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Life
1960- ; b. Tarmon, Co. Leitrim; ed. Lough Allen College, Drumkeeran, and College of Journalism, Rathmines; newscaster and ‘Morning Ireland’ current affairs presenter at RTÉ, 1983-89; resigned to travel in New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific; plays for Druid are John Hughdy and Tom John (1991), double bill produced by Druid; At the Black Pig’s Dyke (1992), winner of Stewart Prker award and Belfast Telegraph EMA; Song of the Yellow Bittern (1994), based on a case of 1829 when Daniel O’Connell sucessfully defended Tom Maguire, a Catholic priest against a Protestant woman in a paternity suit; The Leitrim Hotel (1992), radio play, winner of P. J. O’Connor Award; The Colour of Language (Dublin: Dedalus Press 1995), poems, cover ill. Nick Miller; elected to Aosdana, Dec. 2000; issued A Cry from Heaven (2005), a play. DIL2.
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Works
‘At the Black Pig’s Dyke’, in John Farleigh, ed., Far from the Land: Contemporary Irish Plays (London: Methuen 1998), 340pp.; A Cry from Heaven (London: Methuen Drama 2005).
A Portuguese translation of A Cry from Heaven as Um Grito do Céu was made by Domingos Nunez in 2006 for CIA Ludens Theatre Co. in (See Domingos Nunez, ‘A Brief History Of Cia Ludens and its Productions of Irish Plays in Brazil’, in Ilha do Desterro Florianópolis, 58 (Jan./June 2010), pp.479-505; pdf version at online.)
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Quotations
‘If we had gone north, as we often did, to camp/in the pace of sanctuary/We might have met the soldiers leaving/the ridge of the rowan tree/We might have gone as far as the hill/of the two air demons to warn someone./But we went west, away from history, we were/not there as witnesses to change.’ (‘The Road West’, in The Colour of Language; reviewed by Peter Denman, ILS, Fall 1995, p.9).
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