Joan Keefe
Joan Trodden Keefe (1931 – February 7, 2013) was an Irish poet, translator, and scholar.
Education and career
Keefe attended University College Dublin.[1] In the early 1970s, she began publishing translations of Irish language poetry, along with her own poetry, in both Irish publications such as Soundings and Kilkenny Magazine and overseas ones such as New Orleans Review.[2] Some of these poems, including her translation of Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin's "His Request," were included by John Montague in the Faber Book of Irish Verse.[3] Others appeared in The Other Voice: Twentieth-Century Women's Poetry in Translation, of which she was also a co-editor.[4] She edited and translated Irish Poems from Cromwell to the Famine in 1976.[5]
After moving to the United States, Keefe earned her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1984, with a dissertation consisting of a translation of and commentary on Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Cré na Cille.[6] This translation was the only version of the novel available to non-Irish speakers until 2015.[7] Keefe continued to teach at Berkeley as a lecturer of Celtic Studies and Scandinavian Studies following her graduation, and served as an Irish language consultant in linguistics courses.[8][9] With Carol Cosman and Kathleen Weaver, she edited the Penguin Book of Women Poets.[10] She also published a number of essays defending and endorsing the "new and vitalising interest" in the writing and publishing of new fiction and poetry in the Irish language.[11] A frequent contributor to World Literature Today, she published 24 articles and reviews in the journal.[12]
Personal life
Trodden Keefe was married to Denis Keefe for 36 years until his death in 1990; Denis was an accomplished physicist at Berkeley and an activist in support of Soviet dissidents.[13] They had three children.[14]
References
- ^ Macdona, Anne, ed. (2001). From Newman to New Woman : UCD Women Remember. Dublin: New Island. ISBN 1902602676.
- ^ "Notes on Contributors" (PDF). New Orleans Review. 4 (2): 191. 1974.
- ^ Montague, John, ed. (1974). The Faber Book of Irish Verse. London, England. ISBN 9780571112180.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Bankier, Joanna; et al., eds. (1976). The Other voice : Twentieth-Century Women's Poetry in Translation. New York: Norton. ISBN 9780393044164.
- ^ Keefe, Joan, ed. (1977). Irish Poems from Cromwell to the Famine : a miscellany. Lewisburg [Pa.]: Bucknell University Press. ISBN 0838718876.
- ^ Ó Cadhain, Máirtín (2016). Graveyard clay = Cré na Cille: A Narrative in Ten Interludes. New Haven. p. xx. ISBN 9780300220926.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Philip, O'Leary (April 2016). "We're No Angels". Dublin Review of Books.
- ^ hÉochaidh, Roibín Ó (August 29, 2013). "Campus to commemorate those who died during 2012–13". Berkeley News.
- ^ "California Language Archive". cla.berkeley.edu.
- ^ The Penguin Book of Women Poets. New York: Viking Press. 1979. ISBN 9780670778560.
- ^ Keefe, Joan Trodden (1989). "Dwelling in Impossibility: Contemporary Irish Gaelic Literature and Séamas Mac Annaidh". World Literature Today. 63 (1): 46–51. doi:10.2307/40145047. ISSN 0196-3570. JSTOR 40145047.
- ^ "World Literature Today on JSTOR". www.jstor.org.
- ^ "Keefe, (Thomas) Dennis | Dictionary of Irish Biography". www.dib.ie.
- ^ "Joan Keefe Obituary (2013) San Francisco Chronicle". Legacy.com.