Derek Mahon
Mahon in 2010
Born	(1941-11-23)23 November 1941 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Died	1 October 2020(2020-10-01) (aged 78) Cork, Ireland
Occupation	Poet Journalist
Genre	Poetry
Literary movement	Modernism

Norman Derek Mahon^[1] (23 November 1941 – 1 October 2020) was an Irish poet.^[2] He was born inBelfast, Northern Ireland but lived in a number of cities around the world. At his death it was noted that his, "influence in the Irish poetry community, literary world and society at large, and his legacy, is immense".^[3] President of IrelandMichael D Higgins said of Mahon; "he shared with his northern peers the capacity to link the classical and the contemporary but he brought also an edge that was unsparing of cruelty and wickedness."^[4]

Derek Mahon was born on 23 November 1941 as the only child of Ulster Protestant working-class parents. His father and grandfather worked atHarland and Wolff while his mother worked at a local flax mill.^[5] 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 theRoyal Belfast Academical Institution, or "Inst".

At Inst he encountered fellow students who shared his interest in literature and poetry. The school produced a magazine in which Mahon produced some of his early poems. According to the criticHugh Haughton his early poems were highly fluent and extraordinary for a person so young. His parents could not see the point of poetry, but he set out to prove them wrong after he won his school'sForrest Reid Memorial Prize for the poem 'The power that gives the water breath'.^[6]

Mahon pursued third level studies atTrinity College Dublin in French, English, and Philosophy^[7] and where he editedIcarus, and formed many friendships with writers such asMichael Longley,Eavan Boland andBrendan Kennelly. He started to mature as a poet. He leftTrinity in 1965 to take up studies at theSorbonne 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 atBelfast High School, he published his first collection of poemsNight Crossing. He later taught in a school in Dublin and worked in London as a freelance journalist. He lived inKinsale, County Cork. On 23 March 2007, he was awarded theDavid Cohen Prize for Literature. He won thePoetry Now Award in 2006 for his collection,Harbour Lights, and again in 2009 for hisLife on Earth collection.^[8]

At times expressing anti-establishment values, Mahon has described himself as, an 'aesthete' with a penchant 'for left-wingery [...] to which, perhaps naively, I adhere.'^[9]

His papers are held atEmory University.^[10]

In March 2020, at the beginning of theCOVID-19 pandemic,RTÉ News ended its evening broadcast with Mahon reading his poemEverything Is Going to Be All Right.^[11]

On 1 October 2020, Mahon died inCork after a short illness, aged 78.^[12]

He is survived by his partner Sarah Iremonger and his three children, Rory, Katy, and Maisie.^[12]

Mahon features on the Irish Leaving Certificate course with ten of his poems (Grandfather, Day Trip to Donegal, Ecclesiastes, After the Titanic, As It Should Be, A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford, Rathlin, The Chinese Restaurant in Portrush, Kinsale and Antarctica)[1].

Thoroughly educated and with a keen understanding of literary tradition, Mahon came out of the tumult of Northern Ireland with a formal, moderate, even restrained poetic voice. In an era offree verse, Mahon often wrote inreceived forms, using a broadly applied version ofiambic pentameter that, metrically, resembles the "sprung foot" verse ofGerard Manley Hopkins. Some poems rhyme. Even the Irish landscape itself is never all that far from the classical tradition, as in his poem "Achill":

Croagh Patrick towers likeNaxos over the water

And I think of my daughter at work on her difficult art

And wish she were with me now between thrush and plover,

Wild thyme and sea-thrift, to lift the weight from my heart.

He has also explored the genre ofekphrasis: the poetic reinterpretation of visual art. In that respect, he was interested in 17th-centuryDutch andFlemish art.

• 1965 –Eric Gregory Award for poetry^[13]
• 1989 –Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize
• 1990 –Lannan Literary Awards for Poetry
• 1992 – The Irish Times-Aer Lingus Poetry Prize^[13]
• 1995 – Honorary doctorateTrinity College Dublin.
• 2001 – Honorary doctorateNUI Galway – for work reflecting the enduring aesthetic of achievement in contemporary Irish writing.
• 2007 –David Cohen Prize for Literature – in recognition of his 'lifetime's achievement'
• Member,Aosdána
• Irish Academy of Letters Award
• Guggenheim Fellowship^[14]
• 2020 – Irish Times Poetry Now award^[15]

• List of Northern Irish writers

• Allen Randolph, Jody.Derek Mahon: A Comprehensive Bibliography. Irish University Review: Special Issue: Derek Mahon 24.1 (Spring/Summer 1994): 131–156.
• Reggiani, Enrico.In Attesa della Vita, Introduzione alla Poetica di Derek Mahon, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1996, pp. 432 [seconda ristampa: 2005]
• Haughton, Hugh.The Poetry of Derek Mahon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Jarniewicz, Jerzy.Ekphrasis in the Poetry of Derek Mahon, Piotrkow: NWP Press, 2013, pp. 275,ISBN 978-83-7726-056-2
• Christopher Steare:Derek Mahon : a study of his poetry, London : Greenwich Exchange, 2017,ISBN 978-1-910996-08-9

Wikiquote has quotations related toDerek Mahon.

• Eamonn Grennan (Spring 2000)."Derek Mahon, The Art of Poetry No. 82".The Paris Review. Spring 2000 (154).
• Derek Mahon's page at Wake Forest University Press
• Griffin Poetry Prize biography
• Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip
• "Achill" from poets.org.
• "A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford" from The Poem.
• "Painting into Poetry: The Case of Derek Mahon" by Rajeev S. Patke.
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University:Derek Mahon papers, 1948–2018
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University:Derek Mahon collection, 1985–1988, 1991, 2000
• Letters and postcards from Derek Mahon to Louis Asekoff from 1963 to 1988:Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University:Letters to Louis Asekoff, 1963–1988
• Portraits of Derek Mahon at theNational Portrait Gallery, London

• 1941 births
• 2020 deaths
• Aosdána members
• David Cohen Prize recipients
• French–English translators
• Writers from Belfast
• Male poets from Northern Ireland
• University of Paris alumni
• Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
• 20th-century writers from Northern Ireland
• 20th-century poets from Northern Ireland
• 21st-century British poets
• 21st-century British male writers
• 20th-century Irish translators
• 21st-century translators
• Male writers from Northern Ireland
• 20th-century British male writers
• People from Kinsale
• Translators of Gérard de Nerval

• Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the ODNB
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• EngvarB from October 2013
• Use dmy dates from May 2023
• CS1: long volume value
• National Portrait Gallery (London) person ID same as Wikidata