Charles Baudelaire ( 1821 - 1867 )

More than any other poet, Baudelaire's influence on my own poetry has been immense. I discovered him, his name rather, perhaps in connection with Jim Morrison, another 'bad' boy, or perhaps it was Bob Dylan, on the Desire album. I can't really recollect, but suffice it to say that it would have been sometime in the mid to late eighties, almost thirty five years ago. Christ! That makes you think...

Well, ( I've noticed while 'composing' this blog that I tend to use this word a lot, never noticed it till now) over those years, Baudelaire, I have found, is the poet that I have been taking down off the shelves more and more, as the years went by. I never asked, or even desired that it should be so. It just happened this way.

I really would have only read him sporadically in Paris. It was when I returned to Dublin in 98 that I really started to read Les Fleurs de Mal with any real specific interest. I suppose it was my contact with the city of Dublin that instilled that. I worked as a Barman for those first years, so my relationship to the city became very hands on.

But, as the years passed, and my profession changed, I became a TESOL ( Teacher of English to Students of Other Languages ), I noticed that I stayed with him. Baudelaire is essentially a city poet, and I was too, at the time. I was busy trying to write The Dark Pool ( mgv2>publishing, 2015). This book would take me the better part of 15 years to write, despite the fact that it says 2000 - 2009 on the original cover.

This book, my first, almost killed me to write, as I was attempting, as far as I know, something unprecedented in contemporary Irish writing, at least, and that was to attempt to bring Baudelaire's decadent 19th century French aesthetic to the early 21st century in Ireland. Well, Dublin, really.
I was really learning, writing this book. I had, up till then, just finished a short work which was eventually published in eBook format under the title Antiope. This work had taken me over eleven or so years to write. The mid eighties or late eighties to 1999. Writing came very slowly to me then, I was learning the craft, as they say.

Well, after The Dark Pool was primarily completed, around 2013, I decided to translate/transverse Baudelaire himself, into English. Somehow completing that first full length collection of poetry, my first, had given me the courage to take on the translation of a major work. It was a very difficult and challenging process, but one which I would never regret. You learn so much about the craft of poetry when you translate the work of a master poet like Baudelaire. His influence has been enormous, so many poets worldwide have been influenced in some way by him. And yet, in Ireland, you'd hardly think it!

Well, this is what Dennis Greig and myself finally presented to the reading public, four years ago now. As far as I know, its the first book of its kind since Ulick O'Connor had his translations of the French poet published back in the nineties. And you know what, it has never been reviewed, in all this time! What a load of shite, t'would make you scowl...

https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/peter-o-neill

http://levurelitteraire.com/peter-oneill/