|
Life
1972-; b. Dublin; issued The Drowning of the Saints (2003), a début poetry collection winner of Hennessy New Irish Writer with short fiction, 1998; appt. James Michener fellow of creative writing, Miami Univ., and afterwards poetry fellow, Houston, Texas; winner of Listowel Poetry Award, 2002; writer in residence, Co. Longford Co. Council, 2002; writer in residence, University of Ulster, 2004-2006; issued The Orchard Keeper (2006); issued The Last Falcon and Small Ordinance (2010); issued Gunpowder Valentine (2014), poems of war; his poem “The Shepherd’s Purse” appeared in Poetry in 2015; appt. director of Mary Lavin Centre for Creative Writing, UCD; wrote The Garden (2021), a thriller set in Miami (Fl.); shortlisted for Farmgate National Poetry Book Award, 2023; curates DLR Poetry Now, the longest-running international poetry festival in Ireland; his thriller series with Karen Gilhece as Karen Perry has been a Penguin best-seller; there is a film of his poems by Marc Neys; married, with three children ( Blaithin, Fionn, and Leonora); lives in Dublin.
[ top ]
Works
|
| Anthologies & translations [incl.] |
|
| Fiction |
|
Also: co-authored six novels with Karen Gilhece as Karen Perry [pen-name] in a Penguin series incl. The Boy That Never Was (2014), Only We Know (2015), Girl Unknown (2016), Your Closest Friend (2018), Come a Little Closer (2019), and The Innocent Sleep (2014). |
| Miscellaneous |
|
 |
| The Irish Times; rep Irish Centre for Poetry Studies (both 6 Aug. 2025). |
See extract from “The Ghosts of Barnacullia” [title-poem] and “Sheperd’s Purse“ at Poetry Foundation - online.
[ top ]
Criticism
Fred Johnston, review of The Drowning of the Saints, in Books Ireland (April 2004), pp.89-90 [‘a real poetic find’; James McAuley, ‘Giving image pride of place’, review of The Orchid Keeper [with poetry of Tom Mac Intyre, Kerry Hardie and Robert Welch], in The Irish Times (16 Dec. 2006), Weekend [see extract]; Eamon Grennan, review of The Last Falcon [... &c.], with other works, in The Irish Times (7 Aug. 2010), Weekend, p.13 [see extract.]
Commentary
James McAuley, ‘Giving image pride of place’, review of The Orchid Keeper [with poetry of Tom Mac Intyre, Kerry Hardie and Robert Welch], in The Irish Times (16 Dec. 2006), Weekend: ‘Some of Paul Perry’s new work, meanwhile, appears on the page as if texted to the reader - “smooth smooth / smooth enough to soothe / and clean a wound / almost” - though most of the 21 poems in this fascinating second collection are closer to the orthodox, often playfully so. “Towing an Iceberg to Belfast” takes up four pages with one-line, one-word double-shifted “stanzas” with a couplet or two, then six staggered lines, then a set of quatrains, then all of the above in a mix - cunningly contrived to suggest comic exertion, until “At last / The city/ Exhales an icy breath”. / In “The Lady with the Coronet of Jasmine”, the first-person speaker is Gladstone. The struggle between Christian orthodoxy and the Freudian libido is a strikingly successful use of the dramatic monologue. At 81 tercets, it is also courageously long in the era of the short personal lyric. Although Perry also includes a pair of epistolary prose-poems - arrgh! - most poetry readers will savour this slim but rich offering, and will likely read it through again before leaving it down.’
Eamon Grennan, review of The Last Falcon [... &c.], with other works, in The Irish Times (7 Aug. 2010), Weekend, p.13: ‘Perry creates a poetry of hope [...] remaining a little distance from passionate engagement, yet pulsing quietly with feeling [...] when Perry’s minor key surrealism invades poems without genuine emotional need or ignition they are less successful’.
[ top ]