Derek Mahon - Wikipedia Derek Mahon From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Irish poet This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize its key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. (October 2020) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Derek Mahon" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Derek Mahon Mahon in 2010 Born (1941-11-23)23 November 1941 Belfast, Northern Ireland Died 1 October 2020(2020-10-01) (aged 78) Cork, Ireland Occupation Poet Journalist Nationality Irish Genre Poetry Literary movement Modernism Derek Mahon (23 November 1941 – 1 October 2020) was an Irish poet. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland but lived in a number of cities around the world. At his passing it was noted that his "influence in the Irish poetry community, literary world and society at large, and his legacy, is immense".[1] President of Ireland Michael D Higgins said of Mahon "he shared with his northern peers the capacity to link the classical and the contemporary but he brought also an edge that was unsparing of cruelty and wickedness." [2] Contents 1 Biography 2 Style 3 Bibliography 3.1 Poetry 3.1.1 Collections 3.1.2 Translations / versions / editions 3.2 Non fiction 3.3 Critical studies and reviews of Mahon's work 4 Honours 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links Biography[edit] Mahon was born the only child of Ulster Protestant working-class parents. His father and grandfather worked at Harland and Wolff while his mother worked at a local flax mill.[3] During his childhood, he claims he was something of a solitary dreamer, comfortable with his own company yet aware of the world around him. Interested in literature from an early age, he attended Skegoneill Primary school and then the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. At Inst he encountered fellow students who shared his interest in literature and poetry. The school produced a magazine to which Mahon produced some of his early poems. According to the critic Hugh Haughton his early poems were highly fluent and extraordinary for a person so young. His parents could not see the point of poetry, but he set out to prove them wrong after he won his school’s Forrest Reid Memorial Prize for the poem ‘The power that gives the water breath‘.[4] Mahon pursued third level studies at Trinity College, Dublin where he edited Icarus, and formed many friendships with writers such as Michael Longley, Eavan Boland and Brendan Kennelly. He started to mature as a poet. He left Trinity in 1965 to take up studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. After leaving the Sorbonne in 1966 he worked his way through Canada and the United States. In 1968, while spending a year teaching English at Belfast High School, he published his first collection of poems Night Crossing. He later taught in a school in Dublin and worked in London as a freelance journalist. He lived in Kinsale, Co. Cork. On 23 March 2007 he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. He won the Poetry Now Award in 2006 for his collection, Harbour Lights, and again in 2009 for his Life on Earth collection.[5] At times expressing anti-establishment values, Mahon has described himself as, an ‘aesthete’ with a penchant ‘for left-wingery […] to which, perhaps naively, I adhere.’[6] His papers are held at Emory University.[7] In March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, RTÉ News ended its evening broadcast with Mahon reading his poem Everything Is Going to Be All Right.[8] On 1 October 2020, Mahon died in Cork after a short illness, aged 78.[9] He is survived by his partner Sarah Iremonger and his three children, Rory, Katy and Maisie.