# Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Tristan Rosenstock (eds.)

Pádraic Lamb

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## To cite this version:

Pádraic Lamb. Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Tristan Rosenstock (eds.). Études irlandaises, 2025, 50-2, pp.172-174. 10.4000/15aa9. hal-05414897

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*Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry*, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Tristan Rosenstock (eds.)

Pádraic Lamb

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/21274

DOI: 10.4000/15aa9

ISSN: 2259-8863

**Publisher**

Presses universitaires de Caen

**Printed version**

Date of publication: December 31, 2025

Number of pages: 172-174

ISSN: 0183-973X

**Electronic reference**

Pádraic Lamb, "*Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry*, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, Tristan Rosenstock (eds.)", *Études irlandaises* [Online], 50-2 | 2025, Online since 05 December 2025, connection on 09 December 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/21274; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15aa9

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living in a new housing state (Tolka Row), or the economic strain experienced by those living in rented rooms in a middle-class location (A Tree). Each play speaks of Dublin's urban expansion in the 1950s and the new possibilities and restraints that came along with the changing geography of the city coupled with strict Catholic values, which invariably moulded their inhabitants' attitudes. As Leeney and McFeely point out, the canals and rivers are central motifs in the trilogy as they "act as demarcating boundaries of space and class" (p. 11).

*Liffey Lane*, an adaptation of Laverty's 1947 novel *Lift Up Your Gates*, like the other plays in the trilogy, is structured around a prologue, three acts and an epilogue. The melodrama dissects the hardships of the families living in the area and of the busybodies of the neighbourhood. In spite of its happy ending, the play does not fail to comment on the prejudices against women who bear children out of wedlock, on the social stigma that shadows their children's lives or on the insidious addiction to gambling of the time. *Tolka Row*, both beautiful and painful, exposes the challenges of growing old, materialised in Dan Dempsey's loving but at times trying presence in the Nolans's residence. *A Tree* also explores ageing but from the perspective of dreams, unfulfilled, due to familial commitments and concerns with economic stability.

All three plays provide sharp social commentary on life in Dublin in the 1950s. They powerfully evoke Arthur Miller's in their in-depth psychological depiction of character and the social fate of the economically vulnerable. The book is a great resource for drama researchers, teachers and students but also for Irish studies scholars in a broader way. Most importantly, it expands the canon of Irish drama by gearing sharp critical attention to Laverty as a powerful and yet understudied playwright.

Alinne Balduino P. FERNANDES

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

*Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry*, Ailbhe Ní Ghhearbhuigh, Tristan Rosenstock (eds.), Cork, Cork University Press, 2023, 236 p.

*Innti* is the name of the poetry broadsheet founded by Michael Davitt at University College Cork (UCC) in 1970 and the *nouvelle vague* of poets associated with it: chiefly, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Michael Davitt, Gabriel Rosenstock, Liam Ó Muirthile. As Alan Titley points out in his foreword, "Nobody can ever precisely point to when a revolution in literature begins" (p. vii). And as with most such literary movements, there is no consensus over "why?", or to what extent individual differences threaten the coherence of the group – the essential point is that none of the authors of the ten chapters or interviewees doubt that the revolution occurred. Published irregularly from 1970 to 1996, *Innti* changed the face, the body and the
soul of Irish-language poetry, by letting in the winds of change: forms of the new, from cummings to Berryman to the haiku; the everyday, the urban, sex, faraway places and their mythologies as subjects.

