Life
1950- ; b. N. London, of Irish parents; grew up on farm in Hollyfort,
Co. Wexford; poetry collections incl. Those Distant Summers (1980),
After Thunder (1985); a one-act play, Cardinal (1991), was
premiered Hamburg; issued The Fabulists (1994), a novel about down-and-outs
in Dublin; issued The Water Star (2000), which follows five Londoners
in aftermath of the blitz, with final sequence in Ireland; issued The
Year of the Knife (1991), poetry; issued The Fisher Child (Nov.
2001), a story of abuse and vengeance, completing the Bann River Trilogy;
elected to Aosdána; lives in Dublin; created “The Fabulist”,
an Irish literary web-page incorporating a ‘Dictionary of Contemporary
Irish Writers’; creator of Irish Writers Online;
currently living in Dublin. FDA
[ top ]
Works
Poetry collections, The Planets and Stars Become Friends
( Gorey: Funge Art Centre [1974]), 1 folded sh (8pp.); Those Distant
Summers (Raven Arts Press 1980), 4opp.; After Thunder (Dublin:
Raven Arts Press; Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1985), 64pp.; The Year
of the Knife: New and Selected Poems 1980-1990 (Raven Arts Press 1991),
96pp; The Fabulists (Dublin: Lilliput Press; London: Serif 1994),
235pp.; The Water Star (London: Picador 2000), 434pp; The Fisher
Child (London: Picador 2001), 261pp.
Miscellaneous, abridged extract from The Fisher Child, in The Irish Times ["Write Now"] (Weekend, 3 Nov. p.13); “The Fabulist/Dictionary of Contemporary Irish Writers” at Irish Writers Online and Philip Casey’s Homepage [infra]; ‘Comforts of Youth’, in “Finishing Lines”, The Irish Times Magazine (14 Sept. 2002), p.66 [reflections on the smells of childhood; infra].
Internet (Webpages), Irish Writers Online & www.philipcasey.com.
[ top ]
Criticism
Interview, Books Ireland (Oct. 1994) [self-admitted surrealist];
review of The Fabulists in Times Literary Supplement (18,
Nov. 1994) [down-and-out-ers in Dublin, ‘spoofing’].
Paul Magrs, review of The Fisher Child (Picador), Times Literary Supplement, 16 Nov., p.24
Katie Donovan, A. N. Jeffares, and Brendan Kennelly, eds., Ireland’s Women (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994), selects prose.
[ top ]
Notes
The Fabulists (1994), set in Dublin, concerns Tess and Mungo,
lonely people who begin sporadic affair after chance encounter on Ha’Penny
Bridge having both been through ‘marriage, children, death of love’;
exchange fantasies; rediscover capacity to feel; Mungo has previously
lived in Barcelona; Tess receives postcards from Berlin; opens with Tess
joining the Parade of Innocence to highlight the case of the Birmingham
Six as it crosses O’Connell St. Bridge, where she first sees Mungo;
ends with the couple waving to President Robinson as she leaves Dublin
Castle following her inauguration; skill in handling of elements of fact
and fantasy. (Review by Liam Harte, in Irish Studies Review, Winter
1994/5, p.49.)
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)