [212]; The Old Catechism 213]; The Man who Wrote Yeats, the Man who Wrote Mozart [216]; Sibelius in Silence [223]; He’ll to the Moors [229]. New Poems (1990-1999): Pining [236]; Last Aisling [237]; ‘Slowly the blossoms are falling …’ [238]; Sycamore, Sycamore [239]; In Memoriam Sheila Hackett [240]; Something Secret [241]; The Blink of an Eye [242]; A Prayer for Sleep [243]. Author’s Notes [245]; Index of first lines [246]; Editor’s Note [254].
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Criticism
Victoria White, interview with Michael Hartnett, The Irish Times
(Thurs. 15 Dec. 1994).
Bernard O’Donoghue reviews Ó Rathaille (Gallery 1999), in Times Literary Supplement ( 17 April, 1999).
Eamon Grennan, ‘Wrestling with Harnett’, in Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century (Creighton UP 1999) [chap.], pp.296-314.
Thomas O’Grady, ‘(Re)Visiting Michael Hartnett’, in Irish Literary Supplement, Vol. 9, No.1 (2000), pp.27.
Patricia Craig, review of Michael Harnett, Collected Poems (Oldcastle: Gallery Press), 255pp.
Callum Boyle, ‘Tradition and Transgression in the Poetry of Michael Hartnett’, MA Diss., UUC, 2005.
Rory Brennan, reviewing A Book of Strays, in Books Ireland (Sept. 2003).
Denis Donoghue, The Genius of Irish Prose, 1985, p.85.)
‘K. J.’, writing in Times Literary Supplement (6 Jan. 1995).
Patrick J. Duffy, ‘Writing Ireland’, in Brian Walker, In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography, 1997, p.74.
Sean Golden, ‘Post-Traditional English Literature: A Polemic’, in The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies [Vol. 3, No. 2 1979], 1982, pp.427-34, p.435-55.
John Cronin, review of Ó Bruadair , Irish Studies Review, Winter 1994/95.
Website: The Harnett pages of “Culture & Custom / Poetry” website contain the poems “Death of an Irishwoman”, “The Poet as Black Sheep” for Paul Durcan (from Notes on My Contemporaries), and “Farewell to English”, as well as a biographical account (link; see also Notes, infra.)
Website: “The Irish Culture and Customs” website records a correction to our biographical account of Hartnett’s marriages and relationships in the form of a note from his daughter. (See web page [link].
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James Simmons, ed., Ten Irish Poets (Carcanet 1974) [‘The Person Nox Agonistes’; ‘The Poet as Black Sheep’; ‘Crossing the Iron Bridge’; ‘The Lord Taketh Away’; ‘The Night before Patricia’s Funeral ...’; ‘The Third Sonnet’; ‘A Small Farm’; ‘The Person as a Dreamer’; ‘All That is Left’]
Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, eds., Soft Day: A Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing, ed. (Notre Dame/Wolfhound 1980), Prisoners; Death of an Irishwoman; from A Farewell to English.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1992), Vol. 3, selects from Adharca Broic; Do Nuala Foigne Crainn; An Lia Nocht, [915-18]; A Farewell to English, 1387-89; BIOG., 1434.
Books in Print (1994) Ó Bruaidair, Selected poems of Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, translated and introduced by Michael Hartnett (Dublin: Gallery Press 1985), 53pp. [for Desmond and Olda Fitzgerald [cover by Michael Kane] [0 904011 90 9; 91 7 cloth]; Collected Poems Vol. 1 (1986; Raven Arts/Carcanet 1987), 103pp. [for Denis Hartnett 1914-1984]; Collected Poems Vol. 2 (1986; Raven Arts/Carcanet 1987), 168pp. [for Rosemary, whom I do not deserve].
Cathach Books (1996/97) lists The Naked Surgeon, ill. (Dublin: Purple Heron n.d.); Gipsy Ballads (Dublin: Goldsmith Press 1973), 42pp.; The Retreat of Ita Cagney (Culu Ide), with Mosaic by Finola Graham [Last book publ. In old Irish Script] (Dublin: Goldsmith Press 1975), 34pp.; signed copies.
Tribute: Michael Coady has written a tribute to Michael Hartnett in “Adhlacadh an Dreoilin [the Wren’s Burial]”, in One Another (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 2003).
“The Teaboy of the Western World” is the title of an article by Hartnett written and published while working in London building sites. (See the website biography by his daughter [link].)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)