- This article is about Austin Clarke the Irish poet. For the Canadian novelist of the same name see: Austin Clarke. Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke CM, OOnt (born 26 July 1934) is a Canadian Novelist, Essayist and
Austin Clarke (May 9, 1896–March 19, 1974) was one of the leading Irish poets of the generation after W. B. Yeats. Events 1457 BC - Battle of Megiddo (15th century BC between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Year 1896 ( MDCCCXCVI) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Leap year Events 1279 - A Mongolian victory in the Battle of Yamen ends the Song Dynasty in China. Year 1974 ( MCMLXXIV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the 1974 Gregorian calendar. The history of Irish poetry includes the poetries of two languages one in Irish and the other in English. He also wrote plays, novels and memoirs. A play, or stageplay, is a form of Literature written by a Playwright, almost always consisting of Dialogue between Fictional characters A novel (from Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new" "news" or "short story for other uses see Memoir (disambiguation As a literary Genre, a memoir (from the French: mémoire Clarke's main contribution to Irish poetry was the rigour with which he used technical means borrowed from classical Irish language poetry when writing in English. Irish (ga ''Gaeilge'' is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish.
Effectively, this meant writing English verse based not so much on metre as on complex patterns of assonance, consonance, and half rhyme. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States The metre or meter is a unit of Length. It is the basic unit of Length in the Metric system and in the International Assonance is repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within Phrases or Sentences, and together with Alliteration Half rhyme, sometimes called slant, sprung, near rhyme, oblique rhyme, off rhyme or imperfect rhyme is Consonance Describing his technique to Robert Frost, Clarke said "I load myself down with chains and try to wriggle free. Robert Lee Frost (March 26 1874 &ndash January 29 1963 was an American Poet. "
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Early career
Clarke's early poetry clearly shows the influence of Yeats. His first book, The Vengeance of Fionn was a long narrative poem retelling an Ossianic legend. Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the It met with critical acclaim and, unusually for a first book of poetry, went to a second edition. Between this and the 1938 collection Night and Morning, Clarke published a number of collections, all of which, to one extent or another, can be seen as being written in the shadow of Yeats. There was, however, one significant difference; unlike the older poet, Clarke was a Catholic, and themes of guilt and repentance run through this early work. Catholic is an Adjective derived from the Greek adjective '' / 'katholikos' meaning "whole" or "complete".
Theatre years
Between 1938 and 1955, Clarke published no new lyric or narrative poetry. He was co-founder of the Lyric Theatre Company and wrote a number of verse plays for them. He also worked as a journalist and had a weekly poetry programme on RTÉ radio. It seems likely that he also experienced some kind of personal crisis during this time and this had significant consequences for his later poetry.
Return to poetry
Clarke returned to the publishing with the 1955 collection Ancient Lights, and was to continuing writing and publishing prolifically for the rest of his life. Although he continued to use the same Gaelic-derived technical means, this late poetry is markedly different from the earlier work. Irish (ga ''Gaeilge'' is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish. Many of the poems he then wrote were satires of the Irish church and state, while others were sensual celebrations of human sexuality, free of the guilt of the earlier poems. Generally speaking human sexuality is how people experience and express themselves as sexual beings He also published the intensely personal Mnemosyne Lay in Dust, which is a poem sequence detailing the fictional Maurice Devanes's nervous breakdown and subsequent recovery. Mental breakdown (also known as nervous breakdown or snapping) is a non-medical term used to describe a sudden acute attack of Mental illness such as
Clarke also came to admire the work of more avant-garde poets as Ezra Pound and Pablo Neruda, both of whom he wrote poems about. Avant-garde (avɑ̃gaʁd in French) means "advance guard" or "vanguard Ezra Weston Loomis Pound ( Hailey, Idaho Territory, United States October 30 1885 – Venice, Italy November 1 1972 was an American Expatriate Pablo Neruda ( July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and later legal name of the Chilean writer and politician A number of the late long poems, such as, for instance, the 1971 Tiresias, show the effects of reading these poets in their looser formal structures. Everes redirects here For the Butterfly Genus, see Everes (genus. Clarke set up the Bridge Press to publish his own work, which allowed him the freedom to publish work that many mainstream Irish publishers of the time might have been reluctant to handle. His Collected Poems was published in 1974 and a Selected Poems in 1976.
Other writings
In addition to some twenty volumes of poetry and numerous plays, Clarke published three novels: The Bright Temptation (1932), The Singing Men at Cashel (1936), and The Sun Dances at Easter (1952). Year 1932 ( MCMXXXII) was a Leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. All of these were banned by the Irish Censorship Board. He also published two volumes of memoirs, Twice Round the Black Church (1962) and A Penny in the Clouds (1968) and a number of scattered critical essays and book reviews. While all of these prose writings are of interest, Clarke's reputation rests firmly on his poetry.
Family
In 1920 Clarke married Cornelia (Lia) Cummins. The marriage effectively lasted only a few days, and Clarke spent several months in St. Patrick's Hospital recovering from it, but they did not divorce before Cummins died in 1943. Clarke met, had three sons with, and later married (1945) Norah Esmerelda Patricia Walker (1900–1985), granddaughter of Matt Harris, MP for East Galway from 1885 to 1890. Matthew Harris (also Mat or Matt) (1826– 13 April 1890) was an Irish Fenian, Land Leaguer, nationalist East Galway was a UK Parliament constituency in Ireland returning one Member of Parliament 1885-1922 They had three sons. [1] Austin Clarke lived beside the bridge in the south Dublin suburb of Templeogue. The new Templeogue bridge was renamed The Austin Clarke Bridge
References
- ^ Mary Shine Thompson, " Clarke, Augustine Joseph (1896–1974)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 17 Feb 2008.
External links
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