Bermuda Poet To Participate In MacNeice Tribute

April 26, 2013

Paul MaddernBermudian poet Paul Maddern will participate in an upcoming Belfast tribute commemorating the 50th anniversary of celebrated Irish poet Louis MacNeice’s death.

Being held in conjunction with Ireland’s National Poetry Day, the Louis MacNeice Poetry Evening event takes place on May 17 at Ulster Hall Group Space.

Other readers include contemporary Irish poets Jean Bleakney, Lucy Caldwell, Ciaran Carson, Alan Gillis, Miriam Gamble and Sinéad Morrissey.

Frederick Louis MacNeice [1907–1963] was part of the generation of “thirties poets” that included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, collectively nicknamed “MacSpaunday.”

His body of work was widely appreciated by the public during his lifetime, due in part to his relaxed, but socially and emotionally aware style.

Never as overtly political as some of his contemporaries, his work shows a humane opposition to totalitarianism as well as an acute awareness of his Irish roots.

Now a Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the UK’s University of Leeds, Mr. Maddern completed a PhD at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University in Belfast.

The former Saltus Grammar School student’s work — much of it Bermuda-flavoured– has appeared in publications including “The Caribbean Writer”, “Poetry Ireland Review”, “The Shop”, “The Yellow Nib” and “Incertus”, an anthology of emerging poets writing in the north of Ireland.

Mr. Maddern’s collection “The Beachcomber’s Report” was recently awarded The Cecile N. Musson Prize for Poetry at the 2012 Bermuda Literary Awards presentation.

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