Dichter
Derek Mahon
Derek Mahon
(Ierland, 1941)
© John Minihane, courtesy of The Gallery Press
Biografie
Derek Mahon was born in Belfast in 1941 and studied French literature at Trinity College Dublin and at the Sorbonne. He lived for many years in London, working variously as a reviewer, television adaptor of literary texts for British television and poetry editor of the New Statesman. More recently he has domiciled in Dublin and Kinsale. He is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential of contemporary Irish poets. He has influenced not only a younger generation of British and Irish poets but has also been one of the influences on a new school of Scandinavian poets centred in Oslo and Gothenburg. The high regard in which his work is generally held can be gauged by the awarding to him of the lifetime achievement award, the €60,000 2007 David Cohen Prize for Literature, previously won by the poet Thom Gunn but usually awarded to Novelists. Judging by the brilliance of his recent work and his relative youth a lifetime achievement award may be considered a tad premature; this “itinerant soul”, surrounded by both the literal and metaphoric “esurient sea” he writes so often about, has plenty of juice left in him yet.
© Patrick Cotter
Selected Bibliography Poetry
The Yellow Book, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1997
Collected Poems, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1999
Harbour Lights, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 2005
Translations
Words in the Air (Phillipe Jaccottet), The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1998 Birds (Saint-John Perse), The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 2002
Adaptations (selected translations/versions), The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 2006
Translated Drama
High Time, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1985
The Bacchae, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1991
Racine’s Phaedra, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 1996
Cyrano de Bergerac, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 2004
Oedipus, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, 2005
Prose
Journalism- Selected Prose, 1996
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Mahon Wikipedia’s Take
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellpatke/Miscellany/Painting/Painting%20into%20Poetry.htm Critical Paper dealing with Mahon’s poems on paintings
http://www.theparisreview.com/viewmanuscript.php/prmMID/732 A manuscript page reproduced in the Paris Rview
http://www.towerpoetry.org.uk/poetry-matters/july2005/mahon.html
A review of Mahon’s latest original collection.
Gedichten
Gedichten van Derek Mahon
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère