Life
1955- ; b. Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford; son of prominent hotel-keepers; ed. Cistercians,
Roscrea; UCD, BA and HDip; issued The Celtic Twilight (1974) and
Fragments and Other Poems (1981), both with Funge Arts Centre;
studied at Univ. of Wisconsin, MA 1984; issued Fire Escape (1988)
and The Tamed Goose (1990) at different presses in New York; completed
PhD., NY City University 1992; contrib. to Dermot Bolger, ed., Ireland
in Exile (1993); issued Dyckman-200 Street (1994) with Salmon
Press; co-ed., The Gorey Detail; issued From the Sin-e Café
to the Black Hills (2000), autobiography; issued
Refuge at De Soto Bend (2005), incorporating a sequenceon the Wexford refugee container-tragedy; travels between Ireland and America. DIL2
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Works
Poetry, The Celtic Twilight (Wexford: Funge Arts Centre
1974); Fragments and Other Poems (Wexford: Funge Arts Centre 1981);
Fire Escape (NY: Sunken Isle 1988); The Tamed Goose (NY:
Hall 1990); Dyckman-200 Street (Dublin: Salmon Press 1994); Refuge at De Soto Bend (Salmon Poetry 2005), 80pp.
Autobiography, From the Sin-e Café to the Black Hills (Winsconsin UP 2000), 154pp.
Miscellaneous, ‘Four Paintings by Danny Maloney’, in Dermot Bolger, ed., Ireland in Exile: Irish Writers Abroad (New Ireland Books 1993); poems in Bolger, ed., Wexford Through Its Writers (Dublin: New Island Books 1993); suite of poems in New Hibernia Review, 3, 1 (March 1999).
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Commentary
James J. McAuley, review of Refuge at De Soto Bend, with others, in The Irish Times (123 Feb. 2005; Weekend): speaks of two sections, with “The Wexford Container Tragedy” and “North Atlantic Drift”, both sequences, at the centre of each. Also “How You Leave”, the first poem. ‘His satire on “The New Marina in Wexford”, with one Ray Wallace as the Countess Cathleen’s escort, is amusing. “The Dutch” pokes ironic fun at the trials and thwarted expectations of those we used to call “the visitors”, while giving serious thought to the immigrants’ woes. [...]
Wall therefore relies almost entirely on his disposition of imagery and figuration to accord the bulk of this work the characteristics of poetry. He has a sharp satirical eye; can take the pulse of a sick society; but his forms suggest hasty innovation.’ (Review of sundry
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)