Showing another side to Cork writer Frank O’Connor 

Though best known for his short stories, Frank O'Connor also translated many poems from Irish to English. Gregory A Schirmer has collected these for his comprehensive anthology, Look Back To Look Forward 

 Frank O'Connor pictured at Cobh in 1961 after returning from the US. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive 

Frank O’Connor is acknowledged as one of the finest short story writers Ireland has ever produced. While stories such as Guests of the Nation and First Confession brought him literary fame, lesser known is the Cork author’s extensive work in the field of translation. Between the mid-1920s and the mid-1960s, O’Connor published 121 English translations of poems in Irish, spanning work from the 8th to the 19th centuries. 

The lack of awareness around this area of O’Connor’s work is something that Gregory A Schirmer has aimed to address in editing the comprehensive anthology Look Back to Look Forward: Frank O’Connor’s Complete Translations from the Irish, the paperback edition of which has just been published.