Tributes have been paid to the poet and translator Michael Hartnett, who died early yesterday in St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, aged 58.
His publisher, Mr Peter Fallon, said, "His dying is a darkness in the world. In his honesty and dedication, he was in some way the personification of poetry."
A fellow poet and friend, Tony Curtis, said: "He was not one to draw big crowds but poets loved him for his craft. He'd more lyrical talent in his little finger than any of the rest of us in our whole bodies."
A member of Aosdana and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award winner, Mr Hartnett was best known for his A Farewell To English (1975), a sequence of biting, polemical poems. After its publication, he pledged never to write again in the English language and returned to his native Newcastle West, Co Limerick.
However, he later moved back to live in Dundrum in Dublin, where he wrote bilingual collections including A Necklace of Wrens (1987), Poems to Younger Women (1988), and The Killing of Dreams (1992).
In recent years he had been studying and translating the work of the three great Irish 17th-century poets - O Bruadair, Haicead and O Rathaille.
The last major collection of his own work was Selected and New Poems (1994).
Paying tribute last night, Labour TD Mr Michael D. Higgins said: "What he brought to life and letters was a very particular incisive, wry and deeply human perspective."
Born in Croom, Co Limerick, Mr Hartnett was educated at UCD and Trinity and worked in a variety of jobs before taking up writing full-time. He was a former poetry editor of The Irish Times and co-editor of Arena.
He is survived by his partner, Ms Angela Liston, his children, Niall and Lara, and their mother, Rosemary.
An obituary will appear in Saturday's edition of The Irish Times
