Mahon, Derek (1941- ), poet. Born in Belfast, he grew up in Glengormley, and was educated at TCD. He worked as a teacher, and as a journalist. He was writer in residence in NUU, 1978-9, and TCD, 1988, and moved to New York. His work responds in a complex manner to a northern, Protestant, middle-class background. Without a community to which he can easily belong, Mahon in Night Crossing (1968), his first collection, is drawn to the forgotten and neglected. In Lives (1972) the central issue is the relation of self to the world, with the imagination coming under pressure. Rather than exploring the past, Mahon's poems often project into an apocalyptic future. In The Snow-Party (1975) form and chaos are held in delicate equipoise. Poems: 1962-1978 (1979) was followed by Courtyards in Delft (1981), many of the poems in this volume reappearing in The Hunt by Night (1982). Meditations on war, human decay, lost innocence, and cultural decline are accompanied by a growing uncertainty. Mahon's recurring settings are desolate Northern landscapes, deserted beaches, and scenes of cosmic isolation. In Antarctica (1985), symbolic landscape is even more wasted and extreme. Mahon translated Gérard de Nerval's The Chimeras (1982); Molière's School for Husbands as High Time (1985), which was presented by Field Day in 1984; Molière's School for Wives (1986); and Selected Poems of Philippe Jaccottet (1988). The Hudson Letter (1995) and The Yellow Book (1998) are volumes in which form relaxes into loose-rhyming couplets as social satire grows harsher. Collected Poems appeared in 1999.

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