Harry Clifton

Background

Harry Clifton was born on August 15, 1952, in Dublin, Ireland. He has 3 younger brothers and 2 sisters.

Education

Harry Clifton was educated at Blackrock College and University College in Dublin. In 1974 Harry got a bachelor's degree at University College in Dublin. In 1975 he earned a Master of Arts. In 1976 Harry gained a postgraduate degree.

Career

After graduating from University College in Dublin, Harry Clifton began an extended period of travel outside of Ireland. Many of his experiences from this time had major influence on his poetry because he believes the true home of the poet is 'not in a place, but in the language itself'. Harry Clifton lectured at Government Teacher’s College in Nigeria from 1976 till 1978. From 1979 till 1980 Clifton was a teacher at Blackrock College, Dublin, Ireland. Harry has lived in places throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, working as an aid administrator in Thailand for Indo-Chinese refugees from 1980 till 1982. From 1980 till 1988 Harry was a member of staff at Irish Civil Service.

In 1986 Harry Clifton was a poet-in-residence at the Frost Place in New Hampshire, an International Fellow at the University of Iowa, and a representative for Ireland at the International Writing Program in Iowa. He has held many teaching positions at universities, including Bremen and Bordeaux in France, and Trinity College and University College, Dublin, in Ireland. From 1989 till 1991 Harry was a teacher at The New School in Assisi, Italy. From 1992 till 1993 he worked as a teacher at St. Charles Sixth Form College in London, England. In 1994 Harry Clifton became a lecturer at the University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany. In 1996 he became a writer in residence at the University of Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France.

Harry Clifton wrote On the Spine of Italy: A Year in the Abruzzi (Macmillan, 1999), a prose work based on a year he spent in Italy's Abruzzi Mountains. He subsequently lived in Switzerland, England and Germany before settling in Paris for ten years, a period that he recorded in Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994–2004 (Wake Forest University Press, 2007). His poems have been translated into several European languages, with a French translation of selected poems, Le Canto d'Ulysse, published in 1996. Harry Clifton also published a book of stories, Berkeley's Telephone & Other Fictions (Lilliput Press, 2000). A new collection, Herod's Dispensations, is scheduled to be published by both publishers in 2019. He now lives in Dublin with his wife, Irish novelist Deirdre Madden, and teaches at University College Dublin.

Achievements

• Among many awards, Harry Clifton has received the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, two Arts Council Bursaries in Literature, and the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the top poetry prize in Ireland.
  
  Harry Clifton is the recipient of fellowships in Germany, France, Australia, and the United States. He is also a recipient of Arts Council bursaries in literature in 1982 and 1987. On June 30, 2010, Clifton was named as Ireland Professor of Poetry for a three-year tenure.

Works

More photos

• book

  • On the Spine of Italy

    (One summer, Harry Clifton and his wife moved unnoticed in...)

    1999
  • Null beauty 1975
  • The Walls of Carthage 1977
  • Office of the Salt Merchant 1979
  • Comparative lives 1982
  • The liberal cage 1988
  • At the grave of Silone: An Abruzzo sequence : poems 1992
  • Night Train Through the Brenner 1994

• Other Work

  • The Desert Route: Selected Poems 1992

Religion

Harry Clifton is a Catholic.

Membership

Harry Clifton is a member of the Ireland Chair of Poetry.

• member

  Ireland Chair of Poetry , Ireland

Personality

Harry Clifton is intelligent, honest, self-wounding, complaisant. Harry Clifton knows history, geography, landscapes very well: he is quite curious. It depicts his poems. Harry is also a good psychologist: he can describe people's inner nature and behavior at a high level. Harry Clifton is an owner of rich imagination: his works are full of gorgeous descriptions.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Harry Clifton can create a mood with his deceptive simplicity." - Audrey Baker

Interests

• travelling, literature, poetry.

Connections

Harry Clifton married Deirdre Madden. She is a writer.

Wife:

Deirdre Madden

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields
  2010