Theo Dorgan

Life

1953- ; b. Cork; son of a Dunlop tyre-factory worker; lived at Water Lane; ed. ed. St Vincent’s Convent, Cork, and North School Monastery [CBS]. grad BA at UCC (Eng. & Phil.); taught and studied for MA (grad. UCC 1984) and continued as tutor while serving as Lit. Officer to Triskel Centre; also taught as visiting faculty at University of Southern Maine and publ. in The Café Review (Fall 1997); appt. Arts Organiser and Director at Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann, 1989-2000; co-Director of Cork Film Festival and Literature Officer of Triskel Arts Centre; issued The Ordinary House of Love (Galway: Salmon Publ. 1992), winner of Listowel Prize for Poetry, 1992; produced, with Gene Lambert, An Leabhar Mór: The Great Book of Ireland (2002), a compilation of 259 Irish and Scottish-Gaelic poets’ work with illustrations by painters accompanying each [var. 150]; issued the collection Rosa Mundi (1995); ed., Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh (1996);

appt. Independent Assessor of Arts Council submissions to Minister of Arts, Nov. 2000; voyaged from Antigua to Kinsale on board 70-foot schooner “The Spirit of Oysterhaven”, with three others; and issued travel-memoir, Sailing for Home (2004); ed., A Book of Uncommon Prayer (Penguin 2007), incorporating examples from world religions dealing with hopes, fears, thanks, spells and oracles as well as death and God; hosted ”Imprint and Imprint: Writers in Profile“, a regular RTÉŠ interview arts programme; elected a member of Aosdána; also member of Board of Irish Arts Council; ed., with Noel Duffy, Watching the River Flow: A Century in Irish Poetry (1999), and contrib. to Flowing Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry, ed. Pat Doran (2009);

issued My Time on the Ocean (2010) recording a voyage from Punto Arenas [Cape Horn] to Capetown on board the 70-ft. Pelagic Australis; winner of O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry, (Boston College, Mass.), 2010; issued Nine Bright Shiners (2014), winner of Irish Times Poetry Now Best Collection award (2015) his Orpheus (2018), in Sapphic verse, is a poetic itinerary in the spirit of the Greek myth; his Ériu and Amergin (2022), a bilingual recretion of the Tuatha Dé Danann’ arrival in Ireland, was commissioned by the Arts Council and performed at the Kilkenny Arts Festival to music by Colm Mac Con Ionaire (11 Aug. 2022); issued Once Was a Boy (2023), poems of childhood and schoolday, adopted as City One Book by City Libraries; lives in Dublin; lives in Dublin with his partner Paula Meehan [q.v.]. OCIL

‘When you set out from Ithaca again / You will not need to ask where you are going ...’
(Theo Dorgan reads “Ithaca” - a poem after Cavafy - Youtube online [12.12.2018].)

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Works

Poetry

Slow Air (Pine Tree Press 1985).
A Moscow Quartet (priv. 1989) [pamphlet; var. 1987].
The Ordinary House of Love (Galway: Salmon Publ. 1990), 76pp. [rep. 1993].
Nine Views of Uzbekhistan (Dubli: Harkin Press 1992) [pamphlet].
Rosa Mundi (Galway: Salmon 1995), [18] 73pp.
Sappho’s Daughter (Dublin: Wave Train Press 1998), 27pp.
La casa ai margini del mondo, a cura di Mario Gosa e DanieleSerafini (Faenza: Mobydick 1998), 89pp.
What This Earth Costs Us (Dublin: Dedalus Press 2008), 168pp.
with Tony Curtis & Paula Meehan, Days Like These (Washington State: Brooding Heron Press 2008).
Greek (Dublin: Dedalus Press 2010), 80pp.
Nine Bright Shiners (Dublin: Dedalus Press 2014), 142pp. [see note].
Orpheus (Dublin: Dedalus Press 2018), 80pp. [in sapphics].
Ériu and Amergin (Dublin, Wave Train Press, 2022) [see note].
Once Was a Boy (Dublin: Daedalus Press 2023), 82pp. [One City One Book for Cork City Libraries in 2024).

