Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry

As Cork city pulsated with poetry and music in the early 1970s, a revolution in Irish-language poetry was about to be launched on the banks of the Lee. Inspired by the innovative energy of composer and musician Seán Ó Riada, and under the watchful and, sometimes, critical eye of resident poet Seán Ó Ríordáin a group of four pioneering poets established a journal that would alter the course of Irish-language poetry and literature. Over fifty years after Innti first launched the voices of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Michael Davitt, Liam Ó Muirthile, and Gabriel Rosenstock, this bilingual book seeks to examine the cultural climate from which the journal emerged and hopes to capture a portrait of this literary and cultural phenomenon. The electrifying readings which drew enormous crowds throughout Cork are among the many mythologies surrounding the story of Innti, and this collection of essays correlates and challenges the numerous strands of the story for the first time. While Ó Ríordáin labelled them a ＂school＂, others have unconvincingly described Innti as a movement. This timely publication seeks to explain why Cork city and UCC provided fertile terrain and how, in Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s words, ＂a second blossoming＂ occurred in modern Irish-language poetry at this vibrant time. Including interviews and reflective essays, as well as insightful academic arguments, this book reassesses Innti’s contribution to twentieth-century Irish literature.