Roy McFadden was an Irish attorney and poet. Roy McFadden combined a long and successful legal career with a passion for poetry, both as an editor and promoter of new writing and as a poet himself.
Background
Roy McFadden was born on November 14, 1921, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. McFadden was the son of a bank official father and a keenly pacifist mother. His maternal grandfather worked in a Belfast shipyard and was a Unitarian lay preacher fond of painting and books, with a particular interest in the poetry and painting of William Blake.
Education
Roy was educated at Regent House Grammar School, Newtownards, County Down and Queen's University, Belfast where he graduated in Law in 1944.
While at Queen's University McFadden became friends with his almost exact contemporary Graecen, with whom he co-edited a literary quarterly, Ulster Voices, which they launched in 1943, publishing their own and others' poetry (not everyone's: a keen young English poet, Drummond Allison, stationed as a soldier in Belfast, sought them out, became good friends with the editors who were happy to introduce him to the Belfast literary scene they well knew; but they declined to publish a line of his poetry, which decision he attributed to his being English, a solder or both). McFadden's own poetry was first published in Dublin in 1941, in a pamphlet, Russian Summer. The following year he was one of the Three New Poets brought out by Grey Walls Press, Essex - the others being Alex Comfort, later famous for his book The Joy of Sex, and Ian Seraillier, probably most famous for his story of three Polish children in the Second World War, The Silver Sword.
McFadden himself was of pacifistic leanings and was drawn to the thought of Herbert Read, the anarchistic poet and art critic, who persuaded Routledge to publish McFadden's first "proper" collection of poems, Swords and Ploughshares, in 1943, followed by Flowers for a Lady in 1945 and The Heart's Townland in 1947. McFadden was still busy as an editor, with Irish Voices, the short-lived Lagan (1945-6), and the leading literary journal Rann (1948-1953). Concurrently, he overseeing his law firm, of which he was the director by 1954. In 1952, he produced came to a verse play for radio, The Angry Hound. He published a single piece, Elegy for the Dead of Princess Victoria, to commemorate the loss of the ship of that name, a Northern Ireland-Scotland cross-channel ferry, in 1953.
In 1971 McFadden began to publish more of his own poetry, in that year issuing an anthology, The Garryowen, followed in 1977 by Verifications and in 1979 by A Watching Brief. Then came The Selected Roy McFadden (1983), Letters to the Hinterland (1986), and After Seymour's Funeral (1990). An edition of his Collected Poems was published in 1996, which included some material previously unpublished, albeit recast. The volume included a preface and extensive notes by the author, as well as a portrait drawing by Rowel Friers. The volume Last Poems was published in 2002, overseen by Sarah Ferris.
During the 1939-1945 war McFadden was a pacifist, attracted to socialist realism, and deeply influenced by Herbert Read’s politico-cultural anarchism.
Views
Though McFadden had rich a speaking voice, he believed that, "a writer can survive only behind a mask or in self-imposed exile", and deflected searchers for his views ‘poetry’ with a terse injunction to “read the poems”. This stance largely explains McFadden's exclusion from contemporary anthologies but his voice persisted.
Personality
Roy McFadden was a generous and patient mentor over a considerable period of time.
Quotes from others about the person
"In a particularly creative period of Irish writing, Roy McFadden was one of his country's true masters."