seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Heinrich Boll


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Birth of Matthew Gerard Sweeney, Irish Poet

Matthew Gerard Sweeney, Irish poet, is born at Lifford, County Donegal, on October 6, 1952. His work has been translated into Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese, Latvian, Mexican Spanish, Romanian, Slovakian and German.

Growing up in Clonmany, Sweeney attends Gormanston College (1965–70). He then reads sciences at University College Dublin (1970–72). He goes on to study German and English at the Polytechnic of North London, spending a year at the University of Freiburg, before graduating with a BA Honours degree in 1978.

Sweeney meets Rosemary Barber in 1972 and they marry in 1979. Two offspring – daughter Nico and son Malvin – are produced before the couple goes their separate ways in the early 21st century. Having lived in London for many years until 2001, he separates from Rosemary and goes to live in Timișoara, Romania and Berlin. In 2007, he meets his partner, Mary Noonan, and in early 2008 he moves to Cork to live with her there.

Sweeney produces numerous collections of poetry for which he wins several awards. His novels for children include The Snow Vulture (1992) and Fox (2002). He authors a satirical thriller, co-written with John Hartley Williams, and entitled Death Comes for the Poets (2012).

As Bill Swainson, Sweeney’s editor at Allison & Busby in the 1980s, recalls: “As well as writing his own poetry, Matthew was a great encourager of poetry in others. The workshops he animated, and later the residencies he undertook, were famous for their geniality and seriousness and fun. Sometime in the late 1980s I attended one of these workshops in an upstairs room of a pub in Lamb’s Conduit Street, Bloomsbury, where the poems were circulated anonymously and carefully read and commented on by all. Around the pushed-together tables were Ruth Padel, Eva Salzman, Don Paterson, Maurice Riordan, Jo Shapcott, Lavinia Greenlaw, Michael Donaghy, Maura Dooley and Tim Dooley.” Sweeney later has residencies at the University of East Anglia and Southbank Centre, among many others. He reads at three Rotterdam Poetry Festivals, in 1998, 2003 and 2009.

According to the poet Gerard Smyth: “I always sensed that in the first instance [Sweeney] regarded himself as a European rather than an Irish poet – and rightly so: like the German Georg Trakl whom he admired he apprehended the world in a way that challenged our perceptions and commanded our attention.” Sweeney’s work has been considered “barely touched by the mainstream of English writing” and more so by the German writers Heinrich von Kleist, Georg Büchner, Franz Kafka, Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll, as well as the aforementioned Georg Trakl. According to Poetry International Web, he would be among the top five most famous Irish poets on the international scene.

Sweeney’s final year sees the publication of two new collections: My Life As A Painter (Bloodaxe Books) and King of a Rainy Country (Arc Publications), inspired by Charles Baudelaire‘s posthumously published Petits poèmes en prose.

Having been diagnosed with motor neuron disease the previous year, Sweeney dies at the age of 65 at Cork University Hospital in Wilton, Cork, on August 5, 2018, surrounded by family and friends. He continues writing up until three days before his death. In an interview shortly before his death he is quizzed on his legacy, to which he gives the response, “Mostly what awaits the poet is posthumous oblivion. Maybe there will be a young man in Hamburg, or Munich, or possibly Vienna, for whom my German translations will be for a while important – and might just contribute to him becoming a German language poet with Irish leanings.”

Among those attending a special ceremony on August 8, 2018, at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork to celebrate Sweeney’s life are fellow poets Jo Shapcott, Thomas McCarthy, Gerry Murphy, Maurice Riordan and Padraig Rooney. On August 9, 2018, he is buried in Clonmany New Cemetery in County Donegal.


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Birth of Novelist & Critic John Broderick

Irish novelist and critic John Broderick is born in Athlone, County Westmeath, on July 30, 1924.

Broderick is the only child of the proprietors of a thriving local business, Broderick’s Bakery. His father dies when he is just three years old. He begins his secondary education at the Marist Brothers’ School but, at the age of 12, on his mother’s remarriage to the bakery manager in 1936, he is sent to board at St. Joseph’s College, Garbally Ballinasloe. He leaves in 1941 without sitting the Leaving Certificate and is expected to take over the bakery business, but always intends to write.

From 1951 he lives for a time in Paris where he knows some of the French and expatriate literary community, among them Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, James Baldwin and most importantly Julien Green. Green is a French Academician and highly respected novelist and diarist, who becomes a mentor and personal friend. He visits Broderick in Athlone in 1974 and 1975.

The Irish Times accepts a travel article from Broderick in 1956. In the same year, the paper publishes the first of his book reviews. He continues to review widely and to write general articles for The Irish Times and Hibernia magazine, among others, until shortly before his death. As a critic he is frequently controversial being dismissive of a number of established writers including Heinrich Boll, Seamus Heaney and most notably Edna O’Brien while he is extremely generous and encouraging to a host of young Irish writers. His first novel, The Pilgrimage (1961) is banned by the Irish Censorship of Publications Board. Broderick is elected to membership of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1968, and in 1975 receives the Academy’s Annual Award for Literature.

Broderick lives most of his life in Athlone, with his mother until her death in 1974, and alone until he moves to Bath, England in 1981. He dies in Bath in 1989. The Westmeath County Library system has a collection of his papers, manuscripts and other materials.

Most of Broderick’s family are born and reared in Athlone, and many still live there today. John Broderick is third cousins to Shauna, Cliodhna and Aisling Golden, three sisters who perform together as a singing act called “The Golden Sisters” who are quarter finalists on the RTÉ prime time show “The All Ireland Talent Show.”