Life
1927- ; b. 15 Aug., 13 Margaret St., Cork, ed. Presentation Brothers (CBS) and later at
a reformatory in the countryside; influenced by English teacher and returnee
from Spanish Civil War; returned to Cork; sold broadsheets in Cork pubs in early childhood;
left school in 1939; employed as messenger boy, newspaper boy, and projectionist
in Washington St. and Lee cinemas; travelled to Belfast to join American
Army but enlisted in RAF Bomber Command instead; served in UK,
Palestine, and Sierre Leone (Coastal Command, Africa); variously employed
in London in post-war period; encountered Seamus Ennis and practised folk-singing;
made 7 records of of Irish folk-song from 1798-1923 for WMA, Stinstson
Records and Riverside Records, NY; broadcast poetry with BBC; issued Heart
of Grace (1957); made Life and Poetry of J. M. Synge (BBC3,
1959), a radio feature; briefly moved to Dublin, 1962; a play, And
Him Stretched, presented at Unity Theatre (London 1962); returned
to London, 1963; wrote Boy in the Smoke (BBC 2, 1965); settled
at Roaring Water Bay, W. Cork, 1965; Cry the Believers (1965),
play; travelled in Spain, Israel, Germany, 1967-69; The Wood Burners
(1973), poetry; resident dramatist at Lyric Theatre, Belfast, as poet-in-residence,1974-77,
and recipient of the Leverhulme Fellowship in Drama, 1974-76; Nightfall
to Belfast (Lyric Th. 1973); dir. Yeats’s Purgatory (Lyric
Th. 1974); The Last Burning (Lyric 1974), The Last Burning
(1974), based on the Dame Kyteler witch trial in Kilkenny; We Do [var.
Did] It for Love (Lyric Th. 1975), ballad opera set in N.
Ireland Troubles, and centred on a merry-go-round; also The Devil’s
Own People (Dublin Th. Fest. 1976); issued Man on the Porch: Selected
Poems (1979); spent six months in Spain; resident writer, East Midland
Arts, 1980-82; wrote Class of ’39 (BBC4 1981), radio play;
read at Washington Library of Congress; wrote My Silver Bird,
with music by Peadar O’Riada (Lyric Th. 1981); wrote and dir.,
I Mind My Time (Belfast Fest. 1982), one-man show; dir. Beckett’s
Krapp’s Last Tape (Belfast Th. Fest. 1982); travelled in Spain
for research; moved to Ballycotton, East Cork; City Child Come Trailing
Home, and also Landscape and Seascape (RTÉ 1983), radio
plays; elected to Aosdana, 1984; Quartet for Nightown, and Wolfe
(RTÉ 1984), radio plays; settled in Belfast; adapted The
Country Woman by Paul Smith (BBC4 1986); adapted The Monkey’s
Paw by W. Jacobs (BBC4 1986); dir. Oscar Wilde (Brighton Pavilion
1987); issued Folk Tales for the General (1990); Song for a
Poor Boy (1990); reading tour in Mexico and Newfoundland, 1991; returned
to Cork, 1991; Song for a Raggy Boy (1991), autobiography, adapted
for film with Aidan Quinn in lead-role; The Death of Arthur O’Leary
(1994); O’Shaugnessy Award for Poetry from Irish American Cult.
Institute, and reading tour in USA, 1994; writer in residence and ed.
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Co. Anthology (1996), incl. his own Village
Diary; New and Selected Poems was edited by Greg Delanty and
Robert Welch (1996); The Raggy Boy Trilogy issued 2003, to be filmed
by Aisling Walsh. DIL DIW OCIL
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Works
Poetry, Heart of Grace (London: Linden Press 1957); Christ
in London (London: Linden Press 1960); The Woodburners (Dublin:
New Writers’s Press 1973); Midnight and Other Poems (1979);
Man on the Porch (London: Martin Brian and O’Keeffe 1980)
[var. 1979]; Folk Tales for the General (Dublin: Raven Arts 1990);
Greg Delanty & Robert Welch, eds. & intro., New and Selected
Poems of Patrick Galvin (Cork UP 1996), 128[133]pp.; The Death
of Arthur O’Leary (Cork: Three Spires Press 1994); Also The
Death of Art O’Leary (Killeen: Three Spires [q.d.]), 26pp.; Madwoman
of Cork, cassette recording.
Autobiographical trilogy, Song for a Poor Boy: A Cork Childhood (Dublin: Raven Arts Press 1990), 111pp. [1-85186-080-0]; Song for a Raggy Boy (Dublin: Raven Arts 1991); Song for a Fly Boy (due 1997); issued jointly as The Raggy Boy Trilogy (Raven Arts 2003). Bibl., Letter to A British Soldier on Irish Soil (Detroit: Red Hanrahan Press 1972) [ltd. 500]. [OCIL err: Heart of Grace 1957; recte 1959.]
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Portfolio: his longer poem “The Madwoman of Cork” was been produced in a portfolio edition of 1987 with 8 lithographic illustrations by Kent Clark, one for each stanza; copied of the ltd. edition of 75 are held in Harvard University Library, Boston, Massachusetts, USA The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Northern Ireland St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada The University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Canada The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, County Monaghan, Ireland The Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland and numerous private collections worldwide. Kent Jones holds the Chair of Fine Art at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)