Michael Hartnett was born in 1941 in Newcastle West, County Limerick and died in October 1999 in Dublin. He came to school late and did not receive his leaving certificate until he was twenty years old. Nevertheless, he was a fluent Irish speaker and also had a reading capacity in several other languages. After working for many years in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, he became a lecturer in creative writing at Thomond College in Limerick. He received the Irish-American Cultural Institute Award in 1980, the Irish Arts Council Award for the best book in Irish in 1986, the Irish American Cultural Institute Award in 1988, and the American-Ireland Fund Literary Award in 1990. He was a member of Aosdana, a government-sponsored group of Irish artists.

His first small collection of verse, Anatomy of a Cliché, is a talented if overwrought collection of love poems, in which the writer exchews capital letters, consistent punctuation, conventional syntax, and discernible rhythm, although he rhymes when convenient. The diction ranges from flat to florid. There is some pretentious phrasing and one bizarre personification of Ireland as a multibreasted female who invites her children to suckle her many breasts, after which she promises to make them love her by devouring them and then vomiting them up.

In Selected Poems (1970), he is more concerned with form, but in some pieces the form is uncontrolled and disintegrates before the close of the poem. A Farewell to English (1975) was a definite advance, and there are some strong images in the poems in this collection. The longish title poem, however, veers between limp eloquence and lame satire, with detours into rather frantic imagery. The sentiment of the title poem received considerable publicity at the time of its publication. Hartnett's farewell to English was not total, for his next two volumes were written in English; however, for ten years he did concentrate on writing in Irish.

In recent years, he continued to publish frequently, both original work in English and translations, especially from the Irish. His reputation has grown considerably, and Seamus Heaney has written that he is "one of the truest, most tested and beloved voices in Irish poetry in our time." And Brendan Kennelly said of Hartnett's work, "here and there a hint of that brave, rounded humanity which earns him the right to be called divine."

The best introduction to his work is Selected and New Poems, recently reprinted by Gallery Press of Ireland, which contains work spanning his entire career. A full list of his available work can be found by the link below.