Life
1959- ; b. 6 Feb., Finglas, Co. Dublin; ed. St. Canice’s and Beneavin
College; factory hand, 1978-79; library assistant, 1979-84; lit. dir.
Grapevine Arts Centre; fnd. Irish Writers’ Co-Operative, with Neil
Jordan, Ronan Sheehan, Steve MacDonagh, and others; fnd. dir. Raven Arts
Press, 1979; Arts Council Member, 1989-93; member of Aosdána, 1991;
works incl. The Habit of Flesh (1979), poems; other collections
include Finglas Lives (1980), No Waiting America (1982),
Internal Exiles (1986), and Leinster Street Ghosts (1989),
containing the longer poem ‘The Lament for Arthur Cleary’, a
stage-adaptation of which won the Edinburgh Fringe award 1989, under direction
of David Byrne of Wet Paint, with dramaturg Maureen White; Blinded
by Light (Peacock 1990), Whitbread Prize; In High Germany premiered
at Dublin Theatre Festival (Gate 1990), and later filmed by RTE, 1993,
features three Irish football fans following their international side
abroad for the European Championships of 1988; played at Irish Arts Centre,
NY 1993; re-shown in Two Lives series (RTÉ 1, Thurs. Nov.
3, 1995), also produced at Edinburgh Festival, 1995, making him the only
writer to win at Edinburgh twice; The Holy Ground (Gate Theatre
1990), played with In High Germany under joint title “The
Tramway End”; One Last White Horse, premiered at Dublin Theatre
Festival (Peacock 1992); novels incl. Night Shift (1985), telling
how Donal Flynn copes with his girlfriend’s pregnancy, a rushed marriage,
and the brutality and sadness of the underside of city life, won the Macauley
Fellowship; The Woman’s Daughter (1987, rev. 1991), a tale
of incestuous love with a hidden offspring and the abuse of women in small-town
Ireland, written in three parts set in different periods; winner of Guinness
Peat Award, 1989; The Journey Home (1989), a story of the ‘crazy,
unofficial lives’ of Hano [Francis Hanrahan], Katie and Shay, and
particularly the latter couple’s flight from Dublin after having
murdered the head of the Plunkett dynasty which brought about Shay’s
death and abused Hano; ends with their taking shelter in the “big
house” of a humanitarian old Ango-Irish lady, evicted by her Irish
rural neighbours; became an Irish best-seller in Viking edn. of 1990;
Emily’s Shoes (1992), an exploration of fetishism and the
roots of a man’s unhappiness]; A Second Life (1994), involving
a formerly adopted child’s search for his real mother now he is a
man; also April Bright (Peacock, Aug. 1996), a play; also ed. The
Bright Wave: An Tonn Gheal (1986), anthology of translated contemporary
Gaelic poetry, and ed. Letters from the New Island (1987-89), pamphlets
series; ed. Invisible Dublin: A Journey through Dublin’s Suburbs
(1991), ‘an attempt to chronicle the lives of the new Dubliners ...’);
also ed., The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction (1993),
asserting prefatorially that the new writers are ‘drawing on deep
reserves to drive literature into a state of renewal’ (xvi), so that
‘the centre is shifting in Irish writing’ (xx); corrected and
reissued in 1994; executive editor of New Island Books in 1992 after collapse
of Raven Arts Press; awards incl. AE Memorial Award; awarded Macaulay Fellowship,
and received the Sunday Tribune Arts Award; issued Father’s Music (1997),
a novel of Dublin gangsterdom; winner of The Stuart Parker BBC Award and
Samuel Beckett Award in 1990 and the Æ []George Russell] Memorial Award in 1996; conceived
and ed. with Paul Daniels, a collective ‘novel’ comprised of
chapters by Irish writers each set in a different room of Finbar’s
Hotel (1997), incl. commissioned chapters by Jennifer Johnston, Colm
Toibin, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, et al.; issued New
and Selected Poems (1998); Temptation (2000), a novel; m. Bernadette,
with two children; issued The Valparaiso Voyage (2001), dealing
with the return of a troubled Irishman and his relationship with a Nigerian
asylum-seeker and people from his past; issued The Reed Bed (2002),
poetry; wrote
Départ Et Arrivée, a play with Paris-based Iranian writer exile Kazem Shahryari (Paris Arts Studio, Nov.-Dec. 2004); also, a new play about three generations of two Ballymun families, These Green Heights (Axis Arts Centre, Ballymun 24 Nov. - 11 Dec. 2004); reviews TV for The Village. FDA OCIL
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Works
Poetry: Finglas Watching the Night (1977); Never a Dull
Moment [Raven Arts, No. 4] (Dublin: Raven Arts Press [1979]), 32pp;
The Habit of Flesh (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1979); Finglas
Lilies (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1980); No Waiting America
(Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1982) [ltd. edn. 25 signed copies]; Internal
Exiles (Dublin: [Dolmen] Raven Arts Press 1986), and Leinster Street
Ghosts (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1989) [incl. ‘Lament for Arthur
Cleary]; The Reed Bed (Oldcastle: Gallery Books 2000), 78pp.; Dermot Bolger, The Chosen Moment (Dublin: New Island 2004), 28pp.
