Earrach Phrág

Publication Instance Details #560

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes

Details

Human Rights Issues	State Violence
Irish Context	Specific Irish place or place-name mentioned Other
Languages	Irish
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Journal
Paratext Text	(do Phádraig Hamilton)
Notes	This poem is overall a reflection on Czech activist Jan Palach. He was a Czech student of history and political economy at Charles University in Prague. His self-immolation was a political protest against the end of the Prague Spring resulting from the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies. The speaker of the poem reflects on this, as well as various aspects of his youth in this poem, including his friend and fellow poet John Moriarty, resisting evictions in Ventry, watching and listening to news about the Czech uprising, and so forth. The speaker reflects upon the oppression of the Czech people under the Soviets, as well as their own lack of interest or activism on behalf of the people of the East. Patrick Pearse appears to be mentioned notably in the final verse, and there is also a likely reference to poet Aogán Ó Rathaille in the poem.