Life

He was born in Baile Mhúirne

Ballyvourney

Baile Bhuirne , anglicised as Ballyvourney is a Gaeltacht village in south-west County Cork, Ireland. It is a civil parish in the barony of Muskerry West and is also one half of the Ecclesiastical parish of Baile Bhuirne agus Cúil Aodha in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne-Location and...

, County Cork

County Cork

County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...

, the eldest of three children of Seán Ó Ríordáin of Baile Mhúirne and Mairéad Ní Loineacháin of Cúil Ealta.

English was his first language. His mother spoke English; his father spoke Irish and English. His father's mother, a native Irish speaker, lived next door. His next-door neighbor on the other side also spoke Irish. It wasn't long before Ó Ríordáin gained some knowledge of Irish.

Seán was only ten when his father died of tuberculosis. Five years later, the family moved to Iniscarra, on the outskirts of Cork City

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

. After settling there, Seán and his brother Tadhg were sent to school in the North Monastery Christian Brothers school, on Cork's northside. When he was a young man he was diagnosed with tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

. He lived to the age of sixty and was constantly in poor health.

Poet

Ó Ríordáin published four books: Eireaball Spideoige (A Robin's Tail) (Sáirséal Ó Marcaigh 1952, 1986), a volume of some hundred pages, and three subsequent booklets, Brosna (Kindling) (1964), Línte Liombó (Limbo Lines) (1971), and the posthumous Tar éis mo Bháis (After my Death).

The title of his first collection is borrowed from the first line of the final verse of Ó Ríordáin's more celebrated poem. A new frisson was created in Irish language poetry when this poem, Adhlacadh Mo Mháthar (My Mother's Burial), was first published in 1945. It celebrates the innocence, devoutness, and motherliness of the poet's dead mother.

Interpretation

Ó Ríordáin delineates his personal aesthetic and theology in the preface to his first collection of poetry, Eireaball Spideoige (A Robin’s Tail) (1952), in which he highlights the relationship between artistic expression, poetry in particular, and being. He argues that poetry is to be under the aspect of another and without that relationship one can only ever produce a prosaic narrative. In that same preface, Ó Ríordáin considers an appropriation of an infant's mind as a prerequisite for the poetic act. The poem An Peaca (The Sin) reveals that Ó Ríordáin's ability to write poetry is at once lost if his immediate relation to nature is interrupted.

Ó Ríordáin has been described as a Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an poet. As well as writing poetry, he wrote a column in The Irish Times

The Irish Times

The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...

during the latter years of his life in which he spoke vehemently about national affairs. A number of his poems have appeared in English translation, for example, Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (ed. Patrick Crotty).