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- Born: 1941
- Active: '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s
- Genres: Spoken Word
Biography
Derek Mahon, one of the foremost poets of Ireland, has written more than a dozen volumes of poetry. While enrolled at Dublin's Trinity College, he received the Eric Gregory Award and also won a Lannan Literary Award. Among the other honors he has received are the American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the Irish American Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Arts Council Bursary. In addition to writing poetry, Mahon also published translations that include the Selected Poems of Philippe Jaccottet, a 1977 work that earned the Scott-Manriet Translation Prize. Among his volumes of poetry are The Hudson Letter, published in 1996 by Wake Forest Press, and The Man Who Built His City in Snow, which was published in 1972. With Seamus Heaney, he published In Their Element: A Selection of Poems, which was published in 1977. His recordings include Derek Mahon Reads His Poetry.The Belfast native was born in 1941 and raised in the County Antrim town of Glengormley. At Trinity College, he took up French. Twelve Poems, his first book, was published the same year he graduated from college: 1965. Along with poets Michael Longley and Heaney, he was part of a group that came to be known as the Belfast Group, and alternately the Northern Poets. He worked as a teacher in Ireland before moving to London and taking employment as an editor of poetry and feature stories, a journalist, a theater critic of drama, and a screenwriter. He also wrote several plays, among them The Bacchae: After Euripides. Universities on both sides of the Atlantic named him writer-in-residence. Mahon spent time in both the U.S. and Canada, but resides in London. ~ Linda Seida, All Music Guide
