- Blanaid Salkeld
Blanaid Salkeld (1880-1959) was an Irish poet, dramatist, and actor, whose well-known literary salon was attended by, among others,
Patrick Kavanagh andFlann O'Brien . Her son,Cecil ffrench Salkeld was one of the leading Irish artists of the day; her granddaughter Beatrice marriedBrendan Behan .Early life
Salkeld was born in
Chittagong , in what was thenIndia but is nowBangladesh , and grew up inIreland . Salkeld's father, a doctor in the Indian Medical Service, was a friend ofRabindranath Tagore and also introduced her to the poetry ofKeats when she was six. When she was in Dublin and her father in India, she regularly included her poems in letters to him. He had two volumes of these printed privately inCalcutta . She married in 1902 and spent the next six years in India with her husband, who worked in theIndian Civil Service .Theatre
On returning to Ireland, Salkeld joined the Abbey Players as an actor and once played the lead role in
George Fitzmaurice's three act play "The Country Dressmaker". She started writing verse plays in the 1930s, and one of these, "Scarecrow Over the Corn" was staged in 1941 at theGate Theatre with stage sets designed byLouis le Brocquy .Poetry
Salkeld published five books of poetry, "Hello, Eternity" (Elkin Mathews 1933), "A Dubliner" (Dublin: Gayfield 1942), "The Fox’s Covert" (JM Dent 1935), "the engine is left running" (Gayfield 1937), and "Experiment In Error" (Aldington, Kent: Hand & Flower Press 1955). The first of these was reviewed favourably by
Samuel Beckett .Reviews
Salkeld contributed numerous book reviews to "
The Dublin Magazine ". She reviewed a wide range of books, but focused especially on contemporary poetry (for instance, in perceptive reviews ofAnna Akhmatova and Pound'sPisan Cantos ). She also used her review writing to promote an interest in poetry by women, especially Irish women.References
Print
*Autobiographical note on dustjacket of "Experiment In Error".
Online
* [http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/s/Salkeld,B/life.htm Blanaid Salkeld at The Princess Grace Irish Library]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
