Derek Mahon
| Derek Mahon | |
|---|---|
Moscow 2010
|
|
| Born |
23 November 1941 Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Occupation | Poet Journalist |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
Derek Mahon (born 23 November 1941) is a Northern Irish poet. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Mahon was born the only child of Ulster Protestant working class parents. His father and grandfather worked at Harland and Wolff while his mother worked at a local flax mill. During his childhood, he claims he was something of a solitary dreamer, comfortable with his own company yet aware of the world around him. Interested in literature from an early age, he attended Skegoneill Primary school and then the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.
At Inst he encountered fellow students who shared his interest in literature and poetry. The school produced a magazine to which Mahon produced some of his early poems. According to the critic Hugh Haughton his early poems were highly fluent and extraordinary for a person so young.
Mahon pursued third level studies at Trinity College, Dublin where he edited Icarus, and formed many friendships with writers such as Michael Longley, Evan Boland and Brendan Kennelly. He started to mature as a poet. He left Trinity in 1965 to take up studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.
After leaving the Sorbonne in 1966 he worked his way through Canada and the United States. In 1968, while spending a year teaching English at Belfast High School, he published his first collection of poems Night Crossing. He later taught in a school in Dublin and worked in London as a freelance journalist. He currently lives in Kinsale, Co. Cork. On 23 March. 2007 he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. He won the Poetry Now Award in 2006 for his collection, Harbour Lights, and again in 2009 for his Life on Earth collection.
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