MacGreevy, Thomas

(1893-1967)

   Born in Tarbert, County Kerry, he worked for the Irish Land Commission, Dublin, from 1910 until World War I. He was an officer in the Royal Field Artillery and by Christmas 1917 he was fighting at the Somme. His war experiences clearly influenced his poems. After the war he read history and political science at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1924 he became assistant editor for The Connoisseur in London and wrote art and literature reviews for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and the Athenaeum. From 1927 to 1928, he was lecturer in English literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. Returning to London in 1933, he became chief art critic of The Studio, then was director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963. He was awarded the Chevalier de l'ordre de la Légion d'honneur (1948), Officier de la Légion d'honneur (1962) and an honorary doctorate of letters from the National University of Ireland (1962). He died in Dublin from heart failure. Some of his poems: "Aodh Ruadh O'Domhnaill," "Crón Tráth na nDéithe" (the "cab" poem), "De Civitate Hominum," "Homage to Marcel Proust," "Recessional," "The Six Who Were Hanged."

   Sources: An Anthology of Irish Verse: The Poetry of Ireland from Mythological Times to the Present. Padraic Colum, ed. Liveright, 1948. Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry. Keith Tuma, ed. Oxford University Press, 2001. Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy: An Annotated Edition. Susan Schreibman, ed. Anna Livia Press, Dublin, 1991. Contemporary Irish Poetry: An Anthology. Anthony Bradley, ed. University of California Press. New and rev. ed., 1988. Kennys Irish Bookshop (http://www.kennysirishbookshop.ie/categories/irishwriters/macgreevythomas.shtml). Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). 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 Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935. William Butler Yeats, ed. Oxford University Press, 1936.