Fiction: Night Shift (Dingle: Brandon 1985; Dublin: Raven 1989; London: Penguin 1993) [A.E. Memorial Prize, 1986]; The Woman’s Daughter (Raven Arts 1987), Do., [extended version as] Woman’s Daughter (Viking/Penguin 1991), and Do., [extended version, Swedish trans. (1994), and Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Flamingo 2003), 262pp.; Macaulay Fellowship, 1987; shortlisted Hughes Fiction Prize, 1988]; The Journey Home (London: Viking/Penguin 1990; 1991) [in French 1992, Germany 1992 and Swedish, 1993; shortlisted for Irish Times/Aer Lingus Prize, 1992. Shortlisted Hughes Fiction Prize, 1990], and Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Flamingo 2003), 392pp.; Emily’s Shoes (London: Viking/Penguin 1992), 299pp.; A Second Life ([?1989] Viking/Penguin 1994); Father’s Music: A Novel (London: Flamingo 1997; pb. 1998), 388pp.; Taking My Letters Back: New and Selected Poems (Dublin: New Island Press 1998); Temptation (London: Flamingo 2000), 222pp.; Bolger, Dermot, The Valparaiso Voyage (London: Flamingo 2001), 256pp.
Plays: The Lament for Arthur Cleary (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1989) [ded. to David Byrne and Maureen White], Do., in David Grant, sel. and intro., The Crack in the Emerald: New Irish Plays (London: Nick Hern Books 1990; 1994); A Dublin Quartet (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1992), containing ‘Blinded by Light’, ‘In High Germany’, ‘The Holy Ground’, ‘and One Last White Horse’]; Blinded by the Light (Abbey Theatre 1990); In High Germany (Gate 1990) [based on 1988 European Championships, it follows Irish soccer fans abroad].
Miscellaneous: Ed., After The War is Over: Irish Writers Protest at the Visit of Ronald Reagan (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1984); ed., The Bright Wave/An Tonn Gheal: Poetry in Irish Now, with a preface by Alan Titley (Dublin: Raven Arts 1986; rep 1988, 1992) [anthology of contemporary Gaelic poetry with translations; An Duais Bhord Na Gaeilge, award]; ed., Letters from the New Island [a series of polemical pamphlets, 1987-89] (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1991); ed., Invisible Dublin: A Journey through Dublin’s Suburbs (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1991) [infra]; ed., Wexford Through its Writers (Dublin: New Island Books 1993), pb., 125pp.; ed., Padraic Pearse, Rogha Dánta: Selected Poems (Dublin: New Island Books, 1993), 80pp., intro. Eugene McCabe [pp.7-18]; Iar-fhocal le Michael Davitt [pp.75-79]; ed., Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction (London: Picador 1993; NY, Vintage 1994), 554pp. [infra]; ed. Francis Ledwidge: Selected Poems, foreword by Seamus Heaney (New Island Books 1992); ed., Ireland in Exile: Irish Writers Abroad (Dublin: New Island Books 1993; 1995); ed., with Ciaran Carty, The Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction (Dublin: New Islands Books 1995) [incl. Mike McCormack, Colum McCann, Michael Taft, Marina Carr, Eoin MacNamee, Mary Costello]; Dermot Bolger, [ed.,] Finbar’s Hotel (Dublin: New Island 1997) [chap.-stories by Bolger, Colm Toibín, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, Joe O’Connor, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton]; Ladies’s Night at Finbar’s Hotel (Dublin: New Island 1999), 270pp. [Maeve Binchy, Clare Boylan, Emma Donoghue, Anne Haverty, Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, Kate O’Riordan].
