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Life
b. Sandymount, Dublin; ed. Christian Brothers, Synge St., and Coláiste Mhuire; trained at the Abbey School of Acting; joined Abbey Company, 1939-40; moved to Gate, 1942-44; won AE Award, 1945; joined Foreign Service [Foreign Affairs], 1946; suspended on writing letter to Irish Times deploring American incarceration of Ezra Pound in St. Elizabeth’s Mental Asylum, and again for publicly demonstrating from the audience with Roger McHugh against low standard of production of Plough and the Stars, Nov. 1947; |
posted with Ministry for Local Government; later appt. Ambassador to Sweden, 1964-68; India, 1968-73; Luxembourg, 1973-79; then Portugal until retirement in 1980; with Robert Greacen, ed. Contemporary Irish Poetry (Faber 1949); poetry editor of Envoy, 1949-51, the magazine that issued his first collection, Reservations (1950); prob. author of profile of Kavanagh in The Leader, leading to an unsuccessful suit by the poet in Feb. 1954; appt. Ambassador to Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, 1954; unhappy as ambassador in posts outside of London; increasingly alcoholic; |
trans. into English Micí Mac Gabhann’s Rothaí Mor an tSaoil as The Hard Road to Klondike (1962), and Dónal Mac Amhlaigh’s Dialann Deoraí as An Irish Navvy (1964); obliged by illness to hand over editorship of Faber Book of Irish Verse to John Montague, 1967; issued Horan’s Field and Other Reservations (1972); followed by Sandymount, Dublin (1988), a selection; survived by Sheila Iremonger; his ‘Icarus’ poem has been anthologised most frequently. DIW DIL IF HAM OCIL |
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| Poetry |
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| Translations |
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| Miscellaneous |
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| Query: edited a collection of Irish short stories, c.1944 [see Carraig Books, Cat., Oct. 1992]. |
| Discography |
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Bibliographical details
On The Barricades (New Frontier Press [135 Tritonville Road, Sandymount, Dublin 1944), 37pp. [Robert Greacen, Bruce Williamson, Valentine Iremonger]; Iremonger’s contributions, pp.31-37 [Longer poem in ten canto-parts (I-X) of 3-5 quartrains, the first entitled ‘Well, I do Declare’, the ninth (’Evening - Storm Coming Up’, and the tenth ‘The Choice’.] (See also under Greacen, supra.)
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Commentary
Donagh MacDonagh, ed & intro.., Poems from Ireland, with a preface by R. M. Smylie (Dublin The Irish Times 1944), bio-note: ‘a civil servant who has acted, studied stage production and written a great deal of verse. His first book of poems, Reservations, is due soon from Poetry: Scotland publications.’
John Montague, ‘The Impact of International Modern Poetry on Irish Writing’, in Irish Poets in English: The Thomas Davis Lectures on Anglo-Irish Poetry, ed. Sean Lucy (Cork: Mercier Press 1972): ‘The main opposition to the new-Gaelic lobby during and after the war years was Valentin Iremonger, whose jazzy rhythms and use of urban slang can be seen in “Icarus” [quotes, as infra] / More effective, because less programmatically modern, was his beautiful adaptation of John Crowe Ransom’s “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” to record another, very Irish death [quotes “Elegy”, as infra].’ (p.154; for full text, see RICORSO Library, “Critical Classics”, infra.)
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Robert Greacen, Brief Encounters (1991): Valentin Iremonger, Dept of Ed., with Joseph O’Neill; lived in Sandymount; Member of the New Theatre, inclined to the Left; produced a collection, On the Barricades (New Frontiers Press) with Greacen [and Bruce Williamson]; from Catholic Irish stock; learned Irish, and translated Michael McGowan’s The Hard Road to Klondike; Irish diplomatic service; also with Greacen, ed. Contemporary Irish Poetry (1949), for Faber - Uncle Tom’s Cabin - but without a contribution from Kavanagh. [26-27]
Patricia Boylan, All Cultivated People (1988), November 1982, ‘Val Iremonger read from his work [at the United Arts Club]; his wife, Sheila, sang to her own musical arrangement ... the poem ‘Wrap Up my Green Kackety’ from Val’s verse-play on Robert Emmet ...’ [258].
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Quotations
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The foregoing both quoted in John Montague, ‘The Impact of International Modern Poetry on Irish Writing’ (1972), as supra. |
The group(s): ‘One group of our established writers denounce you if you are not foreward-moving in a sociological sense. Another group denounce you if you do not write in what they imagine to be an Irish ‘tradition’, but which, in fact, is nothing more than a ‘mode’ which was evolved and popular during the period from the end of the nineteenth century to about 1930, the fraying ends of which are still limply flying. Neither group seems to be interested in the young writer as writer only, as endeavouring to formulate and answer the fundamental question that present themselves to all humanity. The result is that whatever the vitality, communal or personal, that urges a young person to express his conceptions, he often abandons writing in despair at the lack of interest or encouragement.’ (Valentine Iremonger, ‘The Young Writer’ [a symposium], The Bell, Vol. XVII, No. 7, Oct. 1951, p.15; quoted in Terence Brown, Northern Voices, 1975, p.149-50.)
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References
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. 2] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), lists Irish Short Stories (1961), and anthology incl. Moore, Somerville and R, Joyce, Corkery, O’Flaherty, O’Connor ... Plunkett ... Montague [presumably ed. with Greacen].
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Anthologies
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), selects Iremonger’s ‘Icarus’.
Lennox Robinson and Donagh MacDonagh, eds., Oxford Book of Irish Poetry (1958), selects ‘This Houre her Vigill ...’; ‘Hector’; ‘Time, the Faithless’; ‘Icarus’ [pp.322-25].
Brendan Kennelly, ed., Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970), selects ‘Icarus’.
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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3: selects from Horan’s Field and Other Reservations, poems including ‘Icarus’ 1329-20; 661; BIOG 1431.
Patrick Crotty, ed., Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1995), selects “This Houre Her Vigill” [130]; “Clear View in Summer” [131]; “Icarus” [132].
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Notes
Denunciation: At a production of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars in 1947 Valentin Iremonger, the Irish poet and diplomat, stood up in the audience to denounce the incompetence of the Abbey’s artistic policy [var. the standard of production], ‘Having seen what they did to O’Casey’s masterpiece tonight in acting and production, I, for one, am leaving this theatre as a gesture of protest ...’ (Stephen Fay, in the [English] Independent on Sunday, 6 Sept. 1992, p.16’; cited also in Anthony Roche, Contemporary Irish Drama, Gil & Macmillan 19956, p.40.)
Oratory: Iremonger delivered an oration at the funeral of Carl Marstrander (d.23 Dec. 1965), Norwegian Professor of Celtic at Univ. of Oslo, who in 1908 visited the Blaskets to learn Irish, foregoing his place on the Olympic team, and later was active in resistance against the Nazis.
Contra Kavanagh: That Iremonger was indeed the author of the profile of Kavanagh in The Leader which led the latter to sue unsuccessfully is confirmed in John Montague, The Pear is Ripe (2007) - as reviewed in Books Ireland (April 2008), p.76.
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