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Where
Irish Cultural Centre, 5 Black's Rd, London W6 9DT.
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Join us on Friday 24 Jan for our first event of 2025. We are delighted to welcome back Professor Declan Kiberd to the Society to discuss the life and poetry of Aogán Ó Rathaille (c.1670–1729) and to launch a book by long time ILS member Brian O’Connor of a selection of the poems. Conveying Ó Rathaille’s intricate rhythms and rhyme schemes are a challenge for a translator, even more so in his great laments of dispossession, O’Connor carries the work into English with admirable simplicity and fluency.
These translations capture the fragile buoyancy of beautifully extended vowels, which give each line a magnificent dignified internal patterning, even as their endings sometimes refuse rhyme, because the world the poet faces is no longer felt to be regular: Brian O’Connor helps us also to appreciate the sheer range of Ó Rathaille’s acoustic.Declan Kiberd
The evening will feature Professor Kiberd’s discussion of the work of Ó Rathaille and the closing down of the civilisation that nurtured him. There will be music and readings from the Irish and English. In O’Connor’s new book of translations, Wave, the Irish and English are presented in parallel text – this will be available for sale on the night. The parallel text format of the publication is suited to enhancing language acquisition and effectively scaffolding reading proficiency, as such we have made this event free to encourage all those studying Irish to attend.
Reserve tickets below.
Speakers:
Declan Kiberd
Brian O'Connor