Journalism (selected:) Bolger gives an account of the founding of Raven Arts, in ‘How Poetry Warps the Mind’, Sunday Independent, Living & Leisure, 9L (8 Dec. 1994); Bolger, ‘Singing Detective Work’, review of W. Stephen Gilbert, Fight and Kick and Bite, the Lie and Work of Dennis Potter, in Tribune Magazine (3 Dec. 1995), Books, p.26; ‘Home for Christmas, tale of uneasy homecoming, death and revenge’, Sunday Independent (31 Dec. 1995), Living, 29L; ‘A December Morning in Leinster Street, 1985’, poems, in Sunday Independent (29 Dec. 1995).
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Bibliographical
Details
Invisible Dublin: A Journey
through the Dublin Suburbs, Ed. & intro. Dermot Bolger (Raven
Arts P. 1991), 178pp. [ded., ‘For my father and in memory of my mother,
a Wexford lad and a Monaghan girl, two new Dubliners’]; Ferdia MacAnna;
Roddy Doyle [Dead Bones and Chickens]; Sara Berkeley; Hilary Fannin;
Aileen O’Mara; Paul Kimmage; June Considine; Podge Rowan; Deirdre
Purcell; Michael O’Loughlin; Sebastian Barry [Mountjoy Square
1974]; Peter Sheridan; Aidan Murphy; Francis Stuart; Noel McFarlane;
Fintan O’Toole; Gene Kerrigan; Nell McCafferty; Kieran Fagan; Leland
Bardwell; Heather Brett; Annette Halpin; Eamon Dunphy; Eavan Boland [The
Need to be Ordinary]; Conleth O’Connor; Joe Jackson; no biog.
notices.
Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction, ed. Dermot Bolger (London Picador 1993; corrected ed. 1994), 518pp. Authors included, John Banville [from Mefisto]; Leland Bardwell [The Hairdresser]; Sebastian Barry [from The Engine of Owl-Light]; Mary Beckett [Heaven]; Samuel Beckett [For to End Yet Again]; Sara Berkeley [The Sky’s Gone Out]; Dermot Bolger [from The Journey Home]; Clare Boylan [Villa Marta]; Shane Connaughton [Ojus]; Mary Dorcey [The Husband]; Roddy Doyle [from The Snapper]; Anne Enright [Men and Angels]; Hugo Hamilton [from Surrogate City]; Aidan Higgins [from Balcony of Europe]; Desmond Hogan [from A Curious Street]; Jennifer Johnston [from The Christmas Tree]; Neil Jordan [Last Rites]; Molly Keane [from Good Behaviour]; Maeve Kelly [Orange Horses]; Benedict Kiely [from Proxopera]; Mary Lavin [Happiness]; Mary Leland [from The Killeen]; Eugene McCabe [Cancer]; Patrick McCabe [from The Butcher Boy]; John McGahern [High Ground]; Tom McIntyre [The Man-Keeper]; Bernard MacLaverty [Between Two Shores]; Bryan MacMahon [A Woman’s Hair]; Eoin MacNamee [If Angels had Wings]; Deirdre Madden [Remembering Light and Stone]; Aidan Matthews [Incident on El Camino Real]; Gerardine [sic] Meaney [Counterpoint]; Brian Moore [The Sight]; Val Mulkerns [Memory and Desire]; Eilís Ní Duibhne [Blood and Water]; Edna O’Brien [from What a Sky]; Bridget O’Connor [Postcards]; Joseph O’Connor [Mothers were All the Same]; Sean O’Faolain [The Talking Trees]; Michael O’Loughlin [A Rock-’n-Roll Death]; David Park [Oranges from Spain]; Glenn Patterson [from Burning Your Own]; Francis Stuart [from Black List, Section H]; Colm Tóibín [from The Heather Blazing]; William Trevor [The Ballroom of Romance]; Robert McLiam Wilson [from Ripley Bogle]; Biographical notes [titles without dates], 509-518pp.; Julia O’Faolain, review of Dermot Bolger, Temptation (Flamingo), pb., in Times Literary Supplement, 16 June 2000, p.25.
