Liam Gogan

Liam Seosamh Gógan (1891–1979), was an Irish civil servant, Celticist, lexicographer, and, in modern literature in Irish, a groundbreaking poet and playwright. According to Louis De Paor, Gógan was the most important poet of the era between the death of Patrick Pearse and the revival of literary Modernism in the Irish language during the 1940s. Gógan also possessed, according to De Paor, "a prodigious knowledge of all the spoken dialects of Irish and the Gaelic literary tradition."

Life Gógan was born in Dublin, at 391 North Circular Road, on 24 October 1891. His parents were William J. Gogan, the owner of a string of sweets shops and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and Ellen (née Hendricks) Gogan. He began learning his heritage language through classes arranged by Conradh na Gaeilge and taught by Sinéad Flanagan, who was later to marry future Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and who Gógan later credited with instilling his passion for the Gaelic revival.

Gógan was educated by the Congregation of Christian Brothers at O'Connell School on North Richmond Street. He then attended University College Dublin, where he read Old Irish and graduated in 1913 with a first class honours in Celtic studies. In 1914, Gógan was hired as assistant keeper of antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland. He resigned his position with the Irish Volunteers after a failed attempt to acquire arms in the United States. he was imprisoned afterwards for three months at Frongoch internment camp in Wales. After refusing to take an oath of allegiance to King George V following his release, he was dismissed from his post in the National Museum of Ireland.

Colm Breathnach, who set out to re-popularize Gógan's poetry during the 2017 Imram literary festival, has said of Gógan, "He was a moderniser, he was trying to develop the language. He employed old words and forms, he coined new words (particularly compound words) from the existing resources of the language and mixed various dialectical usages throughout his work. Readers often found it difficult to follow these experiments... Some of his work would resonate with people today, he has a lot of love poetry, other works would portray urban angst, others are in a household setting."

As a Celticist, linguist, and philologist, Gógan is also traditionally credited with coining, at the request of future Easter Rising leader Thomas MacDonagh, , the word in Modern Irish for "republic", based on the root word , meaning "public".

Gógan was also very passionate about Irish language drama. In addition to writing his award-winning original stage play An Saoghal Eile, Gógan also translated a Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck into the Irish language as Dallán.

Between 1923 and 1927, Gógan assisted Patrick Dinneen in revising his standard Irish-English dictionary. In 1953, Gógan was requested by the Irish Texts Society to prepare a supplement to the same dictionary. Gógan amassed more than 50,000 entries, but the supplement was not published due to lack of funding,