[10] Style[edit] Thoroughly educated and with a keen understanding of literary tradition, Mahon came out of the tumult of Northern Ireland with a formal, moderate, even restrained poetic voice. In an era of free verse, Mahon has often written in received forms, using a broadly applied version of iambic pentameter that, metrically, resembles the "sprung foot" verse of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Some poems rhyme. Even the Irish landscape itself is never all that far from the classical tradition, as in his poem "Achill": Croagh Patrick towers like Naxos over the water And I think of my daughter at work on her difficult art And wish she were with me now between thrush and plover, Wild thyme and sea-thrift, to lift the weight from my heart. He has also explored the genre of ekphrasis: the poetic reinterpretation of visual art. In that respect he has been interested in 17th century Dutch and Flemish art. Bibliography[edit] Poetry[edit] Collections[edit] 1965: Twelve Poems. Festival Publications, Belfast 1968: Night-Crossing. Oxford University Press 1970: Ecclesiastes Phoenix Pamphlet Poets 1970: Beyond Howth Head. Dolmen Press 1972: Lives. Oxford University Press 1975: The Snow Party. Oxford University Press 1977: In Their Element. Arts Council of Northern Ireland 1979: Poems 1962–1978. Oxford University Press 1981: Courtyards in Delft. Gallery Press 1982: The Hunt By Night. Oxford University Press 1985: Antarctica. Gallery Press 1990: The Chinese Restaurant in Portrush: Selected Poems. Gallery Press 1991: Selected Poems. Viking 1992: The Yaddo Letter. Gallery Press 1995: The Hudson Letter. Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press, 1996 1997: The Yellow Book. Gallery Press; Wake Forest University Press, 1998 1999: Collected Poems. Gallery Press 2001: Selected Poems. Penguin 2005: Harbour Lights. Gallery Press (winner of the 2006 Irish Times Poetry Now Award) 2007: Somewhere the Wave. Gallery Press 2008: Life on Earth. Gallery Press (shortlisted for the 2009 International Griffin Poetry Prize; winner of the 2009 Irish Times Poetry Now Award) 2010: An Autumn Wind. Gallery Press 2011: New Collected Poems. Gallery Press 2016: New Selected Poems. Faber & Faber; Gallery Press Translations / versions / editions[edit] 1982: The Chimeras (a version of Les Chimères, by Nerval), Gallery Press 1985: High Time (a version of Molière's A School for Husbands), Gallery Press 1988: The Selected Poems of Philippe Jaccottet, Viking, 1988. 1996: The Bacchae of Euripides, and Racine's Phaedra, Gallery Press 2001. Jonathan Swift. Poems selected by Derek Mahon. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-20715-2. 2002: Birds (a version of Oiseaux, by Saint-John Perse), Gallery Press 2004: Cyrano de Bergerac. (A version of the play by Edmond Rostand), Gallery Press 2005: Oedipus (A conflation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus), Gallery Press 2006: Adaptations (A collection of versions, rather than translations proper, from poets such as Pasolini, Juvenal, Bertolt Brecht, Paul Valéry, Baudelaire, Rilke and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill), Gallery Press Mahon, Derek (2013). Echo's grove : collected translations. The Gallery Press. Non fiction[edit] 1996: Journalism: selected prose, 1970–1995. Ed. Terence Brown. Gallery Press Critical studies and reviews of Mahon's work[edit] Enniss, Stephen (2014) After the Titanic: A Life of Derek Mahon, Gill & Macmillan Haughton, Hugh (2007) The Poetry of Derek Mahon, Oxford University Press Jarniewicz, Jerzy (2013) Ekphrasis in the Poetry of Derek Mahon, NWP Piotrkow, ISBN 978-83-7726-056-2 Cooke, Belinda (June–July 2014). "Nasty, brutish and short". The London Magazine: 99–104. Review of Echo's grove. Honours[edit] 1965 – Eric Gregory Award for poetry[11] 1989 – Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize 1990 – Lannan Literary Awards for Poetry 1992 – The Irish Times-Aer Lingus Poetry Prize[11] 1995 – Honorary doctorate Trinity College Dublin. 2001 – Honorary doctorate NUI Galway – for work reflecting the enduring aesthetic of achievement in contemporary Irish writing. 