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Celebration was tinged with a shared sadness at the loss of an original voice
A poignant period for Irish poetry continued in Dún Laoghaire on Saturday as this year’s Dlr Irish Times Poetry Now award, won by Dennis O’Driscoll’s final collection, Dear Life, was presented to his widow, poet Julie O’Callaghan. In receiving it, she read the words of Czech poet Miroslav Holub’s Ode to Joy: “Like caryatids/our uplifted arms/hold up time’s granite load/and defeated/we shall always win.”
Victory was not, however, all that important; a sense of loss presided and O’Driscoll’s collection had been dominated by mortality and musings on the randomness of life, its sneaky haste. “The tally of years/added up so rapidly/it appeared I had/been short-changed,/ tricked by sleight/of hand, fallen victim/to false bookkeeping.” (From Time Enough.)
