Life
1909-1969; [William Robert; called Bertie], b. Belfast. ed. QUB, grad.
in English, 1931; entered Presbyterian Theol. College; ord. 1935, served
as minister, at Loughgall, Co. Armagh, 1935-1946 [DUB 1934-]; known English
as the ‘Catholic Presbyterian’; wrote and published sexually
liberated poetry; issued Awake! and Other Poems (1941), professing
in the introduction that it contained all his poems to date, none written
more than three years earlier; resigned, moving to Edinburgh to train
as psychoanalyst; took BBC producer job offered by MacNeice, and settled
in London, 1946; contrib. BBC in 3rd Prog. Features Dept.; elected MIAL
on death of GB Shaw, in 1951; remarried in 1953; writer in residence at
Pitzer College, Clairmont, [Los Angeles] California, 1966; d. Los Angeles.
Poetry collections, collaborations with MacNeice [as in unpublished Character
of Ireland], and compiled Irish Literary Portraits (London:
BBC Publ. 1972; NY: 1973); exchanged religion for poetry and life; Dan
Davin, ed., Collected Poems (1971), incl. ‘Home Thoughts from
Abroad’. Hardin Rodgers, TCD lecturer, is a daughter. DIB DIW
DIL ORM FDA HAM OCIL
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Works
Poetry, Awake! and Other Poems (London: Secker & Warburg
1941), 69pp.; Europa and the Bull (London: Secker & Warburg
1952), 94pp.; Collected Poems, with an introductory memoir by Dan
Davin (London: OUP 1971), xxv, 149pp.; an unpublished play for the BBC,
The Return Room (1955) [verse playscript dealing with Belfast].
Prose, Irish Literary Portraits: W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, James Joyce, George Moore, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St. John gogoarty, F. R. Higgins, AE [George Russell], Broadcast Conversations with Those Who Knew Them (London: BBC 1972), 7, xix, 236pp., and do. [another edn.] (NY: Taplinger 1973) [infra].
Articles, ‘How I Write a Poem’, Threshold, No. 37 (Winter 1986/87), pp.20-25. NOTE also letters in Rupert Hart-Davis, ed., Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Hart-Davis 1962). Qry [Reprinted] Poems (1947).
Miscellaneous, Essex Roundabout [...] (Colchester: Benham & Co 1963), 63pp., with drawings by Meg Stevens; Ireland in Colour: A Collection of Forty Colour Photographs with an introductory text and notes […] by W. R. Rodgers (London. B. T. Batsford 1957), 110pp.; ISBN 0 563 10347]; The Ulstermen and Their Country [British Council] (London: Longmans Green & Co. [1947]) 8o.
Recordings, Europa and the Bull: W. R. Rodgers Reading from his Second Volume (London: Argo 1953-54); Michael Longley, ed., Poems [of] W. R. Rodgers (Dublin: Gallery Press 1993) [1 85235 106 3; also pb.]
Bibliographical
details
Irish Literary Portraits (BBC
1972): W. B. Yeats, 1-22; James Joyce, 22-76 [two sections on the younger
and the older artist]; George Moore, 75-93; Shaw, pp.117-42; , Oliver
St. John Gogarty, 142-68; F. R. Higgins, 169-184; AE (George Russell),
pp.185-203; additional section, ‘Old Ireland Free’, being memories
of 1916, with Seamus O’Suillivan, Edward Stephens, Richard best,
Oliver St. John Gogarty, George Roberts, Fred O’Donovan, Cecil Salkeld,
Liam Ó Briain, Bulmer Hobson, Desmond Ryan, Pearse Beasley, Cathal
O’Shannon, Helena Maloney, Sean McGarry, [?et al.]
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Criticism
Kingsley Amis, ‘Ulster Bull’, Essays in Criticism, Vol.
III, No. 4 (1953), pp.470-75 [dismissive essay, cited by Terence Brown,
Northern Voices, 1975].
Robert Greacen, ‘The Poetry of W. R. Rodgers’, Rann, No. 14 [Autumn 1954], pp.14-18.
Darcy O’Brien, W. R. Rodgers (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1970), 103pp. [draws on dream-notebooks and other uncollected writings].
Terence Brown, ‘W. R. Rodgers, Romantic Calvinist’, in Northern Voices, Poets from Ulster (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1975), pp.114-27.
Terence Brown, ‘The Poetry of W. R. Rodgers and John Hewitt’, in Douglas Dunn, ed., Two Decades of Irish Writing (Manchester: Carcanet 1975), pp.81-97.
Terence Brown, ‘The Dissidence of Dissent", John Hewitt and W. R. Rodgers’, in Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley, eds., Across the Roaring Hill, The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland [essays in honour of John Hewitt] (Belfast: Blackstaff 1985), pp.139-60. NOTE, Rodgers at the BBC is satirised a length in Anthony Cronin, The Life of Riley (1964)
Derek Mahon, ‘An Imprudential Poet’, review of Poems
of W. R. Rodgers, ed. Michael Longley (Irish Times, 1993);
rep. in Journalism: Selected Prose 1970-1995I (Gallery Press 1996),
pp.88-91.
Seamus Heaney writes, ‘[W. R. Rodgers was] much lured by alliteration’, and quotes: ‘an abrupt people/Who like the spiky consonants of speech …’] (‘Feeling into Words’, in Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-78, Faber 1980, pp.41-60, p.[44].)
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Notes
Belfast Public Library (1956 Cat.) holds Europa and the Bull, and
other Poems (1957); The Ulstermen and their Country (n.d.).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, selects from Awake! and Other Poems, ‘White Christmas; from Europa and the Bull, ‘Lent’, ‘The Net’ [pp.166-68; Biog., p.170.] Collected Poems (OUP 1971).
British Library holds Awake! and Other Poems. London: Secker & Warburg 1941. 69pp. 8o.; Collected Poems. London: Oxford University Press 1971. xxv, 149pp. 23 cm.; Essex roundabout ... with drawings by Meg Stevens. Colchester: Benham & Co 1963. 63pp. 24 cm.; Europa and the Bull, and other poems. 94pp. Secker & Warburg: London, 1952. 8o.; Ireland in Colour. A collection of forty colour photographs. With an introductory text and notes on the illustrations by W. R. Rodgers. London. B. T. Batsford 1957. 110pp. 8o.; Irish literary portraits [of W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, George Moore, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St John Gogarty, F. R. Higgins, AE.] W. R. Rodger's broadcast conversations with those who knew them. London: British Broadcasting Corporation 1972. 7, xix, 236pp.. 24 cm. [ISBN 0 563 10347]; The Ulstermen and their Country. [with illustrations]. 31pp. [British Council] London: Longmans Green & Co. [1947] 80.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)