This book examines the prose of major Irish language poet Seán Ó Ríordáin, comprising of up to 350 articles that were published between 1954 and 1975. These are mostly associated with the Irish Times where most of them were published on a weekly basis. Ó Ríordáin's prose speaks of nineteen sixties and seventies Ireland and the contention of emergent and risidual identies which are thought to have come to the fore at that time. The prose is seen as central to the practice of the poet and not secondary or peripheral to it. Drawing on varied approaches, from literary theory to ethnographic and discourse centred approaches the work of the poet is relocated in a new historical, cultural and political context, a postcolonial context that loosens it from the restraint of the literary cultural canon of both the English and the Irish languages. The conflictual nature of language and culture is foregrounded throughout. This publication was Book of the Year at Merriman Winter School in 1999.