Dunne, Seán

(1956-1995)

   Irish poet, from Waterford City, he studied English at University College, Cork, where he was a contemporary of Thomas McCarthy and Theo Dorgan (see entries). He detailed his student political activities in his memoir The Road to Silence: An Irish Spiritual Odyssey (1995). After college he settled in Cork, where he worked in the city library and continued to write and publish poems. Around the time first book, Against the Storm: Poems, was published in 1985, he began working as a freelance journalist and joined the Cork Examiner daily newspaper, where he became a prominent columnist. Among the anthologies he edited are Poets of Munster (1985), The Cork Antholog y (1993) and Something Understood: A Spiritual Antholog y (1995). He published two other poetry collections: The Sheltered Nest (1992) and Time and the Island (1996), as well as a memoir, In My Father's House (1991, republished, 2000). His Collected was published by the Gallery Press in 2005. He died suddenly in Cork, where he had spent his adult life. Some of his poems: "Autumn," "Quatrain," "Refugees at Cobh," "Requiescat," "Sydney Place," "Throwing the Beads," "Time, Please," "Tristitia Ante."

   Sources: Bitter Harvest, an Anthology of Contemporary Irish Verse. John Montague, ed. Scribner's, 1989. Biography of Seán Dunne (http://www.gallerypress.com/Authors/Sdunne/sdunne.html). Biography of Seán Dunne, Irish Writers Online (http://www.irishwriters-online.com/seandunne.html). Life and Works of Seán Dunne (http://www.munsterlit.ie/Conwriters/sean_dunne.htm). Modern Irish Poetry. Patrick Crotty, ed. The Blackstaff Press, 1995. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). Turning Tides: Modern Dutch and Flemish Verse in English Versions by Irish Poets. Peter van de Kamp, ed. Story Line Press, 1994.