The Poems of Valentin Iremonger

Valentin Iremonger (1918 1991) is the quiet man of 20th century Irish poetry in English. As he wrote to Robert Graves in 1944, If, as you say, poetry is a sharing of secrets, today these secrets are proscribed and it is not by shouting and tearing one s hair or by roaring through a microphone they will be shared. As a diplomat living with his family abroad (First Secretary in the UK, Ambassador in Sweden, India, and Luxembourg), he was in no position to promote his poems, but nor was it his temperament to do so. The poet (in Irish) Máire mhac an tSaoi wrote after his death: Valentin Iremonger, both as a poet and as a human being, radiated integrity. His poems are, to use a phrase Iremonger applied in a review, from the only place where poetry can be found in the everyday life of the people around... And as Seán O Faoiláin wrote, one rarely hears a modern idiom, a modern speech. (I find it in the tense poetry of W.R. Rodgers and in the hesitating rhythm of Valentin Iremonger) . Iremonger s poems are the epitome of feeling thought the rhythm, whether hesitant or driving, carrying them often in unusually long but lucid sentences. This collection is as close to complete as we have found possible: it includes all poems from his published volumes, with some published only in periodicals, and a few unpublished. It also includes passages of poetry from his radio play Wrap up my Green Jacket. ________________________________________

Valentin Iremonger was born in Dublin in 1918. He attended University College, Dublin. His first poems were published in 1944, and with his wife Sheila Manning he worked in theatre for some years. He then became a diplomat, serving as First Secretary in London, then as Irish Ambassador in Sweden and the Scandinavian countries, in India and in Luxembourg. Following an accident in 1979 he retired to Dublin. He died in 1991. In 1945 he won the Æ Memorial Prize for poetry. He was poetry editor of the magazine Envoy from 1949 to 1951. He translated Dialann Deoraí, by Dónall Mac Amhlaigh, as An Irish Navvy (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964); and Rothar Mór an tSaoil, by Micí Mac Gabhann as The Hard Road to Klondyke (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973). He also published a translation of Rilke into Irish in a dual-language edition, as Beatha Mhuire /sraith dhánta Ghearmáinise le Rainer Maria Rilke (Baile Átha Cliath, Coiscéim, 1990). His volumes of poetry are: On the Barricades (with Robert Greacen and Bruce Williamson), 1944; Reservations, 1950; Horan's Field and Other Reservations (1972); and Sandymount (1988). He also wrote a verse play for radio, Wrap up my Green Jacket, broadcast on the BBC in 1947.