Colum, Padraic

(1881-1972)

   He was born in Longford in the northwest of Ireland, where his father was workhouse master. From 1898 to 1904 he worked as a clerk in the Irish Railway Clearing House in Dublin and left to become a full-time writer. The Saxon Shillin (1902) won a competition for a play to discourage young Irishmen from joining the British army. He went on to write other plays but seems to have been drawn to poetry. He married in 1912, and in 1914 the couple sailed to America. For some time in the 1930s they lived in France, where Colum renewed his friendship with James Joyce (see entry). Colum taught comparative literature at Columbia University, became a U.S. citizen in 1945, and died in Enfield, Connecticut. Some of his poetry publications: Wild Earth, 1907. The King of Ireland's Son, 1916. Dramatic Legends, 1922. Creatures, 1927. Irish Elegies, 1958. Some of his poems: "A Drover," "Across the Door," "The Ballad of Downal Baun," "The Book of Kells," "The Fire Bringer," "The Stations of the Cross," "The Wall of China."

   Sources: An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry. Marcus Graham, ed. The Active Press, 1929. Biography of Padraic Colum (http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/history/people/writers/pcolum.shtm). Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Ireland in Poetry. Charles Sullivan, ed. Harry N. Abrams, 1990. Microsoft Encarta 2006 (DVD). Microsoft Corporation, 2006. Roofs of Gold: Poems to Read Aloud. Padraic Colum, ed. Macmillan, 1964. Sung Under the Silver Umbrella. Association for Childhood Education International, ed. Macmillan, 1935. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Golden Book of Catholic Poetry. Alfred Noyes, ed. J.B. Lippincott, 1946. The Home Book of Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.