A teacher and writer of long standing, Mícheál Ó Ruairc's Dambatheanga: Damlanguage is a poetry collection that reflects the challenges of writing in a language that is often disdained by many Irish people. (Happily, while Ó Ruairc composes in Irish, those not fluent in the language can use the English-language versions.) His concern with language is seen in the title poem, Damlanguage, and in Nitelink 1 and Nitelink 2 where Charon's passengers on the late bus home speak "in fishnet stockinged tongues/in wink-and-a-nod tongues/in cross-eyed tongues . . . /in every tongue/under the sun/except for our own". That "our" is important for Ó Ruairc because it is "our" language whether the populace acknowledge that or not; Irish is Ireland's intimate tongue. Ó Ruairc's language is both rebel yell and death rattle.
