Stamp of approval for Máirtín Ó Direáin’s life’s work - Ó Cuív
Written by Eamon Ó Cuív Friday, 28 May 2010
Launching the commemorative stamp in honour of Máirtín Ó Direáin today, the Minister for Social Protection, Éamon Ó Cuív TD said
“Maybe there is something poetic in itself about the fact that a number of strands of the distinguished life of Máirtín Ó Direáin have all come together here in his own native place today. Máirtín Ó Direáin was not only a pioneering poet who always had a respect for the nature and the community of his own place, but he also spent part of his life working in the Post Office in Galway, something that adds to the commemoration of his life and work by An Post today with this commemorative stamp.
“In a way many of Máirtín Ó Direáin’s poems are an accurate recording of the nature and the life of the people of Inis Mór/Árainn in times gone by.
“Many school children learned Máirtín Ó Direáin’s poem, an tEarrach Thiar. Through Máirtín’s fantastic imagination and with very natural words that are musical and accurate, he brings us on a journey for a little while in that poem to a different life and back to another time altogether, when people had a closer link with nature.
“For a few minutes in our own imagination, he creates a picture of a calm, sunny day in a beautiful place and we almost imagine that we are there ourselves. It is an example of the talent that Máirtín Ó Direáin had as a poet, that he was able to create a rich picture, almost as if it were a film or movie, with simple and natural words.
“It is fitting then that it is a natural picture of Máirtín Ó Direáin himself and the nature that was so close to his heart that is on the commemorative stamp, from his own former employer, An Post, that we are launching officially here today,” Ó Cuív added.
ENDS
