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Dennis O'Driscoll
Born in Thurles in 1954, Dennis O’Driscoll’s nine books of poetry include New and Selected Poems (2004), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, Reality Check (2007) and Dear Life (Winner of th...view moreBorn in Thurles in 1954, Dennis O’Driscoll’s nine books of poetry include New and Selected Poems (2004), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, Reality Check (2007) and Dear Life (Winner of the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, 2013). He was editor of the Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations (2006) and Quote Poet Unquote (2008). His book, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney (2008) was shortlisted for ‘Book of the Decade’ in the Irish Book Awards 2010. A further book of essays, The Outnumbered Poet, was published posthumously in 2013 and received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Dennis O’Driscoll received a Lannan Literary Award, the E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry and the Argosy Irish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He was a member of Aosdána (the Irish Association to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland), and an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by University College Dublin in 2009. He judged many major awards, including the Griffin Poetry Prizes, T.S. Eliot Prize, Cholmondeley Awards (Society of Authors) and Geoffrey Faber Award. As a reviewer he contributed to, among others, The Irish Times, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Parnassus, London Magazine, Poetry (Chicago), Harvard Review and A Poetry Criticism Reader (University of Iowa Press). Dennis O’Driscoll worked for almost forty years as a civil servant in Dublin. He lived with his wife, Julie O’Callaghan, in County Kildare. He died on Christmas Eve 2012 at the age of 58.view less