Languages and Publishing in Contemporary Irish Writing

According to the 2022 census, 751,507 people usually resident in Ireland spoke a language other than English or Irish at home, a substantial increase of 23% from the 2016 census findings of 612,018 people. Irish culture is now characterised by an unprecedented diversity in the languages used on the island, as will be explored in the first part of this chapter; yet this linguistic diversity is still not substantially reflected in Irish mainstream literary production. The second part of the chapter presents the publication history of The Book of Trivialities, a bilingual English/Arabic collection authored by Iraqi poet Majed Mujed and published by Skein Press in 2023, informed by interviews with the author, translator and publisher. The production history of Mujed's book demonstrates the many barriers to publication for those writing in languages other than English and Irish, while also illuminating how small presses can contribute to, and advocate for, publishing infrastructures that enable linguistically diverse writing to be created and shared.