Reading by Bernard O'Donoghue

Bernard O'Donoghue was born in Cullen, Co Cork in 1945, where he still spends part of the year, but has lived in England since 1962.  He was until recently Fellow of English at Wadham College Oxford, specialising Medieval and Modern Literature.  His publications include an anthology of medieval European love poetry, The Courtly Love Tradition (1984), and a verse translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Penguin Classics 2006), as well as Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry (1995), a pioneering study of Heaney.  He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney.

One of the outstanding Irish poets of his generation, he has published six collections of poetry: Poaching Rights (1987); The Weakness (1991); Gunpowder (1995) - winner of the 1995 Whitbread Poetry Award; Here Nor There (1999); Outliving (2003) and Farmers Cross (2011), shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.  His Selected Poems was published by Faber in 2008.

Bernard has written that his 'main inspirations have been medieval literature: Chaucer and Dante and above all, the shorter poems in Old and Middle English.  The Anglo-Saxon elegies are my model for the perfectly formed lyric poem'.  Farmer’s Cross includes a version of 'The Wanderer'.

Reviewing his new collection in The Guardian Paul Batchelor said: "O'Donoghue's unusual claim on the reader is that he is always excellent company.  Where another poet might impress with imagery or verbal music, O'Donoghue stakes everything on voice – or, more specifically, tone – achieving a soft-spoken intimacy with the reader.  His tact and scrupulous restraint are matched by his artistry, which is especially evident in his explorations of the workings of memory".

In addition to giving a reading of his poetry, Bernard will take part in a discussion about the relationship between medieval and modern poetry.

Wine and soft drinks will be served.

This reading is jointly sponsored by Writers at York and the Centre for Medieval Literature.

Contact: Hugh Haughton or Elizabeth Tyler