Brendan Hamill (writer)

Last updated

Brendan Hamill
Born1945 (age 7879)
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Alma materUlster University

Brendan Hamill (born 1945, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a poet and writer.

Contents

Biography

Hamill was born and raised in the Falls Road area of Belfast, with his home on the Whiterock Road opposite Belfast City Cemetery. He attended St. Kevin's Primary School and then St. Thomas's Secondary School near Ballymurphy. At the latter school the headteacher was the writer Michael McLaverty. Many years later Hamill recalled his teaching: "Over and over again he explained the precise word, the need for feeling in the poetry. There would be no Sons And Lovers without feeling – the reading public would know it was fraudulent. The preachments were gentle but firm, reasonableness in all things." [1] Another one of his teachers at the school was Seamus Heaney.

After finishing school, he worked for several years in England. He recalled: "A lot of my time was spent between the bookshops at Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross at lunchtimes." [2]

He then returned to Northern Ireland to study for a degree in English at the New University of Ulster. One of his lecturers was the critic Walter Allen. His fellow students included the poet Gerald Dawe and the writer Brian Keenan who were collectively known subsequently as the Coleraine Cluster. He was a cousin of the American journalist Pete Hamill. [3]

After he graduated he subsequently worked for several years as a teacher in Kilcullen, County Kildare and later in Belfast.

Work

He has published two poetry chapbooks - the first Emigrant Brother and the second Alameda Park. [4]

His poetry has been published in a wide range of newspapers and magazines including Phoenix, Belfast Telegraph , Irish Times and the Irish Press , included in anthologies [5] and read on both the BBC and RTÉ.

His critical work has been published in various magazines including Fortnight. [6]

He was very enthusiastic about promoting the work of the poet Padraic Fiacc. [7] He read at the Belfast literary festival celebrating poet Padraic Fiacc. [8]

He spoke at the launch of ‘The Literature of the Troubles Project’. [9]

Works

Poetry

Criticism

Anthologies

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seamus Heaney</span> Irish writer and translator (1939–2013)

Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish poetry</span> Poetry by poets from Ireland

Irish poetry is poetry written by poets from Ireland, politically the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland today. It is mainly written in Irish, though some is in English, Scottish Gaelic and others in Hiberno-Latin. The complex interplay between the two main traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English and Scottish Gaelic, has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to categorise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish literature</span>

Irish literature is literature written in the Irish, Latin, English and Scots languages on the island of Ireland. The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from back in the 7th century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish, including religious texts, poetry and mythological tales. There is a large surviving body of Irish mythological writing, including tales such as The Táin and Mad King Sweeny.

Frederick Robert Higgins was an Irish poet and theatre director.

Events in the year 1902 in Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethna Carbery</span> Irish writer and journalist

Ethna Carbery, born Anna Bella Johnston, was an Irish journalist, writer and poet. She is best known for the ballad Roddy McCorley and the Song of Ciabhán; the latter was set to music by Ivor Gurney. In Belfast in the late 1890s, with Alice Milligan she produced The Shan Van Vocht, a nationalist monthly of literature, history and comment that gained a wide circulation in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora. Her poetry was collected and published after her death under the pen name Ethna Carberry, adopted following her marriage to the poet Seumas MacManus in 1901.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Falls Road, Belfast</span> Main road through west Belfast in Northern Ireland

The Falls Road is the main road through West Belfast, Northern Ireland, running from Divis Street in Belfast City Centre to Andersonstown in the suburbs. The name has been synonymous for at least a century and a half with the Catholic community in the city. The road is usually referred to as the Falls Road, rather than as Falls Road. It is known in Irish as the Bóthar na bhFál and as the Faas Raa in Ulster-Scots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derek Mahon</span> Irish poet (1941–2020)

Norman Derek Mahon was an Irish poet. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland but lived in a number of cities around the world. At his death it was noted that his, "influence in the Irish poetry community, literary world and society at large, and his legacy, is immense". President of Ireland Michael D Higgins said of Mahon; "he shared with his northern peers the capacity to link the classical and the contemporary but he brought also an edge that was unsparing of cruelty and wickedness."

Andrew Waterman (1940–2022) was an English poet.

Gerald Dawe was an Irish poet, academic and literary critic.

James Stewart Alexander Simmons (1933–2001) was a poet, literary critic and songwriter from Derry, Northern Ireland.

Aodán Mac Póilin was an Irish language activist in Northern Ireland.

Padraic Fiacc was an Irish poet, and member of Aosdána, the exclusive Irish arts academy.

Events during the year 1969 in Northern Ireland.

Lapwing Publications is a publisher based in Belfast and specialising in poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literature of Northern Ireland</span>

That part of the United Kingdom called Northern Ireland was created in 1922, with the partition of the island of Ireland. The majority of the population of Northern Ireland wanted to remain within the United Kingdom. Most of these were the Protestant descendants of settlers from Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Springfield Road</span> Road in Northern Ireland

The Springfield Road is a residential area and road traffic thoroughfare adjacent to the Falls Road in west Belfast. The local population is predominantly Irish nationalist and republican. Along parts of the road are several interface area with the neighbouring Ulster loyalist areas of the Greater Shankill. The Springfield Road includes the Ballymurphy and New Barnsley districts and is overlooked by Black Mountain and Divis.

Fred Johnston (1951-2024) was an Irish poet, novelist, literary critic and musician. He was the founder and current director of the Western Writers' Centre in Galway. He co-founded the Irish Writers' Co-operative in 1974, and founded Galway's annual Cúirt International Festival of Literature in 1986.

Events from the year 2019 in Northern Ireland.

The Coleraine Cluster of poets and writers was an informal collection of writers associated with the New University of Ulster in the early 1970s.

References

  1. Hamill, Brendan. "Literary geniuses side by side". Andersonstown News. Belfast Media Group. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  2. Hamill, Brendan. "Literary geniuses side by side". Andersonstwon News. Belfast Media Group. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  3. "OBIT: Whiterock writer Brendan Hamill's tribute to famed American cousin Pete". Belfast Media. 18 August 2020. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  4. "Brendan Hamill books" . Retrieved 12 November 2016.
  5. "Children of the Troubles" . Retrieved 12 November 2016.
  6. "Children of the Troubles" . Retrieved 12 November 2016.
  7. Johnson, Fred. "A poet of Blakeian wrath". Irish Times. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
  8. "Pádraic Fiacc – Pádraic Fiacc". www.fiaccpoet.com. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  9. "College Press Releases". www.stmarys-belfast.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 July 2021.