Although Titley favours “magic hand of chance” (p. xvi), the editors in their “Réamhrá” (“Introduction”) and afterword advance the idea that “the convening of a community of urban Irish-language speakers” (p. 174) was crucial to the genesis and success of *Innti*; its culture of happenings and poetry readings (there were 1,500 people at the launch of *Innti* 3, for example) one of its essential legacies. A number of chapters are relevant to all four poets. Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh gives historical consistency to the notion of a generation in “New Turns: A Perspective on Intergenerational Shifts in Independent Ireland, 1958-1973”, with a fascinating account of the overlap between language and revolutionary activism in the period. Louis de Paor, himself member of the second wave or “athghlúin” (p. xviii) of *Innti*, elegantly evaluates how the UCC professor, poet and playwright, Seán Ó Tuama, fostered a community of writers and generations of readers. “‘Máistir Maith Maolshásta’: Seán Ó Tuama agus filí *Innti*” (“‘A Good but Unappeasable Master’: Seán Ó Tuama and the Poets of *Innti*”) describes Ó Tuama, his creative work and his generous, though demanding, criticism. In “Tá Deireadh Anois le Ré na bPleidhcí: Tadhall fhilí *Innti* le hIarthar Duibhneach” (“The Time of the Messers Is Over: The *Innti* Poets’ Contact with West Kerry”), there is a magic lantern effect to novelist Pádraig Ó Cíobháin’s memoir of the poets and their links with the West Kerry Gaeltacht. He also gives the fullest account I have seen of the meaning of *Innti* (cf. Robert Welch, quoted p. xxi). In a dictionary, it means “in her” (a female, or a feminine noun; *inti* in modern standardised Irish). “*An raghfá innti?*”, the question you’d ask before getting into a *naomhóg* (feminine noun, a Kerry currach). Ó Cíobháin explains its sudden use as a kind of linguistic tic locally. From there, his brother called a painting he had done of a sailing boat “Innti”. This, he writes, was the first written appearance of the “*mana*” (“motto”, p. 91) we now know as *Innti*. In a similarly personal vein, the *athghlúin* poet Colm Breathnach describes, in “Dílis don Fhís” (“Loyal to the Vision”), the sense of community, poetic freedom and emulation released by the examples (and creative writing classes) of the *Innti* poets. In “*Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll: An chollaíocht i saothar *Innti*” (“Sexuality in the Work of *Innti*”), the broad theme chosen allows Caitríona Ní Chléirchín to contrast the poets’ collective openness with the ambient conservatism, and then to address, via French feminists theorists, how the female and male gazes produce differing *plaisirs du texte*.

Four further essays are dedicated each to one of the poets. Gearóid Denvir, in “‘Mairim i Ré Chinniúnach’: Gné d’fhilíocht Mhichael Davitt” (“‘I Live in a Fateful Era’: Aspects of Michael Davitt’s Poetry”), describes Michael Davitt as bringing together countercultural influences (Bob Dylan, the Beats) and modern Irish life in a convincing urban poetic idiom. Peter Sirr examines Liam Ó Muirthile’s oeuvre in light of the “dichotomy between what might be perceived as false and what authentic” (p. 66), particularly acute for a non-native speaker writing from an urban, and not a rural perspective (“From *Leath* [Half] to *Leath* [Half]: Liam
Ó Muirthile’s Embrace of Uncertainty”). Pádraig de Paor, in his essay, “Gabriel Rosenstock, Cleasaí” (“Gabriel Rosenstock, Trickster”), draws on Jung and different anthropologists in order to identify some essential concerns of this playful but challenging “world literature” poet. A stand-out contribution in my view is that of Ríona Ní Fhrighil entitled “An Domhan Thoir agus Filíocht Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill” (“The East and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Poetry”). She identifies an important bias towards specifically Irish themes in the very successful bilingual collections of Ní Dhomhnaill’s work that have been published, choices which obscure Ní Dhomhnaill’s very important engagement with the East in different guises.

In the final chapter, “A Munster Beat”, Clíona Ní Ríordáin adopts a postcolonial framework to demonstrate the “translanguage companionship” (p. 161) between English-language poets of Munster from the 1970s onwards with Ó Muirthile and Davitt and the Irish language more generally.

This is a welcome collection of lucid, thoughtful essays, along with interviews with Ní Dhomhnaill and Rosenstock. Three chapters are in English, as well as the foreword, the afterword and the Rosenstock interview. Overall, contributors address poets’ individual collections. For someone who has never held a paper copy of *Innti*, it would have been useful to get a clear idea of precisely what was published, issue by issue, to evaluate *Innti* the journal as a means of reading *Innti* as a movement.

Pádraic LAMB

Université Lumière Lyon 2

*Irish Food History: A Companion, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, Dorothy Cashman (dir.), Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 2024, 795 p., DOI: https://doi.org/10.21427/5WHY-0K87.*

Le livre *Irish Food History: A Companion*, paru en 2024 et édité par Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire et Dorothy Cashman, est un livre-monstre : à la fois volumineux (près de 800 pages, 28 chapitres) et extrêmement ambitieux dans son exploration des enjeux de la nourriture et des pratiques alimentaires en Irlande. Il met en lumière les influences culturelles, économiques et technologiques qui ont façonné les pratiques culinaires de l’île verte. Conçu de façon chronologique, l’ouvrage s’ouvre sur une première partie consacrée à la préhistoire jusqu’au haut Moyen Âge, avec un premier chapitre traitant de l’histoire alimentaire préhistorique de l’Irlande, fondée sur des études archéologiques, linguistiques et littéraires. Le chapitre 2 embrasse la vaste période qui va du mésolithique à la période médiévale, et il s’intéresse à l’impact des changements climatiques, des migrations et des structures sociales sur les habitudes alimentaires irlandaises. Le chapitre 3 aborde les Céide Fields, un système de champs néolithiques situé dans le nord de Mayo, en Irlande, considéré comme le plus ancien système de champs au monde.