2007 – David Cohen Prize for Literature – in recognition of his ‘lifetime’s achievement’ Member, Aosdána Irish Academy of Letters Award Guggenheim Fellowship[12] 2020 – Irish Times Poetry Now award[13] See also[edit] Poetry portal List of Northern Irish writers References[edit] ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54385928 ^ https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40058426.html ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/books/derek-mahon-dead.html ^ Life of poet is work in progress Cork Examiner 11 October 2014. Retrieved 3 October 2020. ^ Mahon wins 'Irish Times' poetry prize for new collection Irish Times, 28 March 2009. ^ Ciarán O'Rourke (14 December 2019). "Derek Mahon, A Poet of The Left". Independent Left. Retrieved 18 December 2019. ^ "Derek Mahon papers, 1948–2018". Emory Archives. Retrieved 11 September 2020. ^ Cain, Sian (2 October 2020). "Derek Mahon, Belfast-born giant of Irish poetry, dies aged 78". Retrieved 2 October 2020 – via www.theguardian.com. ^ "Derek Mahon, one of Ireland's leading poets, has died, aged 78". Irish Times. Retrieved 2 October 2020. ^ https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/derek-mahon-one-of-ireland-s-leading-poets-has-died-aged-78-1.4370324 ^ a b "Derek Mahon". Belfast Group Poetry. Retrieved 11 September 2020. ^ "Derek Mahon". The Gallery Press. Retrieved 11 September 2020. ^ "Derek Mahon wins this year's Irish Times Poetry Now Award". The Irish Times. Retrieved 11 September 2020. Further reading[edit] Allen Randolph, Jody. Derek Mahon: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Irish University Review: Special Issue: Derek Mahon 24.1 (Spring/Summer 1994): 131–156. Reggiani, Enrico. In Attesa della Vita, Introduzione alla Poetica di Derek Mahon, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1996, pp. 432 [seconda ristampa: 2005] Haughton, Hugh. The Poetry of Derek Mahon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Jarniewicz, Jerzy. Ekphrasis in the Poetry of Derek Mahon, Piotrkow: NWP Press, 2013, pp. 275, ISBN 978-83-7726-056-2 Christopher Steare: Derek Mahon : a study of his poetry, London : Greenwich Exchange, 2017, ISBN 978-1-910996-08-9 External links[edit] Wikiquote has quotations related to: Derek Mahon Eamonn Grennan (Spring 2000). "Derek Mahon, The Art of Poetry No. 82". The Paris Review. Derek Mahon's page at Wake Forest University Press Griffin Poetry Prize biography Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip "Achill" from poets.org. "A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford" from The Poem. "Painting into Poetry: The Case of Derek Mahon" by Rajeev S. Patke. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Derek Mahon papers, 1948–2018 Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Derek Mahon collection, 1985–1988, 1991, 2000 Letters and postcards from Derek Mahon to Louis Asekoff from 1963–1988: Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Letters to Louis Asekoff, 1963–1988 Portraits of Derek Mahon at the National Portrait Gallery, London Awards received by Derek Mahon v t e Poetry Now Award Dorothy Molloy (2005) Derek Mahon (2006) Seamus Heaney (2007) Harry Clifton (2008) Derek Mahon (2009) Sinéad Morrissey (2010) Seamus Heaney (2011) Michael Longley (2012) Dennis O'Driscoll (2013) v t e David Cohen Prize 1990s V. S. Naipaul (1993) Harold Pinter (1995) Muriel Spark (1997) William Trevor (1999) 2000s Doris Lessing (2001) Beryl Bainbridge and Thom Gunn (2003) Michael Holroyd (2005) Derek Mahon (2007) Seamus Heaney (2009) 2010s Julian Barnes (2011) Hilary Mantel (2013) Tony Harrison (2015) Tom Stoppard (2017) v t e Irish poetry Topics Irish poetry Chief Ollam of Ireland Irish bardic poetry Irish Literary Revival Metrical Dindshenchas Contention of the bards Aisling Weaver Poets An Gúm Kildare Poems Táin Bó Cúailnge Poets Bardic Mael Ísu Ua Brolcháin Muircheartach Ó Cobhthaigh Gilla Mo Dutu Úa Caiside Baothghalach Mór Mac Aodhagáin Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh Flann mac Lonáin Donnchadh Mór Ó Dálaigh Lochlann Óg Ó Dálaigh Fear Flaith Ó Gnímh Mathghamhain Ó hIfearnáin Cormac Mac Con Midhe Eoghan Carrach Ó Siadhail Fear Feasa Ó'n Cháinte Tadhg Olltach Ó an Cháinte Eochaidh Ó hÉoghusa Proinsias Ó Doibhlin Tarlach Rua Mac Dónaill Gilla Cómáin mac Gilla Samthainde Tadhg Dall Ó hÚigínn Niníne Éces Colmán of Cloyne Cináed ua hArtacáin Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh Cearbhall Óg Ó Dálaigh Máeleoin Bódur Ó Maolconaire Diarmaid Mac an Bhaird Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh Dallán Forgaill Óengus of Tallaght Sedulius Scottus Saint Dungal Maol Sheachluinn na n-Uirsgéal Ó hÚigínn Philip Ó Duibhgeannain 15th/16th century Tomás Ó Cobhthaigh 17th century Dáibhí Ó Bruadair Piaras Feiritéar Aogán Ó Rathaille 18th century Aogán Ó Rathaille Brian Merriman Jonathan Swift