Dennis O’Driscoll

Dennis O’Driscoll was born in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1954. He has written eight books of poetry, three chapbooks and a collection of essays and reviews. He has also edited and compiled contemporary quotations about poets and poetry, and has published a book of his dialogues with Seamus Heaney.

His poetry publications include Kist (Dolmen Press, 1982), Hidden Extras (Anvil Press, London/Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1987), Long Story Short (Anvil Press/Dedalus Press, 1993), Quality Time (Anvil Press, 1997), Weather Permitting (Anvil Press, 1999), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Prize 2001, and Exemplary Damages (Anvil Press, 2002). His New and Selected Poems (Anvil Press, 2004) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. His latest collection of poems, Reality Check (Anvil Press, 2007/ Copper Canyon Press, US, 2008), was shortlisted for the Irish Times/Poetry Now Prize. His three chapbooks are The Bottom Line (Dedalus Editions, 1994), 50 O’Clock (Happy Dragons Press, UK, 2005) and All the Living (Traffic Street Press, Minnesota, 2008).

Among numerous anthologies in which his work appears are Staying Alive (Bloodaxe), Scanning the Century (Penguin), 20th Century Irish Poems (Faber) and The Poetry [Chicago] Anthology (Ivan R. Dee). A substantial selection of his work is included in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry 1 (Wake Forest University Press, USA, 2005).

Also a widely-published critic, Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams (Gallery Press, 2001) contains a selection of his essays and reviews. As a reviewer, he has contributed to the The Irish Times, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Parnassus, London Magazine, Poetry (Chicago), Harvard Review and A Poetry Criticism Reader (University of Iowa Press).

He is editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations (Bloodaxe Books, 2006) and its American counterpart, Quote Poet Unquote (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). His book, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber, London/Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York), was published in 2008.

His awards include a Lannan Literary Award, the E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry from the Center for Irish Studies in Minnesota, and the Argosy Irish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by University College, Dublin in 2009.

He has given readings at the Poetry Room in Harvard University, at Poetry International in London and at many festivals of literature including Hay-on-Wye and Cheltenham.

Among the publications in which his poems have appeared are:

[Ireland] The Sunday Independent, The Sunday Tribune, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Metre;

[UK] London Magazine, New Statesman, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Poetry Review, PN Review, London Review of Books, Poetry London, Thumbscrew.

[U.S.A.] The Southern Review, Yale Review, Verse, New England Review, Columbia, TriQuarterly, Poetry [Chicago], Poetry International, Five Points, Fulcrum, The Paris Review, Parnassus and Harvard Review.

He is an advisor to Agenda magazine and a contributing editor of Harvard Review. A member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy of Artists, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, he worked as a civil servant for almost forty years.