Súil Siar ar Fhilíocht Mháirtín Uí Dhireáin,le Síobhra Aiken

Fathach File Árann: Súil Siar ar Fhilíocht Mháirtín Uí Dhireáin
le Síobhra Aiken

While Ó Direáin is considered to be the ‘father of modern Irish poetry’, his legacy has, arguably, been overlooked and his life story has never been written.
Síobhra Aiken looked at the man behind the poems, introducing many interesting aspects of his life which we had not heard of previously, especially his political interests.
When he first went to Galway he was actually involved in the Post Office Workers Union. Síobhra Aiken quoted Máirtín Ó Direáin writing in the Connacht Sentinal in 1925:
"The post office workers are already engaged in a fight, but are we really prepared for a fight? I do not think so. In the post office, as in many other offices, there are people who are badly off and there are others who are not so badly off. You cannot expect those latter people to do your fighting for you. You have to do your own fighting.”
Ó Direáin’s politics are a lot more complicated, maybe, than those of the O'Flaherty brothers, and it is something that has not really been looked at yet. There are certain aspects of his life that must be taken into consideration in order to understand some of the unfathomable contradictions; he had a social conscience that was always connected to his religious beliefs
Síobhra Aiken revealed new information on many aspects of Ó Direáin’s life, such as the respect he earned as a young actor in An Taibhdhearc, and the steps he took to promote the rights of Post Office workers.

Síobhra Aiken, Lecturer at National University of Ireland, Galway and Fulbright Scholar, Elms College, Chicopee, Massachusetts, USA, 2013 - 2014