Oliver Goldsmith John Hewitt 19th century Thomas Moore Charles Gavan Duffy James Clarence Mangan Samuel Ferguson William Allingham Douglas Hyde James Henry Antoine Ó Raifteiri Aeneas Coffey Robert Dwyer Joyce Thomas Davis Speranza Katharine Tynan Oscar Wilde 20th century James Joyce Patrick Pearse Joseph Plunkett Thomas MacDonagh Francis Ledwidge Padraic Colum F. R. Higgins Austin Clarke Samuel Beckett Brian Coffey Denis Devlin Thomas MacGreevy Blanaid Salkeld Mary Devenport O'Neill Patrick Kavanagh John Hewitt Louis MacNeice Máirtín Ó Direáin Seán Ó Ríordáin Máire Mhac an tSaoi Michael Hartnett Gabriel Rosenstock Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill Micheál Mac Liammóir Robert Greacen Roy McFadden Padraic Fiacc John Montague Michael Longley Derek Mahon Seamus Heaney Paul Muldoon Thomas Kinsella Michael Smith Trevor Joyce Geoffrey Squires Augustus Young Randolph Healy John Jordan Paul Durcan Basil Payne Eoghan Ó Tuairisc Patrick Galvin Cathal Ó Searcaigh Bobby Sands Rita Ann Higgins Eavan Boland Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Medbh McGuckian Paula Meehan Dennis O'Driscoll Seán Dunne Anthony Cronin W. F. Marshall W. B. Yeats 21st century Thomas McCarthy John Ennis Pat Boran Mairéad Byrne Ciarán Carson Patrick Chapman Harry Clifton Tony Curtis Pádraig J. Daly Gerald Dawe Greg Delanty Eamon Grennan Vona Groarke Seamus Heaney Pat Ingoldsby Trevor Joyce Brendan Kennelly Hugh McFadden Sinéad Morrissey Gerry Murphy Bernard O'Donoghue Conor O'Callaghan Caitriona O'Reilly Justin Quinn Maurice Riordan Maurice Scully William Wall Catherine Walsh Poems Anthologies Faber Book of Irish Verse Epics The Wanderings of Oisin Bardic Timna Cathaír Máir Caithréim Cellaig Le dís cuirthear clú Laighean Is acher in gaíth in-nocht... Is trúag in ces i mbiam Sen dollotar Ulaid ... Sorrow is the worst thing in life ... An Díbirt go Connachta Foraire Uladh ar Aodh A aonmhic Dé do céasadh thrínn A theachtaire tig ón Róimh An sluagh sidhe so i nEamhuin? Cóir Connacht ar chath Laighean Dia libh a laochruidh Gaoidhiol Pangur Bán Liamuin Buile Shuibhne The Prophecy of Berchán Bean Torrach, fa Tuar Broide 18th century The Traveller Suantraí dá Mhac Tabhartha Mná na hÉireann 19th century Tone's Grave The Wind That Shakes the Barley Contemporary Love Songs of Connacht Hi Uncle Sam Meeting The British Horse Latitudes Sweeney Astray Prayer Before Birth D-Day Organizations Poetry Ireland Publications Cyphers Poetry Ireland Review The Lace Curtain Events SoundEye Festival Authority control BNF: cb121812331 (data) GND: 119049856 ISNI: 0000 0001 0934 3294 LCCN: n50037879 NKC: js20060901012 NLP: A27212257 NTA: 068519753 PLWABN: 9810545785505606 SELIBR: 336275 SNAC: w6hh7rmg SUDOC: 030387825 VIAF: 110228045 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n50037879 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Derek_Mahon&oldid=1000651923" Categories: 1941 births 2020 deaths Aosdána members David Cohen Prize recipients French–English translators Writers from Belfast Male poets from Northern Ireland University of Paris alumni Alumni of Trinity College Dublin 20th-century writers from Northern Ireland 20th-century poets from Northern Ireland 21st-century British poets 21st-century British male writers 20th-century translators 21st-century translators Male writers from Northern Ireland 20th-century British male writers People from Kinsale Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Wikipedia introduction cleanup from October 2020 All pages needing cleanup Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify from October 2020 All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify Articles needing additional references from October 2020 All articles needing additional references Articles with multiple maintenance issues EngvarB from October 2013 Use dmy dates from October 2013 National Portrait Gallery (London) person ID same as Wikidata Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLP identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Languages Deutsch Español Euskara Gaeilge Italiano مصرى Polski Русский Simple English Türkçe Edit links This page was last edited on 16 January 2021, at 02:04 (UTC). 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