See also What This Earth Cost Us (Dedalus Press 2008), 170pp. [rep. of his first two collections with some amendments]; with Tony Curtis & Paula Meehan, Days Like These (Waldron Island WA [USA]: Brooding Heron Press 2007)

Fiction

Making Way (Dublin: New Island 2013), 242pp.
Camarade (Cork: Mercier Press 2025) [see note]

Prose (travel)

Sailing For Home: A Voyage from Antigua to Ireland (Penguin Ireland 2004); Do. [rep.] (Dedalus Press 2010), 300pp.
Time on The Ocean, a Voyage From Cape Horn to Cape Town (Dublin: New Island Books 2010), 308pp.

Translation

Songs of Earth and Light, by Barbara Korun (Cork: Southword 2005), 62pp. [Slovene author, 1963- ].
La Casa ai Margini del Mundo Faenza [Italy]: Moby Dick 1998), q.pp.
La Hija de Safo (Madrid: Ediciones Hiperion 2001), 61pp.
Barefoot Souls, trans. of Syrian poet Maram al-Masri (UK: ARC Publications) 144pp.

See also Liberty Goes Naked (Cork: Southword Editions 2017) and inThe Abduction (Cork: Southward Editions 2020) - both trans. of Maram al-Masri; trans. Romancero Gitano of Federico García Lorca as Bailéid Giofógacha (BAC: Coiscéim 2019); Dorgan also contrib. translations to Dánta idir Shean agus Nua, by Áine Ní Ghlinn (Cló Iar Connachta 2025).

Miscellaneous

with Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, ed., Revising the Rising, Essays on 1916 (Field Day, 1991).
ed., with Gene Lambert, The Great Book of Ireland (1991), 250pp. [see details].
ed., Podium (Tralee: Kerry Arts Fest. 1996).
ed., Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh (Blackrock: Four Courts 1996), 162pp. [see contents].
ed., A Book of Uncommon Prayer (Penguin Ireland 2007), viii, 294pp.
ed., with Malcolm Maclean, Leabhar mór na Gáidhlig/Leabhar mór na Gaeilge: The Great Book of Ireland (Edinburgh: Canongate 2002, 2008), vii, 321pp., col. ills; [23 x 28cm].
ed., with Noel Duffy, Watching the River Flow: A Century in Irish Poetry (Dublin: Poetry Ireland 1999), 264pp.
Sailing for Home: A Voyage from Antigua to Kinsale (Penguin Ireland 2004), 320pp.; [var. 2006; rep. Dedalus Press 2010).
ed., A Book of Uncommon Prayer (Penguin 2007, 2008), viii, 194pp.
Time on the Ocean: A Voyage from Cape Horn to Cape Town (Dublin: New Island Press 2010), 306pp., ill. [map; see note].
ed., What We Found There: Poets Respond to the Treasures of the National Museum of Ireland (Dublin: Daedalus Press 2013), 100pp.

Sundry contributions

‘Interview with Paula Meehan’, in Colby Quarterly, 28 (Dec. 1992), pp.265-69 [available online].
review of Collected Poems by John Montague (1995), in Sunday Independent (31. Dec. 1995; 8L) [available online].
‘Arts in Northern Ireland’, letter to The Irish Times (24 Sept. 2000) [see extract].
“Watercolour”, a poem, in The Irish Times (6 Sept. 2008), Weekend [see infra].
contrib. to Flowing, Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry, ed. Pat Boran (Dublin: Dedalus Press 2009).

Television

Imprint and Imprint: Writers in Profile (incl. Colm Tóibín, Bernard MacLaverty, Jennifer Johnston, Paul Durcan, Joseph O’Connor, Michael Longley, Nuala ní Domnhnaill, Doris Lessing, John Montague, Eavan Boland, Gore Vidal, Richard Ford and Margaret Atwood [available at IFI Looplin - online; accessed 24.05.2024.]

Discography

Theo Dorgan reads “Death of an Irishwoman” by Michael Hartnett by Michael Harnett in Voices and Poetry of Ireland (London: HarperCollins 2003).

