Gabriel Rosenstock

Irish writer

Gabriel Rosenstock (born 29 September 1949) is an Irish writer who works chiefly in the Irish language. A member of Aosdána, he is poet, playwright, haikuist, tankaist, essayist, and author/translator of over 180 books, mostly in Irish. Born in Kilfinane, County Limerick, he currently resides in Dublin.

Rosenstock's father George was a doctor and writer from Schleswig Holstein, Germany, who served as a medical officer with the Wehrmacht in World War II. His mother was a nurse from County Galway. Gabriel was the third of six children and the first born in Ireland. He was educated locally in Kilfinane, then in Mount Sackville, County Dublin. He exhibited an early interest in anarchism and was expelled from Gormanston College (County Meath) and exiled to Rockwell College (County Tipperary). Later, he attended University College Cork. His son, Tristan, is a member of the Irish traditional music quintet Téada, and impressionist/actor Mario Rosenstock is his nephew.

Rosenstock worked for some time on the television series Anois is Arís on RTÉ, then on the weekly newspaper Anois. Until his retirement he worked with An Gúm, the publications branch of Foras na Gaeilge, the North South body which promotes the Irish language. Although he has worked in prose, drama and translation, Rosenstock is primarily known as a poet. He has written or translated over 180 books. He has edited and contributed to books of haiku in Irish, English, Scots and Japanese. He is a prolific translator into Irish of international poetry (among others Ko Un, Seamus Heaney, K. Satchidanandan, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Iqbal, Hilde Domin, Peter Huchel), plays (Beckett, Frisch, Yeats) and songs (Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, The Pogues, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell). He also has singable Irish translations of Lieder and other art songs. He appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press). He gave the keynote address to Haiku Canada in 2015. His being named as Lineage Holder of Celtic Buddhism inspired the latest title in a rich output of haiku collections: Antlered Stag of Dawn (Onslaught Press, Oxford, 2015), haiku in Irish and English with translations into Japanese and Scots Lallans. Gabriel has worked with American photographer Ron Rosenstock, Indian Photographer Debiprasad Mukherjee, Greek photographer Kon Markogiannis, Dublin photographer Jason Symes, French photographer Jean Pierre Favreau and many more to create the new guise of a photo haiku (or a haiga) the interplay of visual aesthetic and literature. He also writes for children, in prose and verse. Haiku Más É Do Thoil É! (An Gúm) won the Children's Books Judges' Special Prize in 2015. Gabriel trans created Thirukkural first time in Irish Language on 2023. During the launch, happily honoured the Thiruvalluvar by kissing his feet with this saying