Frank Ormsby Biography

Northern Irish poet, born in Eniskillen, Northern Ireland, educated at Queen's University, Belfast. He edited Honest Ulsterman from 1969 to 1989. A Store of Candles (1977), his first substantial collection of verse, was widely acclaimed for its unobtrusive technical accomplishment and the candour with which he dealt with domestic and local material. A Northern Spring (1986) showed him to have built ambitiously on his previous achievements. The long title sequence of thirty-six poems forms a richly imaginative treatment of the Second World War presented through a wide range of voices and incidents; the Ulster settings common in his earlier writing are used as points of departure for work which develops its themes in a wide European context. He has edited numerous books, including Northern Windows (1987), a collection of excerpts from the autobiographies of Ulster-born writers, and A Rage for Order (1992), an anthology of poetry relating to the conflict in Northern Ireland.