Máire Mhac an tSaoi: Contradictory views in emerging voice

A documentary on Máire Mhac an tSaoi gives a rare insight to the poet, writes Richard Fitzpatrick

MÁIRE Mhac an tSaoi was born in 1922. It was six years after her father, Seán MacEntee, took part in the Easter Rising, a man who fought in the GPO, co-founded Fianna Fáil and served as Seán Lemass’s Tánaiste in the 1960s.

In one of her Irish-language poems, trying to tease out where herself and her father became strange with each other, Mhac an tSaoi wonders: “I am the same age as the state/ and neither turned out as you wished.”