irishpoetry.ie

a curated directory of Irish poetry · by Simon James Brady

Women poets

Irish women poets from the seventh century to the present.

Women have written poetry in Ireland for as long as there is a record of anyone writing poetry in Ireland.

Líadain, a poet-nun of the seventh century, is the first named poet in Irish literature of either sex. Uallach ingen Muinecháin, who died in 934, is recorded in the Annals of Innisfallen as banfhile Érenn — chief woman poet of Ireland — which tells us the office was a formal one and that it was open to women. Caitilín Dubh was composing elegies for the O'Briens of Thomond in the 1620s, in accentual metres rather than the syllabic forms of the bardic schools.

The most widely reprinted Irish poem of the eighteenth century, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, was composed by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill for her murdered husband — extempore, in the keening tradition, and carried in memory rather than manuscript. Keening was overwhelmingly a women's art, performed at wakes and passed on orally, which is why so little of it carries a name.

Names survive unevenly: a poem written down in a monastery or a bardic school had a much better chance of reaching us than one performed at a graveside. Fewer named women before 1900 is a fact about what was written down, not about who was composing.

The list below runs from the seventh century to the present.

207 poets, earliest first.

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