Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is a writer and artist. She is an award-winning poet, painter and playwright. She has had poetry readings all over Ireland and in several other countries, has exhibited art work in Ireland and England, and has had plays performed in Ireland and other parts of Europe, New Zealand and the US. Her work has been translated into German, Galician, Spanish and Russian. Brought up in England, by her Irish mother and Jersey Island father, Hartigan's parents and the cultures they stemmed from have been a significant yet subtle influence in her work. Dr Le Marquand read Shakespeare every night and imparted his passion to his daughter, along with his interest in wildlife and nature, astronomy and a sense of fun. Aside from the importance of the extended family, Hartigan's mother, an Irish Catholic, passed on the legacy of the rich language, rhythms, and drama of the church ceremonies and teachings, as well as Irish myths. Jersey features strongly in two of Hartigan's avant-garde plays, La Corbiere, and the Jersey Lillies Trilogy, and much of the rest of Hartigan's work is informed by the language, social history and environment of Ireland. After training in Fine Art at Reading University, (influences included the simplicity of the early renaissance artist Giotto, 'Moderns' such as Matisse, Chagall, Modigliani, de Stael, and sculptor Henry Moore,) Hartigan, her husband, and their five small children moved to Ireland in the early '60s to her mother's family farm near the river Boyne. There, the farmland itself, and the enigmatic megalithic landscapes nearby, augmented that air of mystery she was introduced to in her childhood. With the addition of a sixth child, family life was lively and Hartigan remembers this time as energetic and fun. While she continued to paint, and exhibit in group shows, Hartigan found herself increasingly drawn towards writing. She had always been interested in literature and poetry, recalling the profound impact of TS Elliot's ground-breaking work, The Waste Land, while still a schoolgirl; other early influences include Chaucer, Robert Graves, and Sylvia Plath - the latter being a close contemporary and someone who was exploring many shared themes and experiences. Hartigan played a part too in bringing other women poets to new audiences. Actively involved in the embryonic UCD Women's Studies Forum in the early 1980s she arranged a seminal series of poetry readings by women poets as part of the UCD women's studies program. Working predominantly in free verse Hartigan has also worked in different poetic disciplines. For instance she has written poetry in jig and reel time and performed this with renowned traditional Irish dancer, Jimmy Hickey. Her long poem Now is a Moveable Feast (1991), broadcast on RTE 1 as a full length programme with music specially composed for it by Eibhlis Farrell, was inspired by her mother's family history and the farm itself, stretching back over time across the previous 100 years. To date she has seven books of poems published, with her own illustrations and book covers, the most recent being Unsweet Dreams, 2011, published by Salmon Poetry. As Hartigan became established as a poet, winning awards, publishing collections, she also ventured into playwriting. Of considerable influence on her drama, was the innovative Polish Theatre of the 1970s. As a consequence some of Hartigan's early theatrical work such as Beds, performed in the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1982, and La Corbière, 1989, was highly experimental and avant garde. At present Anne Le Marquand Hartigan is working on an operatic version of La Corbière. Over the past two decades Hartigan has had her dramatic work produced by companies in Ireland and abroad, has had plays included in anthologies, and used as part of academic courses. Her work has also been the subject of several post graduate theses.