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Criticism
‘Realist or Fetishist?: Novelist Dermot Bolger talks to Neil Sammells’, in Irish Studies Review, 1 (1992), pp.23-3; Gerry Smyth, The
Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (London: Pluto
Press 1997), pp76-79 [infra]; Conor MacCarthy, ‘Ideology
and Geography in Dermot Bolger’s The Journey Home’, in Irish
University Review (Spring/Summer 1997), pp.98-110; Liam Harte, ‘A
Kind of Scab: Irish Identity in the Writings of Dermot Bolger and Joseph
O’Connor’, in Irish Studies Review, 20 (Autumn 1997),
pp.17-22; Conor MacCarthy, ‘Modernisation without Modernism: Dermot
Bolger and the “Dublin Renaissance”’, in Modernisation:
Crisis and Culture in Ireland 1969-1992 (Dublin: Four Courts Press
2000) [Chap. 3], pp.135-64 [infra]. See also
unlisted remarks in Commentary, infra; Shaun Richards, ‘Progressive Regression
in Contemporary Irish Culture’, [pt. 3 of] ‘The Triple Play
of Irish History, in Irish Review, Winter-Spring 1997, p.38-39; Rüdiger Imhof,
review of Contemporary Irish Fiction, reviewed with other works
(Linen Hall Review, 10.3; Winter 1993); Carol Birch, ‘The Last of their Kind’, review of Father’s Music,
in TLS, 4 April 1997; Catriona Reilly,
review of Taking My Letters Back (New Island), in Irish Times,
16 Jan. 1999; [Q.a.],
review of Emily’s Shoes (Viking 1992), in Times Literary
Supplement (12 June 1992) p.20; Gerry Smyth,
The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (London:
Pluto Press 1997), pp.76-79; Harry Browne Irish Times,
Radio Review, 1 Dec. 2001, Weekend, p.6; Desmond Traynor,
review of The Valparaiso Voyage (Flamingo), Books Ireland, March 2002; Julia O’Faolain,
review of Dermot Bolger, Temptation (Flamingo), Times Literary Supplement, 16 June 2000, p.25; Anne Fogarty, ‘Sex, power and revenge in modern Ireland’, review of The
Valparaiso Voyage (Flamingo), The Irish Times [Weekend],
2 Nov. 2001; Jonathan Keates,
review of Dermot Bolger, The Valparaiso Voyage (London: HarperCollins),
385pp., in Times Literary Supplement (16 Nov. 2001), p.24; Conor McCarthy,
Modernisation: Crisis and Culture in Ireland 1969-1992 (Dublin:
Four Courts Press 2000) [Chap. 3], pp.135-64
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Notes
Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares & Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s
Women (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994), incls. selection.
Colin Smythe (publisher) catalogue lists Bolger, ed., The Dolmen Book of Irish Christmas Stories; Internal Exiles; note also rep. Dermot Bolger, Nightshift (Penguin 1993), 144pp.
University of Ulster Library holds The Bright Wave [PB 1353 B9]; Invisible Dublin, ed. Dermot Bolger [TRL 820.8]; Night Shift [JORD 823.91].
The Lament for Arthur Cleary (1989), adapted for stage by
Wet Paint in Project Theatre, 1989; Edinburgh Festival, Arthur Cleary
Productions, 1990; BBC Radio 4, 1990; Irish Tour, by Arthur Cleary Prod.;
Scottish Tour, by 7: 84; New York, Irish Arts Centre, 1992; Samuel Beckett
Award; Stewart Parker Award; BBC Award, and Edinburgh Fringe Theatre Award.
Temptation (2000), novel set in holiday hotel in souther Ireland; Alison Alison Gill, 39, is left alone with the children while her husband Peadar, a school principal, returns to Dublin to deal with a crisis arising from the planned school extension; Chris Conway, her former boyfriend, is coming to terms with the death of his wife and children and staying in the same hotel. Reviewing, Bernice Harrison laments that the central characters are so dreary it’s hard to care whether or not they succomb to any sort of temptation and questions whether the challenge of such a title can be met. (The Irish Times, Paperback notes [q.d.].)
Warp effect: ‘John Walshe, Ed. Corr. of Irish Independent, declares that Paul Durcan’s Raven collection Jesus, Breaks His Fall [sic], should be banned from all schools; Eileen Fox, PRO of CBS Parents Council called it ‘extremely offensive.’ [&c.]. See Bolger gives an account of the founding of Raven Arts, in ‘How Poetry Warps the Mind’, Sunday Independent, Living & Leisure, 9L (8 Dec. 1994).
Invisible Dublin: A Journey through Dublin’s Suburbs (1991), is ‘an attempt to chronicle the lives of the new Dubliners in the new Dublin as it has been lived by them’ (Introduction; p.10.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)