Ormsby, Frank

(1947- )

   Born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, and educated at Queen's University, Belfast, he is head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He has edited a number of anthologies, including Thine in Storm and Calm: An Amanda McKittrick Ros Reader (1988); The Collected Poems of John Hewitt (see entry) (1991); and Northern Windows: An Anthology of Ulster Autobiography (1987). He edited the Honest Ulsterman from 1969 to 1989; the Poetry Ireland Review; and The Hip Flask: Short Poems from Ireland (2001), a collection of Irish lyric poems including work by W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge and Seamus Heaney (see entries). In 1992 he received the Cultural Traditions Award, given in memory of John Hewitt, and in 2002 the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry from the University of St. Thomas at St. Paul, Minnesota. Some of his other publications: Ripe for Company, 1971. A Store of Candles, 1977. The Ghost Train, 1995. Some of his poems: "A Northern Spring," "At the Jaffé Memorial Fountain, Botanic Gardens," "The Padre," "The War Photographers," "Winter Offerings."

   Sources: Bitter Harvest: An Anthology of Contemporary Irish Verse. John Montague, ed. Scribner's, 1989. Contemporary Irish Poetry: An Antholog y. Anthony Bradley, ed. University of California Press. New and rev. ed., 1988. Life and Works of Frank Ormsby (http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth133). Poets from the North of Ireland. Frank Ormsby, ed. The Blackstaff Press, 1990. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org).