Cathal O'Searcaigh
Renowned poet and playwright Cathal O'Searcaigh was born in Meenalea, Gortahork in 1956. This area is known as Cloch Cheannfhaola, or Cloughaneely, the heartland of the Donegal Gaeltacht.
Following his education at the local national and vocational schools, Cathal studied French, Russian and Irish at the National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick and Celtic Studies at Maynooth 1977. For a while he worked for the national broadcasting station, RTE, presenting various cultural programmes such as Aisling Gheal.
O Searcaigh has been writing professionally in the Irish language since the late 1970s. Literary influences on the young O Searcaigh included Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and French author Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. His late father, a seasonal worker in Scotland, brought back second hand editions of the poetry of Robert Burns, who also became an inspiration to the young O Searcaigh.
Over the years, O Searcaigh has produced eight groundbreaking collections of poetry, many of which have been translated into several languages. He has, over the past decade, emerged as one of Ireland's most distinguished modern day poets.
His latest collection, Ag Tnúth leis an tSolas, was awarded the Irish Times Literature Prize for Irish Language Books in 2001. In the past few years Cathal has read his work at Arts Festivals and literary celebrations in Belgium, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Wales, Scotland, England and Canada. In the spring of 1995, he was elected a member of Aosdána. His collection Na Buachaillí Bána (CIC 1996) has received more media coverage than any other volume of verse published in the Irish language in recent years. "The best poems in the collection," according to The Irish Times, "are exceptional and single Cathal Ó Searcaigh out, not so much as a maker of poems - of which the Irish language has its fair share - but as one of our finest working poets. This is not meant as faint praise but as a statement of fact."
Titles:
Light on Distan Hills: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster 2009)