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Bibliographical details
Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh, ed. Theo Dorgan (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1996), 162pp. Introduction [7]; Augustine Martin, ‘Kavanagh and After: An Ambiguous Legacy’ [21]; Gerald Dawe, ‘The European Modernists: MacGreevy, Devlin and Coffey’ [32]; Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, ‘Modern Poetry in Irish, 1940-197’ [42]; Edna Longley, ‘Out of Ulster 1: Louis MacNeice and His Influence’ [52]; Terence Brown, ‘Out of Ulster 2: Heaney, Montague, Mahon and Longley’ [6-]; Anthony Roche, ‘Platforms: ‘The Journals, the Publishers’ [71]; Alan Titley, ‘Inntí and Onward: The New Poetry in Irish’ [82]; Eamon Grennan, ‘American Relations’ [95]; Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, ‘The Hidden Ireland: Women’s Inheritance’ [106]; John Goodby, ‘New Wave 1: “A Rising Tide”; Irish Poetry in the 1960s’ [116]; Eavan Boland, ‘New Wave 2: Born in the 50s; Irish Poets of the Global Village’ [136]; Dorgan, ‘Looking Over the Edge’ [147]. Index [159].

Nine Bright Shiners (2014): At the heart of Theo Dorgan’s new collection is a sequence of elegies that reflect on early and recent deaths, from the loss of his infant sister to that of a contemporary by suicide. These are poems from a broken world. The book is unflinching in facing up to death and the poet’s own mortality, but these dark meditations are framed by, subsumed into, whole-hearted celebrations of love, life, art and voyaging. (Notice at Daedalus Press “translated books” website - online.) [Trans. into Italian as Nove lucenti corpi celesti, Kolibris 2017].

Ériu and Amergín (2022): A work commission by the Arts Council from Theo Dorgan, poet in residence at Kilkenny Arts joins, with composer Colm Mac Con Iomaire and it explores the origins of poetry in Ireland in the mythical encounter between Amergín Glúingel, a bard who took part in the Milesian conquest of Ireland, and Ériu, a Tuatha Dé Danann princess. The bilingual text is is spoken by Aaron Monaghan and Bríd Ní Neachtain to an original score performed by Colm Mac Con Iomaire with a six-piece ensemble. Filled with contemporary resonances, Ériu and Amergín is a lyrical exploration of identity, heritage and migration, and the ambiguous encounter between the foreign and the native. Instruments incl. violin, keboard, harp, drums, bazouki and uileann pipes. (See The Journal of Music, notice for 3. Feb. 2022 - online.)

Time on the Ocean: A Voyage from Cape Horn to Cape Town (2010): An exciting account of a journey under sail from Punto Arenas in Chile to South Africa - around Cape Horn, on to the Malvinas/Falklands and, via Tristan da Cunha, to landfall in Cape Town. Underscoring the the story of Theo's great-grandmother who died in childbirth off Cape Horn and was buried at sea [...] this is a poetic and evocative account but it is also an adventure. (Adapted from Daedalus notice and other sources.)

Camarade (2025): In this masterful, philosophical thriller, one violent act echoes across four decades. An Irish exile in Paris begins writing his memoir, forcing him to confront the night he shot a policeman and fled to France. Against the backdrop of the Algerian Crisis and May ’68, this haunting meditation on identity, violence and fate asks: do our actions shape us, or are we already who we’re meant to be? (Notice at Mercier Press - online.)

The Great Book of Ireland / Leabhar Mór na hÉireann (Cambridge UP), ed. by Theo Dorgan and Gene Lambert (1991), 250pp. [510 x 360 x 110mm.] is a bound manuscript and illuminated anthology, known as "Ireland's modern-day Book of Kells", with contributions by 121 artists, 143 poets and 9 composers writing directly on vellum handmade by Joe Katz with calligraphy by Denis Brown and design consultant Trevor Scott (S.D.I.); bound by Anthony Cains; boxed by Eric Pearce with silver clasp by Brian Clarke]. Postface [afterword] to Seamus Heaney, Les Errance de Sweeney, trans. by B. Hoepffner (Nantes: Passeur 1994). The resulting work was purchased by Cork University Open Research Archive [CORA] for $1 million in 2013. See also notice by Crónán Ó Doibhlin, C. (2016) ‘The Great Book of Ireland - Leabhar Mór na hÉireann’, in Art Libraries Journal [25] (2016), pp.198-208.

