Introduction
Jeremiah Joseph Callanan (1795–1829) was an Irish poet born in County Cork, Ireland.
Callanan studied for Catholic priesthood at Maynooth College, and afterwards law at Trinity College, Dublin, where he won two prizes for his poems. Afterward, he found employment teaching briefly at a school in his hometown of Cork.
Callanan also contributed translations of Irish verse to Blackwood's Magazine before traveling to Lisbon to work as a tutor in 1827. Jeremiah Callanan died in Lisbon in 1829, as he was preparing to return to Ireland.
His great-niece is Academy Award-nominated actress Pauline Collins.
Well-known poems
"The Outlaw of Loch Lene," Callanan's most well-known poem, begins with the line, "O many a day have I made good ale in the glen". It is one of the two Callanan poems included in Brendan Kennelly's The Penguin Book of Irish Verse (1970) the other one being "The Convict of Clonmel". Both are translations from the Irish.
Books of poetry
- Recluse of Inchidony, and other Poems. 1830.
- Poems (ed. M.F. McCarthy). 1847.
- The Poems of J. J. Callanan. A New Edition, with Biographical Introduction and Notes (c) 1992 Chadwyck-Healey