Poet, singer and activist Caitlín Maude died young and her work is neglected. Now a new film is celebrating her legacy, reports Catherine Foley

The sight of Caitlín Maude in a crocheted poncho with a matching beret speaking from the floor of a large meeting at Oireachtas na nGael in 1970 is thrilling. She looks like any iconic rebel from those times - beautiful, young, long-haired and passionate.

"If the Gaeltacht is to be saved," she says, speaking in Irish to those about her, "if the people are to be saved from poverty and emigration, it can only be done through fighting . . . No proof exists anywhere in the world to this day that those in power have given it up of their own accord. They never have."

Caitlín Maude, poet, sean-nós singer, actor, educator and political activist, died in 1982 at the age of 41. She has largely been forgotten (although her poetry does feature on the Leaving Cert syllabus), but her life and work will be revisited on Saturday in Concerto Chaitlín Maude, a new 50-minute documentary on TG4, which includes rare footage and the recollections of friends and relatives.

Poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill remembers meeting Maude in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, at the first Merriman Winter School in the late 1960s.

"There was this beautiful woman there with long black hair. She was full of mischief and joy," she says. "I thought, when I grow up, I'll be just like her. And that has come about in a way. I'm a poet and I have long hair! But I don't have her other gifts."

According to publisher Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, who knew Maude, she believed that "all art is written or created using the head, the emotions, the body, and one's sexuality. And if these four elements aren't present, the work isn't complete . . . She was an elemental force. She inspired us all, and nourished us all".

"Bhí sí an-éagsúil," he adds, recalling how different she was. "When she walked in, everyone would notice her. She was very unusual. She turned heads . . . She was very striking. She'd make you stop and look . . . and she dominated situations."

In another excerpt, Maude reads the opening of her poem, Aimhréidhe (Entanglement), as the camera pans across Sandymount Strand:

Siúil, a ghrá,

Cois trá anocht -

Siúil agus cuir uait

na deora -

She believed poetry came from "the tension that exists between the desire for freedom, and breaking boundaries, and the responsibility that freedom brings", as she once explained in an interview on RTÉ with a young Cathal Ó Searcaigh.

"Is rópa an-chaol é," she says of that narrow rope-like line. "Is as sin a thagann an fhilíocht, nach ea?" she asks her interviewer.

Concerto is the title of an early poem, published in Comhar magazine in 1963. The single volume of poems by Maude, who was born in Connemara, is out of print.

The new film has been made with backing from TG4 and the Arts Council under the joint Splanc! initiative, which funds Irish-language arts programmes. It includes excerpts from the one album that Maude made for Gael Linn in 1975, and it also features the music of Aoife Nic Cormaic, who directed the film and also composed a concerto to accompany the story of Caitlín Maude.

Nic Cormaic grew up in Tallaght, where Maude lived with her husband, Cathal Ó Luain, and their son, Caomhán. She has always been aware of Maude's work and her involvement in the Cumann Gaelach and in the setting up of the Irish-language school, Scoil Santain.

"I always loved her poem, Dán Grá Vietnam," says Nic Cormaic. "It's an anti-war poem and there's a storyline to it, and I liked that from when I was a child . . . She has this kind of power in her voice. I think there's a great humanity in her singing."

Maude's husband, Cathal Ó Luain, is philosophical about how neglected her poems have become.

"You'd feel that she has been somewhat forgotten, but sometimes poets need to fade from view before coming into their own again," he says. "I think her poetry and the recordings made of her music will stand the test of time."

Ní Dhomhnaill comments on Maude's small body of work and wonders if she didn't have too many gifts. "She had a talent for music, acting and poetry," she says. "Perhaps it was hard for her to concentrate on any one of those. It could be why her corpus of poetry is so small."

Máire Ní Fhlathartaigh, one of Maude's friends, recalls her courage and the days before she died of cancer: "Bhí an- mhisneach aici. Bhí croí mór aici. Níor thug sí faoi rud ar bith riamh le leath-chroí . . . Mar chara bhí sí ar leith ar fad."

She remembers Maude ringing her one night. "She said listen to this, and she read me that poem, A Dhéc (O God). It was like she'd brought a currach full of seaweed ashore. She gained great satisfaction from it. It had obviously been a very hard poem for her to write. It may have resolved some issues for her."

Concerto Chaitlín Maude, produced by Eo Teilifís, will be screened on TG4 at 9.05pm this Saturday