Inside Innti: A new wave in Irish Poetry salutes the enduring newness of an Irish-language journal along with its chief poets: Michael Davitt, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Liam Ó Muirthile and Gabriel Rosenstock. The volume consists of 10 essays (seven in Irish and three in English), two interviews and a foreword by that perennial power for good, Alan Titley.
Editors Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Tristan Rosenstock curate this material beautifully, weaving together Innti’s strands with an excellent foreword and afterword of their own. All the contributors remind us, each in a distinct way, that these fellow poets were “four determinedly different people with strikingly different personalities” (Titley). Fittingly, their work is treated individually in a chapter apiece.
Pádraig de Paor represents Rosenstock as The Archetypal Trickster. Rióna Ní Fhrighil traces Ní Dhomnaill’s essentially international sensibility. Peter Sirr gets a fix on Ó Muirthile’s restless spirit. Gearóid Denvir matches Davitt’s “real deal” battle cries with some brilliant insights of his own.
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Other essays inquire into different backgrounds to the Innti story. Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh’s piece on intergenerational shifts in Ireland (from 1958 to 1973) is a standout combination of erudition and common sense. Pádraig Ó Cíobháin’s essay is another winner. Infused with imaginative empathy, it gives us an insider’s take on these poets’ close links with the Corca Dhuibhne community, a vivid depiction of mutual respect, shared joy and giddy-goat antics. Colm Breathnach paints a similar picture of special times in the Gaeltacht, also reminding us that Davitt spoke for every frustrated, urban Irish speaker.
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Inevitably, Cork college life is central to what was a campus initiative. It’s a world that Clíona Ní Ríordáin and Louis de Paor bring to life. Ní Ríordáin’s essay on that specific “Munster beat” and the movement between languages is a must-read; de Paor’s piece is a finely tuned testament to Seán Ó Tuama, a teacher Davitt himself describes as “a father figure” to his own generation. Caitríona Ní Chleirchín catches this generation’s birdcage bid for freedom in her compelling essay. Her title is borrowed from Ní Dhomhnaill’s own words, “we wanted to write poems about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”. This book emphasises how great the best of those poems were.
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