âAnd O she was the Sunday/in every weekâ. Who now remembers the poet who wrote those lines used in a long-running Bord na Móna TV ad campaign? The 125th anniversary of the birth of their author, poet Austin Clarke â for many years a literary critic for this newspaper â is a timely reminder of a writer who deserves to be remembered for much else, not least taking on Church and State in his work at a time when few confronted the might of the crozier.
Clarke was born on Dublinâs Manor Street on May 9th, 1896, but in old age became the poet of Templeogue where for almost 40 years he lived in Bridge House, now the location of a bridge on the Dodder named after the poet. In a number of his poems he celebrates that local river and records the changes in the area from rural to suburban in the 1950s and 1960s. In his long lifetime, Clarke saw Ireland move from being a part of the British Empire to the independent but flawed state that came in for close scrutiny in so much of his work.