Life
1912-1964 [prop. Leslie H. Yodaiken; fam. “the Yod”]; b. Dublin; ed.
TCD MA, republican socialist; moved to London; poetry and propaganda;
wrote much on children’s games; edited Irish Front with Charles
Donnelly in London; edited Goodbye, Twilight (1936), an Irish anthology with poems of Flann Campbell, Jim Phelan, Margaret Barrington, et al.,
dismissed as ‘rockbottom’ in review by John Hewitt; Daiken’s papers are held in Texas Univ. Library (Harry Ramson Hum. Research Cen.) and the National Library of Ireland. DIW OCIL
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Works
Poetry, Good-bye Twilight, Songs
of ... Struggle in Ireland (London 1936), ill. Harry Kernoff [woodcuts]; The
Signature of All Things (1944), and The Lullaby Book (1957); They Go, The Irish (1944), anthology, with pref. by Sean O’Casey.
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Criticism
See Samuel Beckett, ‘Recent Irish Poetry’ in Bookman, 86 (August 1934); rep. in Michael Smith, ed., The Lace Curtain 4 (Summer 1971), pp.58-63 [passing reference].
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Commentary
Edna Longley, ‘Progress Bookmen: Politics and Northern Protestant
writers since the 1930’, in The Irish Review, 1 (1986),
writes of Leslie Daiken’s committed anthology Goodbye, Twilight
(1936): ‘John Hewitt [and Louis MacNeice] reviewed the anthology and their
judgements coincide. MacNeice describes Goodbye, Twilight, as a
“collection of proletarian poems - some communist, some Irish republican,
and all written in a defiant spirit of opposition ... a violent reaction
against Yeats and all that he stood for”. He notes the mixture of
“the conventional utterance of the international working class’
with poems “that are blatantly nationalistic and ... even devoutly
Roman Catholic”.’ (See further under Longley, Notes, infra.)
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References
Lennox Robinson & Donagh MacDonagh,
eds., Oxford Book of Irish Poetry (1958), selects “Lines to
My Father” (p.321.)
Kathleen Hoagland, ed., 1,000 Years of Irish Poetry: The Gaelic and Anglo-Irish Poets from Pagan Times to the Present (NY: Devin Adair 1947), gives poems of Daiken.
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre (Univ. of Texas at Austin) holds 4 boxes of papers of Leslie Daiken incl. MSS material relating to his children’s stories and correspondence with Samuel Beckett, Austin Clarke, Cyril Cusack, Sean O’Casey, Seumas O’Sullivan, Thomas B. Rudmose-Brown, Blanaid Salkeld, Caitlin Thomas, Arland Ussher, et al. (incl. William Carlos Williams). [link]
Ulster Libraries: Belfast Public Library holds They Go, The Irish (1944). University of Ulster Library holds ‘They Go, The Irish, A Miscellany of War- Time Writing, compiled by Leslie Daiken (London: [Ivor] Nicholson & Watson 1944), 123pp.
Cathach Books (Cat. 12) list Goodbye, Twilight (1936), with woodcuts by Harry Kernoff [£65].
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Notes
They Go, The Irish: A Miscellany of War-Time Writing, compiled
by Leslie Daiken (London: [Ivor] Nicholson & Watson 1944), 123pp.;
contains foreword [airgraph from Denis Johnston at 8th Army HQ blames
the post for being too late to catch this anthology ... blessing from
Walter Starkie]; Sean O’Casey, ‘There they go the Irish’,
[‘Ireland is a kaleidoscope of amazing contrasts. she is the oldest
civilisation in Europe, though she is still in her teens ... A nation
of Roman Catholics who abominate prosleytism, but whose army and clans
carried to the greave, with dirge of squealing pipe and beat of muffled
drum, the body of the most proselytising English bishop ever usurped a
See in Ireland, chiefs weeping over his grave, and hoping that they would
as fair a chance of heaven as the English bishop had ... &c. (p.7)
... even a more scattered race than the Jews (p.17); castigates Irish
politicians North and South from a socialist standpoint]; contrib. Bernard
Arbarnel [?pseud]; Margaret Berington [sic for Barrington]; Flann Campbell,
“Jottings from a Campsite”’, pp.47-54 [‘“Welcome to the Kingdom
Hotel”, says the hut orderly, with a sarcastic flourish ... ending
... Five hundred men eat dry bread for breakfast this morning’]; George Brady, “Four Poems”; Seamus Boy Phelan, “An Irish Child Meets Nazism”; H. L. Morrow, “Journal of Fear”;
Charles Duff [to whom the signed copy in University of Ulster Library
is dedicated], “Dr O’Cassidy’s Neutrality Mixture”; Violet McGuire, “The Departure”; Ewart Milne, “Four Poems”; Donal MacNeachtain, “Letter to Another Emigrant”; Jim Phelan, “Mild and Bitter”; Finlay Thompson, “Anglo-Irish”; “Three Poems”, Leslie Daiken, “From Inside the Railings”; [set in Stephen’s Green with local
references incl. Mangan and ‘Countess’s bust’ (Markievicz); another [‘through
archipelagos of anguish hatched and heated ... Doped of an Indian summer
... Bray was my Balbec’]; “Nightfall in Galway” [‘In Eyre Square the stillness of epilepsy ... about the stone ears
of Ó Connaire (sic) on his plinth, / a leprachaun listening / falls
the husky song of drunkards like the call of a muezzin ... A Church bell
rings and a Spring morning unfolds / her hair of Andalusian jet, and combs
it out, smiling.’]
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