Thomas Kinsella Biography

Irish poet, born in Dublin, where he was educated at University College. After a successful career in the Irish Civil Service, he began teaching at American universities in 1965 and became Professor of English at Temple University, Philadelphia, in 1970. The Starlit Eye (1952) was his first collection of verse. His reputation was established by the highly accomplished work in Poems (1956). The experimental character of his later poetry emerged in the sombrely lyrical Another September (1958). Night-walker (1967), the long poem widely regarded as an important advance in Irish Modernism, conducts its penetrating analysis of Ireland's socio-cultural situation through a psychologically revealing treatment of Kinsella's responses to his country's past and present. His later collections include Notes from the Land of the Dead (1972), Songs of the Night and Other Poems (1978), Collected Poems: 1956–1973 (1980), One Fond Embrace (1981), Blood and Family (1988), which contains work previously issued by Peppercanister, the publishing house he founded in Dublin in 1972, and From Centre City (1994). Kinsella is also noted for his translation of the Irish epic poem The Tain (1968). His works as an editor include The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1986). His prose work Dual Tradition (1995) focuses on poetry and politics in Ireland.