The late Gabriel Rosenstock wrote Letters to the Editor for 50 years. Here are just a few

The Irish language poet, haikuist, translator and author wrote dozens of letters, from 1974 to 2025

Fri Apr 10 2026 - 06:00 • 7 MIN READ

Gabriel Rosenstock, Irish language poet, haikuist, translator and author of more than 400 books died at the age of 76 on April 6th, 2026. Born in Kilfinane, Co Limerick, Rosenstock was a member of Aosdána and a founding member of the Irish Language literary movement Innti during his time in University College Cork.

Over the course of six decades, Rosenstock appeared in The Irish Times not only through his bylines on the arts pages or in reviews of his work, but also as the author of dozens of Letters to the Editor.

The first mention of Rosenstock in The Irish Times dates back to 1965, when he won an essay prize at a European schools competition. His first Letter to the Editor appeared in 1974, where he disagreed with fellow poet Monk Gibbon’s account of Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, which “disgusted” Gibbon. “Art is a shocking business,” Rosenstock wrote at the time.

He would go on to pen many more letters, discussing all matters of public life: on the Spire; the Iraq War; censorship in film; Sinéad O’Connor; and, of course, the Irish language. Here is a selection of his letters throughout those years.

Inside Ireland’s growing money-laundering network: ‘Pubs, fast-food restaurants, you name it’

Eurovision 2026 review: Father Ted, controversy and Ireland’s absence as Bulgaria wins

A look at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Foxrock: ‘Our Irish friends are not only very kind, but very open’

Mongoose review: This new Dublin 8 spot is now my favourite restaurant

Gabriel Rosenstock's Letters to the Editor

Film censorship, February 7th, 1974

A Chara na nGael – I’m sure I wasn’t the only one interested in Monk Gibbon’s account (Feb 22) of how Bergman’s Cries and Whispers disgusted him. Having seen the film, I don‘t believe that the episode in which one of the sisters mutilated herself should have been cut. Art is a shocking business. Correggio’s Leda and the Swan is beautifully shocking. I suggest to Mr. Gibbon that beauty encompasses a great deal more than the pastoral or the mythological. As the American writer, Donald Barthelme states: “Any writer in the country can write a beautiful sentence, but it is more interesting to write an ugly sentence which is also beautiful.” That goes for film-makers and painters as well. However, censorship end not aesthetics is the issue here and the editor of Index on Censorship (Vol. 1, No. 3 and 4) has made some interesting remarks on obscenity and censorship: It all comes down to that nebulous concept of the public good or “drawing the line somewhere, and so on, which are the traditional banners under which persons of an authoritarian disposition seek to impose their will on others who think or behave differently”. If you’d like to know one disgusting thing which shouldn’t be projected in full colour on our cinema screens it’s the Join Today‘s Army show. This action-packed black comedy is the ultimate in obnoxious viewing. It should be taken off the cinema and T.V. screens and stored away in the archives as it will, someday, be very valuable as a period piece. – Síochain an Tiarna leat i gcónaí,

GABRIEL ROSENSTOCK, 56 Ros Tí Lorcáin. An- Charraig Dhubh, Co. Átha Cliath.

In translation, July 9th, 1975

A chara na Gael,

I was glad to see Douglas Sealy’s review (July 5th) of Tomas Mac Síomóin’s first collection of poems “Damhna agus Dánta Eile”. God knows, its seldom enough that books in Irish are reviewed in our national newspapers.

In the course of his review Mr. Sealy quoted eighteen lines of poetry in English and only six in Irish. Now, I for one believe that poetry in Irish should reach an international audience by being translated into as many languages as possible. But this is hardly the prerogative of a reviewer pressed by a deadline. What I would like to know is this: was Tomas Mac Síomóin consulted before Mr. Sealy’s translation went to press? Does Mr. Sealy believe that his translation has done justice to the original? Should he have offered some explanation to his readers or made apologies to the author?

Other poems from Mac Síomóin‘s collection are referred to in translation: “Aim”; “In Bloomsbury Cemetery”; “A Flash”; “Excuse.”

This instant translation reminds me of an elderly tweedy couple who were sipping drinks a few yards from me the other day. They were referring to a photograph in an evening newspaper of “President O’Daly”. I racked my brains for a full fifteen seconds before I realised who they were talking about . – Beidh Éire fós ag Kate O’Dwyer!

GABRIEL ROSENSTOCK, An Bothan, Woodbine, Bothar Tí Lorcáin, Droichead na Dothra, Baile Átha Cliath 4.

Learning Irish, December 2nd, 1986

Sir, – I wish all this nonsense about being more or less Irish according to the degree of one’s knowledge of Irish might cease forever to bespatter your letters’ page.

Were Zeuss, Meyer or Zimmer more Irish (or less German) because of their knowledge of Irish; did Flower’s Britishness suddenly wilt when he set foot on the Blaskets, was Thurneysen‘s Swissness somehow lacking, did Marstrander, the Norwegian, lose his way or Pedersen exorcise his Danishness?

The language is a precious ecological phenomenon – an early purple orchid in the Burren, an magairlín meidhreach, as Irish itself so earthily describes it. It needs to be but nurtured. Why squabble over “a miracle of a rare bloom”, or pick it and attach it to one’s person as an emblem of this or that? Plants are dying all over the world, species whose secrets, whose scents, whose medicinal properties we will never know; languages, too, are dying all over the world. Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet, long live the diversity of bloom, of tongue, a diversity which serves to unite us could we but see it with awe, gratitude and respect.

When the Irish language is depoliticised and seen as the ecological issue it is, in all its hidden strength and outer frailty, people will stop kicking it around. You cannot kick a flower, you cannot play games with an essence, bittersweet, accumulated over centuries, not yours or mine exclusively at this moment to love or hate. That essence is its own essence. To sip that essence is to partake in another realm of thought and feeling and consciousness. We should all be free to do this, at greater leisure. It will not make us more Irish, just as the study of orchids, bogs, insects or Connemara ponies is as unlikely to do so! It could possibly make us more human. Then again it could do the reverse. It depends on one’s humility, basically, and a greater willingness to learn.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much time left. – Yours, etc,

GABRIEL ROSENSTOCK, 20 Clonkeen Grove, Deansgrange, Co Dublin.

Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, September 11th, 1997

Sir, – Peter McCarthy (September 9th) may be a little off the mark when he suggests that comparisons cannot and should not be made between Mother Teresa, “a wrinkled, old nun “, and Diana “the photogenic young princess”. For thousands of years, the staple spiritual diet of Europeans was the cult of the goddess. (Our own country, Éire, owes its name to one such Celtic goddess.) The cult of Brigit – “the exalted one” – was supplanted by the Christian Brigid: this pattern culminates in the Virgin Mary, in whom goddess worship was subsumed until the Reformation put severe limits to Marian iconography. The emotional response to the tragic death of Diana – named after a goddess, as her brother pointed out in his eloquent eulogy – may be partly attributable to the re-emergence, in new guise, of the suppressed cult of the goddess. Mr McCarthy might like to know – as can be confirmed by Celticists, transpersonal psychologists, folklorists and anthropologists – that the goddess has always been able to manifest herself as crone and sparkling maiden alike. – Is mise,