Anne Le Marquand Hartigan

Anne Le Marquand Hartigan (1931 - 2022) was an Irish poet, playwright, and painter. Hartigan trained as a painter at Reading University, England. She returned to Co. Louth, Ireland, in 1962 with her husband Tim Hartigan where they farmed and reared their six children. She lived in Dublin. Hartigan published seven collections of poetry: Unsweet Dreams (Salmon Poetry, 2011), To Keep The Light Burning: Reflections in Times of Loss (Salmon Poetry, 2008); Nourishment (Salmon Poetry, 2005); Immortal Sins (Salmon Poetry, 1993); the award-winning long poem with Anne's drawings, Now is a Moveable Feast (Salmon Poetry, 1991); Return Single (Beaver Row Press, 1986); Long Tongue (Beaver Row Press, 1982). Hartigan's theatre piece, Beds, was first performed at the Damer Theatre in 1982 as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Hartigan's full length tragi-comedy, I do like to be beside the seaside, is set in an old peoples home. Hartigan won the Mobil Prize for Playwriting for her play The Secret Game (Chiswick books, 2014) in 1995. In Other Worlds (2003) was commissioned and performed by Ohio University, USA, then performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in New Zealand. Jersey Lilies was performed at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin 1996, where Hartigan acted and directed with Robert Gordon. La Corbiere (Carysfort Press, 2001) was performed at the Project Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1989 and has since been performed in Beirut, Lebanon in 2004 and by Solas Nua Theatre Company in Washington DC, 2006. Hartigan's prose work includes Clearing The Space: A Why of Writing (Salmon, 1996). Source: Wikipedia.org Anne Le Marquand Hartigan (1931-2022) was a writer and artist. She was an award-winning poet, painter and playwright. She has had poetry readings all over Ireland and in several other countries, has exhibited art work in Ireland and England, and has had plays performed in Ireland and other parts of Europe, New Zealand and the US. Her work has been translated into German, Galician, Spanish and Russian. Brought up in England, by her Irish mother and Jersey Island father, Hartigan's parents and the cultures they stemmed from have been a significant yet subtle influence in her work. Dr Le Marquand read Shakespeare every night and imparted his passion to his daughter, along with his interest in wildlife and nature, astronomy and a sense of fun. Aside from the importance of the extended family, Hartigan's mother, an Irish Catholic, passed on the legacy of the rich language, rhythms, and drama of the church ceremonies and teachings, as well as Irish myths. Jersey features strongly in two of Hartigan's avant-garde plays, La Corbiere, and the Jersey Lillies Trilogy, and much of the rest of Hartigan's work is informed by the language, social history and environment of Ireland. After training in Fine Art at Reading University, (influences included the simplicity of the early renaissance artist Giotto, 'Moderns' such as Matisse, Chagall, Modigliani, de Stael, and sculptor Henry Moore), Hartigan, her husband, and their five small children moved to Ireland in the early 1960s to her mother's family farm near the river Boyne. There, the farmland itself, and the enigmatic megalithic landscapes nearby, augmented that air of mystery she was introduced to in her childhood. With the addition of a sixth child, family life was lively and Hartigan referred this time as energetic and fun. While she continued to paint, and exhibit in group shows, Hartigan found herself increasingly drawn towards writing. She had always been interested in literature and poetry, recalling the profound impact of T. S. Elliot's ground-breaking work, The Waste Land, while still a schoolgirl; other early influences included Chaucer, Robert Graves, and Sylvia Plath - the latter being a close contemporary and someone who was exploring many shared themes and experiences. Hartigan played a part too in bringing other women poets to new audiences. Actively involved in the embryonic UCD Women's Studies Forum in the early 1980s she arranged a seminal series of poetry readings by women poets as part of the UCD women's studies program. Working predominantly in free verse, Hartigan has also worked in different poetic disciplines. For instance she has written poetry in jig and reel time and performed this with renowned traditional Irish dancer, Jimmy Hickey. Her long poem, Now, is a Moveable Feast (1991), broadcast on RTE 1 Television as a full length programme with music specially composed for it by Eibhlis Farrell, was inspired by her mother's family history and the farm itself, stretching back over time across the previous 100 years. In all she has seven books of poems published, with her own illustrations and book covers, the most recent being Unsweet Dreams, 2011, published by Salmon Poetry. As Hartigan became established as a poet, winning awards, publishing collections, she also ventured into playwriting. Of considerable influence on her drama, was the innovative Polish Theatre of the 1970s. As a consequence some of Hartigan's early theatrical work such as Beds, performed in the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1982, and La Corbière, 1989, was highly experimental and avant garde. This was followed with work on an operatic version of La Corbière. Over the last two decades of her life Hartigan had her dramatic work produced by companies in Ireland and abroad, had plays included in anthologies, and used as components of academic courses. Her work has also been the subject of several post graduate theses. Source: Commons