Louis de Paor is one of Ireland's leading Irish-language poets, and was a key figure in the Irish language poetry renaissance of the 1980s and 90s. His selected poems in Irish was recently voted one of the top ten collections in Irish since the turn of the millennium.

His dual-language selection, The Brindled Cat and the Nightingale's Tongue, was published by Bloodaxe Books with Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 2014). His anthology Leabhar na hAthghabhála / Poems of Repossession was published by Bloodaxe Books with Cló Iar-Chonnacht in 2016, continuing the line of Irish-language poetry where Thomas Kinsella's earlier anthology An Duanaire, 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed (1981) left off. A new dual language collection, Grá fiar / Crooked love, is forthcoming from Bloodaxe and Cló Iar-Chonnacht.

He has worked closely on English translations of his poetry, with his co-translators fully engaging with the original poem in Irish. Keenly aware of the more destructive aspects of translation, he and his trio of translators, Kevin Anderson, Biddy Jenkinson and Mary O'Donoghue, have eschewed the modern fashion for so-called "versions", producing English translations which are as close as possible to the original Irish poems without sacrificing their tone, energy, clarity and lightness of touch.

Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed him reading his poems in Irish and English at his home in Uachter Ard, Contae na Gaillimhe (Oughterard, Co. Galway), Ireland, in April 2017. He reads eight poems from The Brindled Cat and the Nightingale's Tongue as well as three newer poems (asterisked here) from his forthcoming collection Grá fiar / Crooked Love: ‘An t-amhránaí’ | ‘The singer’; ‘Báisteach’ | ‘Rain’; ‘Didjeridu’ | ‘Didjeridu’; ‘Idir dhá linn’ | ‘In the meantime’; ‘An cruthaitheoir’ | ‘The creator’;’Cloigíní’ | ‘Bells’*; ‘Luascáin’ | ‘Swings’*; ‘Multi-tasking’ | ‘Multi-tasking’*; ‘Marmalade’ | ‘Marmalade’. He reads first in Irish, then in English, but with longer poems completes his reading of the Irish original at the end of the English translation. The reading is followed by a short interview in English about writing in Irish and the survival of the Irish language.

For more information on Louis de Paor's poetry, please see [ Ссылка ]

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