Thomas Kinsella

Thomas Kinsella was an influential Irish poet who explored primal aspects of the human experience, often in a specifically Irish context. He was born in Inchicore, a suburb of Dublin, in 1928. He attended University College Dublin, where he studied science and humanities. He entered the Irish civil service in 1946 and worked in the department of finance until 1965. He began publishing poetry in the early 1950s, with the encouragement of his wife Eleanor and the support of Liam Miller, the founder of Dolmen Press. He also translated early Irish texts, such as The Táin and An Duanaire, and edited the works of Austin Clarke and The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse. He moved to the United States in 1965 and taught at various universities, including Temple University, where he was a professor of English until 1992. He founded his own publishing firm, the Peppercanister Press, in 1972, which allowed him to publish his poems in limited editions. His later poetry became more experimental and complex, dealing with themes such as memory, history, and identity. He received many awards and honors for his work, including the Denis Devlin Memorial Award, the Irish PEN Award, the O'Shaughnessy Award, and the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award. He died in Dublin in 2021, at the age of 93.