John Montague (John Patrick Montague) Biography

Irish poet, born in Brooklyn, New York; he returned as a child to his family's farm at Garvaghey, Co. Tyrone. He was educated at University College, Dublin, and at the Universities of Yale and Iowa, USA. After working as a journalist in Dublin and Paris, he became Lecturer in Poetry at the University of Cork in 1972. His collections of poetry include Forms of Exile (1958), Poisoned Lands (1961), The Rough Field (1972), The Great Cloak (1978), Selected Poems (1982), Mount Eagle (1988), New Selected Poems (1990), and Time in Armagh (1993). Investigation of the connections between individual identity and Irish culture and history is a central concern in his writing. Much of his poetry takes the form of extended sequences in which his richly particularized vision of Ireland's heritage combines imaginatively with treatments of his personal and political preoccupations. Montague was responsible for introducing innovative procedures into Irish poetry during the 1960s, when he and Thomas Kinsella emerged as the principal successors to Austin Clarke and Patrick Kavanagh. His prose works include the short stories of Death of a Chieftain (1964) and the novella The Lost Notebook (1987). He edited The Faber Book of Irish Verse (1974).