Galway poet Máirtín Ó Direáin, who died in 1988 was a leading figure on the Irish literary scene for most of his lifetime, but in his latter years and since his death, his star went into decline.

However, that may be set to change with the publication of a new collection of his poetry, Na Dánta: Máirtín Ó Direáin which is being launched at the Cumann Merriman Winter School this weekend to mark the 100th anniversary of the Aran-born writer’s birth.

The theme of the Cumann Merriman Winter School, which is based in the Hotel Meyrick in Eyre Square is Máirtín Ó Direáin: 1910-2010, and the Irish language event will feature a series of talks on his life and work given by renowned academics, as well as music and song from Connemara, with a particular focus on the culture of the Aran Islands.

This celebration is “timely because it is 100 years since he was born. But it might be even more timely to examine his poetry,” says Professor Mícheál Mac Craith of NUIG’s Roinn na Gaeilge who is speaking at the conference. “He was very much in the air until the end of the seventies. It is time to reassess him now,” adds Mícheál who has written extensively about the poet.

When Máirtín Ó Direáin first came on the literary scene in the late 1930s there was no tradition of writing modern Irish-language poetry in Ireland, according to the NUIG professor. Very shortly after that, Seán Ó Riordán and Máire Mac an tSaoi also came to public attention and the three of them were hugely influential. But when he began, Ó Direáin broke the mould. In fact, in 1977 he was awarded the Ossian Prize for Poetry, a German literary prize which was especially for people writing in minority languages. At the time, says Mícheál Mac Craith, it was the biggest prize awarded to an Irish writer since Yeats had won the Nobel Prize.

It was a big achievement for Máirtín Ó Direáin who was born into a small farm in Sruthán, Cill Rónain on November 26, 1910, the youngest of a family of four.

But this was a man who had the poetic bent from the word go, according to Mícheál.

“He was always admiring the scenery in Aran and getting in the way of hard work!

“Ó Direáin was just seven when his father died, so he was never introduced to the normal work routine of boys on Aran and he was a bit of an outsider, I suppose.”

He left school at 14, although he returned a couple of years later, and there was also a point at which he considered the priesthood but the flu epidemic of 1924 put paid to that plan.

In 1928 Ó Direáin passed the Post Office exams, and began working in Galway, where he remained until 1937, serving for a time as secretary of Conradh na Gaeilge’s Galway branch. During his period in the city he became involved with the Taibhdhearc, taking part in the new company’s first ever production, Diarmuid agus Gráinne, and many observers feel that it was around then that he began to develop his interest in literature.

“He used to write articles about Aran in Galway newspapers and he had written a few short stories that were pretty mediocre, but he didn’t write a word of prose until he went to Dublin,” says Mícheál Mac Craith.

That happened in 1937 when he got a job as a clerical officer in the Civil Service and moved to the capital, where he was subsequently inspired to write poetry after a lecture he attended. His first collection was published in 1942, with a collection Rogha Dánta being published in 1949.

Mícheál Mac Craith feels that Ó Direáin’s desire to write poetry may have come about because this Irish speaker from Aran was lonely in Dublin.

For more, read page 27 of this week's Galway City Tribune.