Aodán Mac Póilin

Aodán Mac Póilin (1948 – 29 December 2016)[1] was an Irish language activist in Northern Ireland.

Background

Aodán Mac Póilin was born in Belfast and grew up in Norfolk Road in the Andersonstown area. His father worked as a civil servant and his mother was an Irish language speaker. He had two sisters.[2] He attended the New University of Ulster in the 1970s and obtained a BA (Hons) and an M.Phil. in Irish studies. He helped to establish the Shaw's Road Irish-speaking community where he and his wife Áine lived.

Career

After graduation, Mac Póilin was a teacher for a period and then became Director of the ULTACH Trust in 1990.[3]

He was active in the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages and the Community Relations Council for Northern Ireland, and was chairman of the first Irish-medium school in Northern Ireland.

Mac Póilin served on the board of Northern Ireland Screen for 5 years from 2012, with particular responsibility for the Irish Language Broadcast Fund.[4] He also served on the boards of the Columba Initiative, Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta (the Council for Irish-medium Education), the Education Broadcasting Council of BBC Northern Ireland,[5] Foras na Gaeilge (the cross-border Irish language implementation body), and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queens University Belfast.

Mac Póilin wrote and lectured extensively on various aspects of the Irish language, literature and culture. He made a major contribution to the revitalisation of the Irish language in Northern Ireland.[6]

Mac Póilin died on 29 December 2016.[7]

Books
  • Styles of Belonging: the cultural identities of Ulster (1992) (editor)
  • Ruined Pages, New Selected Poems of Padraic Fiacc (1994) (co-editor with Gerald Dawe)[8]
  • The Irish Language in Northern Ireland (1997)
  • The Great Book of Gaelic (2002) (member of the editorial panel)
  • Our Tangled Speech, Essays on Language and Culture (2018).

References
  1. "Aodan Mac Poilin-1948-2016". Lagan Online. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  2. "Aodan Mac Poilin our Generation". Retrieved 10 February 2018.
  3. ULTACH Trust
  4. "Sad death of Aodán Mac Póilín". Retrieved 6 July 2019.
  5. "Education Broadcasting Council". Retrieved 5 July 2019.
  6. "Aodan Mac Poilin-An appreciation". Retrieved 10 February 2018.
  7. Mac Poilin-Trailblazer-promoted-irish-language-without-politics
  8. 'The patron saint of the insane': The Northern Irish poet Padraic Fiacc, a fiery, uncompromising chronicler of the Troubles, is celebrating his 70th birthday with the publication of a new volume. Damian Smyth studies the critical renaissance of this literary outsider
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