Thirty years a-publishing

It is difficult to believe it but Cló Iar-Chonnacht, one of the most dynamic and innovative publishers to emerge in modern Ireland, has been around for 30 years now. It would be a mistake to look at Cló Iar-Chonnacht today and think that this was the way it always was, however. Ireland was a poor and unforgiving place in 1985 when the publisher was first founded.

And there was nowhere poorer than the rocky headlands of Connemara where Cló Iar-Chonnacht was born. Ireland as a whole was living through one of its latest and worst crises, the country was broke and, more crucially still, perhaps, there was little hope on the horizon.

The young people of Ireland were emigrating in their droves. We had ghost-towns and ghost villages back then also, a long time before we’d ever heard tell of “ghost estates”. Back then, Irish-language publishing seemed like just a bizarre dream. Publishing in a minority language that was spoken by more people in Boston, San Francisco, Leeds and London than it was in Ireland! Surely not? Wouldn’t you want to be mad?

But this was the sort of ‘marginal’ world, the world of blind faith and chance, that Cló Iar-Chonnacht emerged from. Its founder Micheál Ó Conghaile was more marginal than most. He grew up on an island off the Galway coast, one of the smaller islands called Inis Treabhair, in an area where everyone spoke Irish.

There was nothing romantic about this place. There was no electricity or running water. People worked ferociously hard just to survive. On Sundays, when everyone set out in their currachs for Mass or for a football match on the mainland, you scanned the horizon. A few lights flickered in the dawn light across the bay. Should you go for it or stay put. Or should you take a chance on it – strike out for new ground…

Ó Conghaile could have taken the easy choice and stuck with the teaching and the writing on the side. To cross over and become a publisher was to take the precarious option. Since the foundation of the State, countless other publishers had taken the chance but the wayside was littered with their corpses. They’d disappeared as quickly again – with the swallows. Luckily, Ó Conghaile ploughed ahead. He took the chance…

It was slow in the beginning. One book in the first year. Maybe four or five, in the second. This was a very radical venture for its time; a minority language, as spoken by a maximum of 20,000 people on a daily basis, a language that far fewer people could read.

One of Ó Conghaile’s main motivations was the fact that everything was so Dublin-centric when he began publishing. He admired other brave publishers such as Coiscéim but he knew that there were writers in Irish from Galway and from the Gaeltacht who were not being published and had no outlet. He wanted a publishing house that was Gaeltacht-based and the fact that he is a writer himself and was only just finding an audience for his work only added impetus to the project.

Ó Conghaile's edgy short stories and novels, incorporating magic realism, have won many accolades including the Butler Literary Award of the Irish American Cultural Institute in 1997 and the Hennessy Literary Award in that same year. His short story Athair, about a young man who tells his father, a rural Irishman, that he is gay (and anthologized in Denvir and Ní Dhonnchadha Gearrscéalta an Chéid, 2000) is regarded as one of the most haunting short stories written in either Irish or English during the past half-century.

And yet, everything about this project went against all the cultural and historical odds ; after all, Irish had been banished to the margins from the 16th century onwards as the Gaelic worldview and attendant social and linguistic contexts for its use were replaced in virtually every societal sphere by the ‘modern’ world that was literacy in English.

To use Irish, to write in Irish, to create in Irish almost became an anti-social act. In spite of this the ‘life or the margins’ hung on tenaciously; it refused to die, it would not give in.

There are readers of Irish-language literature out there today and a diversity of writing – with anywhere between 2,500 to 3,000 titles on the bookshelves at any one time – that would surprise many. The sector includes a thriving literary criticism genre, urban novels incorporating a range of experimental forms, magic realism and short stories. It is widely-acknowledged that some of the best poets writing In Ireland today write in Irish. Indeed, no highly-regarded contemporary collection of Irish poetry could neglect to include at least three or four Irish-language poets.

This was not the case 20 years ago. In the space of a few decades, Cló Iar-Chonnacht has published over 600 books and 200 cds, the latter including sean-nós albums and spoken-word cds of writers reading their own work.

All have been produced to an extremely high-standard in terms of quality and layout. They have always placed a big emphasis on collaboration with artists and musicians and have been enterprising in engaging some of the best contemporary artists and designers for their album covers – the likes of Brian Bourke, Pádraig Reaney, Seán Ó Flaithearta and Joe Boske.

This is not to say that there aren’t enormous challenges for publishers, and particularly for those producing books in a minority language. Many of these challenges are common to all publishers and in all languages, however. The competition from online retailers is intense and there is the basic issue of shelf-space.

Add to that the perennial headaches of publishers the world-over, the distribution and marketing of new books in this, the digital era. But then, the publishing business was never for the faint-hearted. You need to constantly adapt your vision and modus operandi to remain relevant and up-to-date, and companies such as Cló Iar-Chonnacht have a proven track record in this regard.

Notwithstanding the collaborations with Sáirséal agus Dill, Dalkey Archive Press, Bloodaxe and news media such as the Tuairisc.ie, the past decade has seen them engage in collaborations on both the artistic and commercial levels, particularly with regard to the interface that is sound, the textual and the visual.

Cló Iar-Chonnacht has recorded an enormous body of material from some of the finest sean-nós singers and their range of albums in this category sell well and include many singers whose art would otherwise have been lost forever to this genre – increasingly designated ethnic music or world-music.

Recent years have seen a range of exciting ventures in the area of translation whereby some of the richest literary works in the Irish language have been translated into a wide range of other languages including English, Danish, Croatian, Greek, German and Polish in order to reach a more global audience and the enormous Irish diaspora worldwide.

There has been translation and rediscovery of hidden gems such as Máirtín Ó Cadhain's masterwork Cré na Cille, a book which was stunningly filmed just a few short years ago, and Pádraic Ó Conaire's Deoraíocht (Exile).

The priority for this publisher remains the same as when they first set out on their journey all those years ago however – to publish the best contemporary Irish-language writers and ensure that their works are available to the greatest audience possible.

The lights still flicker across the way. They’ll surely take a chance on it. There’s still time to strike out for new ground…