Optimism is a collection of Poems in English and Irish. Michéal Fanning was a doctor based in Dingle. He passed away in 2010.
He was also a community activist, a prolific poet in English and Irish, and the founder and director of Féile na Bealtaine, the Dingle peninsula’s annual arts festival.
He wrote poetry all his life. Prof Tom Walsh, his friend and fellow medical student, “if you borrowed his notes, as I did, you were just as likely to find 15 lines of blank verse as suggested diagnostic tests”.