Thomas Kinsella (born May 4, 1928,Dublin, Ireland—died December 22, 2021, Dublin) was an Irish poet whose sensitive lyrics deal with primal aspects of the human experience, often in a specifically Irishcontext.

Kinsella acquired a series of grants and scholarships that allowed him to attend University College in Dublin, where he studied physics and chemistry before receiving a degree inpublic administration. He began serving in the Irishcivil service in 1946, and in the early 1950s he met Liam Miller, the founder of the Doleman Press, which published much of Kinsella’spoetry beginning in 1952. Among these publications werePoems (1956), Kinsella’s first volume of collected work;Another September (1958; rev. ed. 1962), which contains poems that explore the imposition ofexistential order through various forms, be they natural or products of the poet’s imagination; andDownstream (1962), a collection focusing on war and political and social disruption in modernIreland.

In 1965 he left the Irish civil service and took a position as a writer in residence atSouthern Illinois University, Carbondale (1965–70). During this time he publishedNightwalker, and Other Poems (1967), a sombre collectionruminating on Ireland’s past and turbulent present. His translation of the ancient Gaelic sagaThe Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin bó Cuailnge) was published in 1969, and the following year he began teaching atTemple University inPhiladelphia.New Poems 1956–73 (1973) andOne, and Other Poems (1979) skillfully extend the themes of love, death, and rejuvenation.

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Kinsella founded his own publishing company, the Peppercanister Press, in Dublin in 1972, which allowed him to publish pamphlets and individual poems in limited editions without relying on submissions to journals or magazines. Kinsella’s first poem to be published through his press wasButcher’s Dozen (1972; rev. ed. 1992), aboutBloody Sunday, in which 13 demonstrators were killed by British troops in Londonderry (Derry),Northern Ireland, and the ensuing tribunal.Blood & Family (1988)combines four short collections of prose and verse originally published individually through Peppercanister, andGodhead (1999) explores theTrinity in the light of contemporary society. Later works published through Peppercanister includedMarginal Economy (2006),Man of War (2007), andBelief and Unbelief (2007). Numerous collections of Kinsella’s poems were released, includingCollected Poems, 1956–2001 (2001),Selected Poems (2007),Fat Master (2011), andLate Poems (2013); the latter was published by Carcanet Press, which released several of his works in the early 21st century.