Eithne Strong was a bilingual Irish poet and writer who wrote in both Irish and English. Her first poems in Irish were published in Comhar 1943-44 under the name Eithne Ni Chonaill. She was a founder member of the Runa Press whose early chapbooks featured artwork by among others Jack B. Yeats, Sean Keating, among others. The press was noted for the publication in 1943 of Marrowbone Lane by Robert Collis which depicts the fierce fighting that took place during the Easter Rising of 1916.
Life and work
Strong was born in Glensharrold, Co. Limerick to school teachers, John and Kathleen O'Connell. She went to the Irish speaking school Colaiste Muire Ennis. Strong moved to Dublin but was not able to afford college at the time. She worked in the Civil Service for a year. She met her husband while in Dublin. Psychoanalyst Rupert Strong was twelve years her senior and though against the wishes of her family she stayed there and married him on 12 November 1943. She founded Runa Press, a small poetry press and worked there. They had nine children the last of whom required full-time care due to a mental handicap. She went to college in Trinity College, Dublin in her forties where she got a B.A in 1973. She was encouraged and admired in her poetry by Brendan Kennelly, Padraic Colum, Hilton Edwards and Kevin Casey. She taught creative writing and did lecture tours in the USA. Author and poet Mary O'Donnell in her foreword-essay to Strong's poems suggested that “diversity of thought and impulse makes these poems radiate humanity, belief and a revelatory sense of justice.” The editor of Poethead Wordpress, Christine Elizabeth Murray has linked the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, Padraic Colum and Eithne Strong, describing their work "as an example of the triumph of art and literature providing an amazing root-system for new writers in terms of earthly estate, land and language". In 1991 she won the Kilkenny Design Award for Flesh – The Greatest Sin. She was a member of Aosdána. She died in Monkstown, Dublin in 1999. The Dún Laoghaire Annual Book Festival,'Mountains to the Sea' awards the Rupert & Eithne Strong Poetry Prize now the Strong/Shine Award made possible by the generous support of Shine, the national organisation dedicated to the needs of those affected by mental ill health. On International Women's Day 2000, an event was held to commemorate the life and work of Eithne Strong at the Irish Writer's Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin and a room was named in her honour in 2012. Her manuscripts are stored un-cataloged at the National Library of Ireland. http://irishwriterscentre.ie/collections/our-venue-your-event
"Mullaghareirk: Aspects in Perspective". Author writes about her youth in the Eire-Ireland Review, ed. Michael O'Siadhail
'Thomas Mann Country' in Poetry Ireland Review, ed. Michael O'Siadhail
Translation
‘Tetrach of Galilee’, translated by Eithne Strong in The Finest Stories of Padraic Ó Conaire, 15 short stories, with other writers 32-45
Criticism
Bertram, Vicki. ed. Kicking Daffodils: Twentieth Century Women Poets. Smyth, Ailbhe.Dodging Around the Grand Piano:Sex, Politics and Contemporary Irish Women's Poetry.Edinburgh University Press, 1997. 56–83.
Haberstroh, Patricia Boyle. ed. My Self, My Muse: Irish Women Poets Reflect on Life and Art. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001.
Heininger, Joseph, Eithne Strong in Gonzalez, Alexander, Irish Women Writers: an A to Z Guide, Greenwood, 2006, pp. 303–8.
O'Donnell, Mary. "Introduction". In Spatial Nosing:New and Selected Poems. Galway: Salmon, 1993
O'Dushlaine Tadgh. Southword, Vol, 2, No.1, Winter 1999."The Magnanimous Poetry of Eithne Strong. Review of "Nobel" published by Coisceim 1998.
McWilliams, Deborah H. Eithne Strong' in Gonzalez, Alexander. Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, Aldwych Press, London, 1997, pp. 390–93.
Smyth, Ailbhe. ed. Wildish Things: An Anthology of New Irish Women's Writing. Attic, 1989, 1990.
Terente, Ines Praga. A Voice of Their Own? The Role of Women in Contemporary Irish Poetry. Universidad de Valladolid Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 5 : 131–41.
