Life
1930-1988 [John Edward Jordan; pseud. ‘Stephen Renehen’]; b. 8 April, 1930; Dublin, ed. CBS at Synge St.; UCD, grad. BA Hons in English and French (1st Class); MA in English, 1954; proceeded to Oxford on Studentship; completed B.Litt. on verse letters of John Donne; asst. lecturer at UCD, 1959; lecturer 1965; resigned in 1969;
involved with the Gate as actor; championed the later O’Casey; acted as reviewer of novels for The Irish Times; wrote
a column for Hibernia; included Patrick Kavanagh and Kate O’Brien among his friends; published poetry pseud. in Irish Writing
and Arena; re-fnd. & ed., Poetry Ireland, 1962-68 [Nos. 1-8] (hoping ‘in
the humblest of ways, to contribute towards the recreation of Dublin as
a literary centre’); orig. speaker at annual Patrick Kavanagh commemoration
on the Canal bank (followed by Macdara Woods); championed Sean O’Casey,
wrote on Teresa Deevy, defended Gaelic literature, and translated Padraic
Ó Conaire; fnd.-member of Aosdana, 1983; died suddenly in Wales following minor strokes; his executor, Hugh McFadden, has edited his poems and prose; the lit. papers & letters are now held in the
NLI (MS List 15). DIL OCIL
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Works
Poetry, Patrician Stations (Dublin: New Writers’s Press 1971), 32pp. [ltd. edn. 500]; A Raft from Flotsam: Versifications 1948-74 (Oldcastle:
Gallery Press 1975), 5-55pp. [ltd. edn. 1000; 225 in cloth]; Blood and Stations (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1976), 42pp. [poetry & prose incorp. “Patrician Stations”]; With Whom Did I Share the Crystal? (Dublin: St Bueno’s [ John F. Deane] 1980), 18pp. [ltd. handprinted edn.]; Hugh McFadden, ed., Collected Poems, intro. by Macdara Woods (Dublin: Dedalus Press 1991),
138pp.
Fiction, Yarns (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1977), 109pp.[13 stories]; Hugh McFadden, ed., Collected Stories, intro. by Benedict Kiely (Dublin: Poolbeg Press in 1991), vii, 377pp. [28 stories].
Criticism, Hugh McFadden, ed., The Selected Prose of John Jordan (Dublin: Lilliput Press [April 2005).
Miscellaneous, [essay on Teresa Deevy] in University Review (Spring 1956); ‘Off the Barricades: Notes on Three Poets’, in The Dolmen Miscellany of Irish Writing (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1962), pp.107-116; ‘Writer at Work’, in St. Stephen’s (Michaelmas 1962), pp.17-20; ‘Illusion and Actuality in the Later O’Casey’, in Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements [gen. ed. P. N. Furbank] (London: Macmillan 1969), pp.143-61; ‘Collector’s Poet’, review of Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy, in The Irish Press (13 Nov. 1971, p.12 [infra]; ‘Thing to Live For’, in Festschrift for Francis Stuart, ed. W. J. McCormack (Dublin: Dolmen 1972), pp.19-23; intro., Irish Poetry Now: An Exhibition of Books, Periodicals, Broadsheets, Manuscripts, Recordings, Drawings and Portraits since 1939 [Project Arts Centre, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin, Feb. 29-March 11 Feb. (Dublin: Project Arts Centre [1972]), 28pp., ill. ports.; ed. Pleasures of Gaelic Literature (Cork: Mercier & RTE 1977, rep. 1978), 120pp. [incls. own essay on Aogán Ó Rathaille & a piece on ‘Deoraíocht’ (pp.13-24)]; ‘Off the Barricades, Notes on Three Poets’, in the Dolmen Miscellany of Irish Writing (1962), pp.107-116; ‘The Irish Theatre - Retrospect and Premonition’, in John Russell Brown & Bernard Harris, eds., Contemporary Theatre [Stratford-upon-Avon Studies No. 4] (1962) [q.pp.]; ‘Writer at Work’, in St. Stephens (Michaelmas 1962), pp.17-20; ‘Joyce Without Fears: A Personal Journey’, in John Ryan, ed., A Bash in the Tunnel: James Joyce by the Irish (Brighton: Clifton Books 1970), pp.135-46; ‘Irish Catholicism’, in the Crane Bag [Forum Issue: Religion], Vol. 7, No. 2 (1983), pp.106-16; ‘Shaw, Wilde, Synge and Yeats, Ideas, Epigrams, Blackberries and Chassis’, in Richard Kearney, ed., The Irish Mind (1985), pp.209-226; ‘The Passionate Autodidact: The Importance of litera scripta for Sean O’Casey’, in IUR, vol. 10, no. 1 pp.70-71; trans., ‘Nell’, in Padraic Ó Conaire, 15 short stories, with other writers (Poolbeg 1982); ‘The West Awake’, review of L’Attaque, in Irish Press (21 Lunasa 1980).
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Criticism
Thomas Kilroy & James Liddy, ‘In
Memoriam: John Jordan’, in Irish Review, No. 6 (Spring 1989),
pp.95-97. Autobiographical information in letters to James Agate, printed in
Ego 8 and Ego 9.
James Liddy, ‘John Jordan’, in Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary
of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979).
Sean O’Casey: ‘Illusion and Actuality in the Later O’Casey’ [essay based on Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism lecture at Princeton Univ. in 1966]; rep. in Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements, 1969, pp.143-61.
John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, ed., Contemporary Theatre [Stratford-upon-Avon Studies No. 4] (1962).
Thomas MacGreevy, review in The Irish Press, 113 Nov. 1971.
John Ryan, ed., A Bash in the Tunnel (Clifton Books 1970), pp.135-36, 141-43.)
W. J. McCormack, Festschrift for Francis Stuart, ed. , 1972, p.22.)
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Notes
Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, eds., Soft Day,
A Miscellany Of Contemporary Irish Writing, (Notre Dame/Wolfhound
1980), selects poems and prose including short story ”Passion”.
Hibernia Books (1996) lists John Jordan, ed., ‘Kate O’Brien Special Issue’, Stony Thursday Book, No. 7 (n.d.).
Patrician Stations given as book-title Patrician
Studies [sic] (New Writers’ Press 1971), in Michael Smith, ‘The
Contemporary Situation in Irish Poetry’, in Douglas Dunn, Two
Decades of Irish Writing (1975).
Borges/Shaw: quotes Juan Luis Borges on Shaw: ‘In Man and Superman we read that hell is not a penal establishment but rather a state dead sinners elect for reasons of intimate affinity, just as the blessed do with heaven; the treatise, De Coelo et Inferno by Swedenborg published in 1758, expounds the same doctrine’. Jordan remarks: ‘Borges adds in a dazzling footnote [which amounts to] ‘formidable conspectus of the Irish mind [...] from Eruigena to Shaw’, and cites his own critical articles [as above]. (‘Shaw, Wilde, Synge and Yeats, Ideas, Epigrams, Blackberries and Chassis’, in Richard Kearney, ed., The Irish Mind, 1985, pp.209-226.)
Francis Stuart: John Jordan wrote in homage to Francis Stuart, then in Frieburg (Germany/French Zone), on reading Things to Live For (March 1949).
Literary executor: The literary executor of the estate of John Jordan is Hugh McFadden, with an address at 29 Clareville Road, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, 6W, Republic of Ireland (June 2004).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)