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Curriculum vitae

Assistant Director on the Great Book of Ireland - a film commissioned from Gandon Productions for RTÉ.
Presenter of Poetry Now on RTÉ Radio 1, 1996-97, and 1993-95.
Ed. & presented Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh in Radio Thomas Davis Lecture Series (RTÉ).
Scripted & narrated Hidden Treasures, 4-part documentary ser. (Loopline Productions; RTÉ & BBC TV), 1998.
Scripted & presented Imprint (RTÉ TV), 1999-2000 [book programme].
Scripted & narrated Ordinary Things (Loopline Productions for the National Museum of Ireland), 2001.
Co-scripted & narrated Farmleigh: The Story of a House (Loopline Productions for RTÉ) 2010.
Presented The Invisible Thread, interview series on RTÉ Lyric FM [2001-06].
Commissioned by the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands to report on submissions arising from the ministerial document Towards A New Framework For The Arts - resulting in the so-called Dorgan Report.

See Dorgan website > Biography - online.

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Commentary
“Bookwork” (The Irish Times, 15 Feb. 1997), quotes Dorgan as saying that Poetry Ireland is planning to make 1997 the year ‘when the balance of our readings programme shifts decisively out of Dublin’, particularly to the midlands and the North. And, says Theo Dorgan, ‘we positively welcome approaches from arts organisations and festivals who would like to feature poetry in their program.’

See also interview, in Books Ireland (Dev. 2004), p.289, on Sailing for Home (Penguin Ireland 2004).

Note: Thomas MacCarthy calls ‘poet and UCC’s leading student-poet and Graves expert, a youthful master of both The White Goddess and Poetic Unreason.’ (Facebook, 10.04.2019.) [See MacCarthy, profile of Robert Graves, who visited UUC [Cork] in May 1975 - infra.]

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Quotations
N.I. Ghetto?: Theo Dorgan writes to The Irish Times (24 Sept. 2000) on ‘Arts in Northern Ireland’, much regretting the ‘intemperate and ad hominem tone’ of Damian Smyth’s letter in response to Peter Sirr on the apparent ghettoisation of Northern Ireland citizens by imputed racial and religious affiliation and the condescending parallel with respect to women.’

“Watercolour”: ‘I watched you work the colour on soft paper ... until something comes clear and you stand back, surprised and not mistaken: now you’ve found it, /what you’d already guessed was already there. // So with our lives .... My life had been all colour since that day / you wrote your address for me on soft paper / the forms of our promised future coming clear.’ (In The Irish Times, 6 Sept. 2008, Weekend, p.11.)

“Wild Orchids, Windflowers” (i.m. John McGahern, 1934-2006): ‘The long lane curves out beside the lake, / swagged mist in the hawthorns either side. / Leaf rot in the ditches, dust on the verge, / green tunnel of ash and silver birch. // Time you were taking your way to the land of the dead. / The lane joins a country road, drops to the valley. / Bridge then, stone arch, birds in the stream. / Out into sun, a broad land of fields, the bare hill upward, light breaking every where on rock, // Time thick in your throat on the road to the land of the dead. // Now the wide highway, built in these last years. / Turn to the west, walk on into the shadow / of your self, this self you made in the dull afternoons - / the-pen laid down, hand flat on the board. // Evening now, full quiet, on the road to the land, of the dead. // Then finally, there up ahead, the wall of stars. / The black vault of time, the heft of glory - you turn, / you fall back along your march, / down the blank highway, the road, the funneling lane, / back the long journey from the land of the quiet dead // to the house under the trees. Light in the window, voices; / lamp on the deal table, a glass of whiskey, a pen. / Blackbird rustling under the laurel, woodsmoke; you settle your shoulders, you lift the latch, you step in.’ (The Irish Times, 6 June 2009, Weekend, p.13.)

