I Am Lewy
This is the first appearance in English of six-year-old Lewy and his unique, impressionistic account of a tumultuous few months in the early 1920s.
At the fair with his demobbed, slightly shellshocked father, under his seamstress mother’s table while she measures the clients, minding his siblings on the Green across from the Workhouse, entangled with memories of ‘Brazenface’ Rosaleen McNally in the Enclosure by the Earl’s Wood, and the skeleton in the sandpit, he tries to get his head around it all.
A vivid, warm voice brought to us from the Irish by Mícheál Ó hAodha in this translation of Eoghan Ó Tuairisc’s novella, An Lomnochtán (1977).
Eoghan Ó Tuairisc
Born Eugene Rutherford Watters in 1919, Eoghan Ó Tuairisc built a reputation as an innovative stylist in both Irish and English. Ó Tuairisc’s work includes poetry, drama, short stories, novels, essays and lectures in Irish and English.
His best-known novels are L’Attaque (1962), Dé Luain (1966) and An Lomnochtán (1977). His poetry collections include The Week-End of Dermot and Grace (1964), Lux Aeterna (1964), Rogha an Fhile (1974), and Dialann sa Diseart (1981, with Rita E. Kelly). Ó Tuairisc also wrote a number of plays, including Na Mairnéalaigh, Cúirt an Mhéan Oíche, Lá Fhéile Mhichíl, An Hairyfella in Ifreann and Fornocht do Chonac.
An inaugural member of Aosdána, he died in 1982 and is buried in his native town, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway.
Mícheál Ó hAodha is an acclaimed poet and translator from Galway in the west of Ireland who writes in the Irish language. He has written poetry, short stories, journalism and academic books on Irish social history, particularly relating to Travellers, the Irish working-class experience, and the Irish who emigrated to Britain.
Mícheál is also an accomplished translator: recent acclaimed translations from the Irish include: Seán Ó Ríordáin: Life and Work by Seán Ó Coileán (Mercier Press, 2018); Exiles by Dónall Mac Amhlaigh (Parthian, 2020); and This Road of Mine by Seosamh Mac Grianna (Lilliput Press, 2020).
He is a part-time lecturer in the departments of History and Comparative Literature at the University of Limerick.
www.michealohaodha.com
Author portrait © Picture by Una Watters with permission from Rita Kelly