Education
Grennan studied at University College, Dublin, where he met poets Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland, and at Harvard University, and began teaching at Vassar in 1974.
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Eamon Grennan
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He has lived in the United States, except for brief periods, since 1964. He was the Dexter M. Ferry Junior. Professor of English at Vassar College until his retirement in 2004.
Though his Irish roots are clear in his poetry, Grennan has an international sense of literary tradition.
He has cited as influences American poets including Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop (herself an international poet with ties to the United States, Canada, and Brazil). He returned to Ireland fairly briefly, first in 1977 and later in 1981, and began writing poetry there.
His first book, Wildly for Days, was published in 1983. Gaelic poetry became an important influence, particularly, he has said, on the sound of his poems.
At the same time, he is interested in the sentence as a poetic unit as well as a prose unit
In an interview with Timothy Cahill, Grennan said: I have, it"s a toothache quality, a kind of pain -- the ambition to make a sentence that is full, that has not gone limp, hasn"t stopped while it still has some elasticity in lieutenant Grennan"s career has been long, productive and distinguished, and he has earned from fellow poets a reputation for lyrical skill and psychological intensity. Former United States. Poet Laureate Billy Collins said of Grennan: Few poets are as generous as Eamon Grennan in the sheer volume of delight his poems convey, and fewer still are as attentive to the marvels of the earth.
To read him is to be led on a walk through the natural world of clover and cricket and, most of all, light, and to face with an open heart the complexity of being human.
Grennan was nominated for the 2008 Poetry Now Award for his collection.
Achievements
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Born
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Nationality
Ireland
Awards
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Guggenheim Fellowship; PEN Award for Poetry in Translation PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation is given by the PEN American Center to honor a poetry translation published in the preceding year.The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation is given by the PEN American Center to honor a poetry translation published in the preceding year.