According to his long-time friend, the poet Maurice Riordan, who contributes a foreword to this posthumous new collection, O’Donoghue was "sensitive to the preternatural and the ghostly presences, and had a strong sense of fatality... But these poems have as well a wry and understated sense of reconciliation with the melancholy outcome of our lives and loves." One of the most admired of the gifted generation of poets which emerged in Cork in the 1970s, O'Donoghue left behind him a body of poetry whose vibrancy and symbolic depth will guarantee him readers for many years to come.
Gregory O'Donoghue (1951-2005) was born in Cork. His first book, Kicking, was published by the Gallery Press when he was 24 and he was the youngest contributor to The Faber Book of Irish Verse (1978). He lived for many years in Ontario, where he married, and taught at Queen's at Kingston. In 1980 he moved to Lincolnshire where he worked freight trains between South Derbyshire and King's Cross, Nottingham and Skegness. In 1996 he published an interim collection entitled The Permanent Way, followed, in 2001, by his first collection with Dedalus, Making Tracks. In recent years he was co-facilitator of the Thursday workshops of the Munster Literature Centre and editor of the journal Southword. In 2005 Southword Editions published A Visit to the Clockmaker, his translations of the Bulgarian poet Kristin Dimitrova.
Gregory O'Donoghue (1951-2005) was born in Cork. His first book, Kicking, was published by the Gallery Press when he was 24 and he was the youngest contributor to The Faber Book of Irish Verse (1978). He lived for many years in Ontario, where he married, and taught at Queen's at Kingston. In 1980 he moved to Lincolnshire where he worked freight trains between South Derbyshire and King's Cross, Nottingham and Skegness. In 1996 he published an interim collection entitled The Permanent Way, followed, in 2001, by his first collection with Dedalus, Making Tracks. In recent years he was co-facilitator of the Thursday workshops of the Munster Literature Centre and editor of the journal Southword. In 2005 Southword Editions published A Visit to the Clockmaker, his translations of the Bulgarian poet Kristin Dimitrova.