Book review: story of a journal is also history of a literary scene and its writers

'Inside Innti' gives a vivid account of Cork in the early 1970s, where a group of young poets altered the course of Irish poetry

The ‘Innti’ poets in the early 1970s, from left: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Michael Davitt, Gabriel Rosenstock, and Liam Ó Muirthile. Picture: Bill Doyle

• Inside Innti: A new wave in Irish poetry 
• Edited by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Tristan Rosenstock 
• Cork University Press, €49

Literary journals come and go. Some leave more of an impact than others. 

What began as a pamphlet published by University College Cork students in 1970, however, would not only change the complexion of Irish-language poetry, but spawn live readings that make up part of the folklore of this groundbreaking publication. 

It arguably laid the ground for the rich performance poetry scene that is thriving in Ireland.

Fifty-four years after the poetry journal Innti launched the voices of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Michael Davitt, Liam Ó Muirthile, and Gabriel Rosenstock, this new book, Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry, seeks to examine the cultural climate from which the journal emerged and hopes to capture a portrait of this literary and cultural phenomenon.

As Cork City pulsated with poetry and music in the early 1970s, a revolution in Irish-language poetry was about to be launched on the banks of the Lee.

Inspired by the innovative energy of composer and musician Seán Ó Riada, and under the watchful and critical eye of resident poet Seán Ó Ríordáin, four pioneering poets established a journal that would alter the course of Irish-language literature. 

The electrifying readings, which drew enormous crowds throughout Cork, are part of Innti’s legacy, and this collection of essays examines the numerous strands of the story. 

This timely publication seeks to explain why Cork City and UCC provided fertile terrain and how “a second blossoming” occurred in modern Irish-language poetry at this vibrant time.

The first issue of Innti was launched in 1970 and took the form of a broadsheet.

The poets Michael Davitt and Gabriel Rosenstock, together with Con Fada Ó Drisceoil, founded the journal while they were students at UCC.

They wanted to create a platform for a new kind of poetry that would speak to their own generation, and found existing publications too conservative.

Over the years, two more poets also became synonymous with Innti: Liam Ó Muirthile and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. 

Inside Innti: A New Wave in Irish Poetry, devotes a chapter each to these four core poets — Davitt, Rosenstock, Ó Muirthile, and Ní Dhomhnaill — but we included essays by two other Cork poets who were involved in the revival of Innti in the 1980s, Louis de Paor and Colm Breathnach.

Ireland is often depicted as a cultural wasteland in the period leading up to the spirited 1960s, but a lot of groundwork had been carried out in the previous decades by people and organisations that greatly contributed to the intellectual, economic, and artistic life of Ireland.

If winds of change were blowing in from the US through the music of Bob Dylan and the civil-rights movement, we must also acknowledge the huge power of the Catholic Church and the draw of religious life. 

Editors of 'Inside Innti' Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Tristan Rosenstock.

Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh warns against thinking of the changes that took place in the 1960s in ‘stark binary terms’, and also examines the intergenerational change that was taking place in Irish political and public life, which brought with it a fresh and new outlook. 

Dylan’s assertion that “the times they are a changin” was not simply a catchy jingle, but would also serve as a watchword for this emerging generation of poets.

The connection between counterculture and the Irish language is recognised by Louis de Paor in his essay, which pays homage to the massive contribution of Seán Ó Tuama to Irish literature and to cultural life in Cork, not to mention his activism for the language and for speakers of Irish on a national level.

Ó Tuama was a key figure on the UCC campus and de Paor acknowledges the role he played in inspiring students in the classroom.

The appointment of poet Seán Ó Ríordáin as writer in residence in 1969 was also momentous. And yet another Seán — Seán Ó Riada — also played a vital role in inspiring these emerging poets to blend tradition and modernity.

In fact, on Ó Ríordáin’s personal copy of Innti 3, Davitt inscribed: ‘Cuimhnigh gurb iad do dhánta féin agus ceol Sheáin Uí Riada is mó is cúis léi bheith ann’ (‘Remember this journal is indebted most of all to your own poems and Seán Ó Riada’s music.’)

If the UCC campus was formative, Corca Dhuibhne was equally important, for it was to the West Kerry Gaeltacht that the Innti poets headed to hone their language skills. 

Pádraig Ó Cíobháin, a contemporary of the Innti poets, writes about the significance of this interaction with people and indigenous culture, especially the role of the mná tí who looked after them. 

He also reminds us of the common greeting among fishermen who would bid one another safe voyage by saying ‘fan innti’, or ‘stay in her, (in the naomhóg/boat)’, giving the journal its name.

Inclusivity is an important aspect of the Innti story.

Their mission statement was that there was room in the vessel for many, and so we find a diverse selection of voices represented on the pages of Innti, from traditional verse to the more avant garde, men and women, straight and gay, young and old, native speaker and Irish-language learner.

What mattered most was the poetry.

The Innti aesthetic was richly enhanced through collaboration with leading visual artists, whose work featured not only on the cover of each edition, but also throughout its pages. 

Past issues of Innti feature the work of Pauline Bewick, Brian Bourke, Pat Muldowney and Michael Mulcahy, and Innti 9 includes work from students of Crawford College of Art. 

Indeed, for the cover of Inside Innti we chose a piece by Noelle Noonan, who was featured in Innti 14.

Davitt and the various editors, as well as designer Máire Nic Fhinn, were mindful of the layout and the look of the journal, and their attention to detail paid off. Innti set the standard for a stylishly-designed journal. Innti brought Irish poetry from black and white to technicolour.

But the journal, its poets, and the raucous recitals at Innti events would not only prove a seminal point in Irish-language poetry. 

Clíona Ní Ríordáin’s essay examines how other poets, whose medium was English, were swept up in the Innti energy and excited by what they saw at the large-scale ‘happenings’ in Cork City in the early 1970s.

However, as Alan Titley reminds us in his contribution, the Innti poets all had their own very distinctive voices and views and were by no means following an agreed manifesto.

Interviews with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Gabriel Rosenstock reinforce that point. Ní Dhomhnaill reveals how she often felt like the ‘token woman’, while Rosenstock divulges that he “never liked Ó Ríordáin’s mind, or his diction”.

Their poems are as exciting today as they were when they first appeared on the pages of Innti and budding poets in UCC and across the country remain enthralled by their poems, which opened the door to ‘sex, drugs and rock ’ n’ roll’ in Irish-language poetry. 

This collection set out to demonstrate the significance of Innti in Ireland’s cultural landscape, and to reignite readers’ interest in the work of the poets associated with it.

• Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh is poet and a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish at UCC
• Tristan Rosenstock is a broadcaster with RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, an editor, and an author

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