“Speaking Direct to the Camera”
I had forgotten my country, had learned the trick of living here in the silence of a closed heart, an exile in my native place. I knew not to tell my story, well-schooled in the national art of tell them nothing, hide the fear, select a mask to hide your face. Then, something underground shifted. Unforeseen change came in the air. A young woman knocked on my door, and asked if she could speak to me.	Simple as that. A weight lifted, and up all unexpected burned the flame of story buried there all those years, the light of memory granted liberty to shine out. A chance encounter, if it was. A young woman who knew no fear offered her art to set me free - I had forgotten my country until my country remembered me.
	Shared by the poet on Facebook, 29.05.2018.
Note: The poem was written and posted on Facebook at the time of the successful Referendum to remove the 8th Amendment involving the ban on abortion in Ireland.

from Orpheus (2018)

Métro Saint-Michel. Everything much too loud
after a day of silence by the river.
At the interchange I plunge out, unheeding,
shouldering through crowds

to the far escalator. I turn, look back,
she’s stood there looking up, deep wells of sorrow
in her eyes. From the turbulent crowd she signs
I just can’t go on.

Hard fluorescent light, waterfall of black noise,
then a fainting away of all except
that resolute, beseeching figure. Her
unbearable poise.

I batter my way down, panic-struck, fearing
the worst. A loud hiss, the sound of doors closing,
rumbling rubber wheels, light on the last carriage
red, vanishing, gone.

—Available at Daedalus Press - online.

A lecture on James Connolly:

‘Ireland as distinct from its people is nothing to me’ - given at Cork Library 2013 - available as pamphlet in Yumpu screen-page format - online; accessed 19.09.2020.] The paper addresses the question, ‘Why did James Connolly ally himself and the Irish Citizen Army with the armed revolutionary forces of Irish Nationalism’ in 1916. It ends with a quotation: ‘Despite all seeming to the contrary, we assert that Ireland is not really a revolutionary country. Ireland is a disaffected country which has long been accustomed to conduct constitutional agitation in revolutionary language, what is worse, to conduct revolutionary movements with due regard to law and order.’ (Workers’ Republic, 13 Nov. 1915; here p.20.) Dorgan concludes: ‘Alas, my friends, he knew us all too well.’

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References
CCILB: Worked variously as labourer, [taxi]-driver, tutor, lecturer, Arts Organiser, Film Festival Director; Director Poetry Ireland/Eigse Eireann & Broadcaster. Works: Slow Air (Pine Tree Press 1985); Moscow Quartet (priv. 1987); The Ordinary House of Love (Salmon 1992); ed. Revising the Rising, Essays on 1916, with Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha (Field Day, 1991); also ed., with Gene Lambert, The Great Book of Ireland, unique manuscript in vellum with 259 contribs. Dublin, Poetry Ireland/Éigse Eireann & Clash Ganna Mills Trust; sundry journalism. [Author records of Coleraine Centre for Irish Lit. & Bibliog.]

Internet: There is a Theo Dorgan home page - online; see also link to Dorgan, ‘Twentieth-century Irish Language Poetry’ [essay],
in An leabhar mór/The Great Book of Gaelic, rep. in Archipelago - online.)

See Theo Dorgan member's page at Aosdana - online [accessed 22.11.2025]/

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Notes
Translation Cork: Cork poets incl. Bernard O’Donoghue, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Theo Dorgan, Greg Delanty, Robert Welch, participated in Cork 2005 European translation series directed by Pat Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre.

Barrytown: Theo Dorgan lived in childhood on Water Lane, near the birthplace of the painter James Barry (1741-1806) [q..v.].

Munster Writers: Theo Dorgan appeared in In the Hands of Erato - a documentary produced and directed by Liz O’Donoghue for Munster Arts Centre in 2003 - reciting his poetry likewise featuring Greg Delanty, Thomas McCarthy, Patrick Cotter, Conal Creedon, Trevor Joyce, Patrick Galvin, Louis De Paor, John Montague, Roz Cowman, Robert O’Donoghue, Rosemary Canavan, Gerry Murphy, Gregory O’Donoghue, Aíne Miller and Liz O’Donoghue. Original music and soundtrack by Martin Moylett. Camera, sound and editing by Dave Whelan. Additional editing by Neil Patrick McCarthy. Copyright held by Liz O’Donoghue. (Aug. 2018).Available at YouTube - online; accessed 19.08.2024.)

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