Desmond Egan Biography

Irish poet, born in Athlone, County West Meath, educated at University College, Dublin, afterwards becoming a teacher. In 1972 he founded the Goldsmith Press, which has since produced many editions, principally of poetry by Irish authors, including Patrick Kavanagh: The Complete Poems (edited by Peter Kavanagh, 1984). Egan's first collection of poetry, Midland (1973), was followed by subsequent volumes including Song for My Father (1989), Seeing Double (1991), and In the Holocaust of Autumn (1994); Collected Poems appeared in 1984, and Selected Poems in 1992, with an introduction by Hugh Kenner. A keen interest in the possibilities of experimental poetic forms is evident throughout his work, which ranges thematically between outspokenly political poems and precisely observed lyrical verse. His other works include The Death of Metaphor (1989), a collection of his literary essays.