American-born Irish poet, writer of short fiction, essayist, and professor. Graduate of University College Dublin and the University of Iowa.
Awarded honourary doctorates by the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Ulster, and University College Dublin. Recipient of the American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the Irish-American Cultural Institute’s Award for Literature, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and Australia's Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize.
He was appointed the first occupant of the Ireland Chair of Poetry. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he became Distinguished Writer-in-Residence for the New York State Writers' Institute and Professor of Poetry and Writer-in-Residence at State University of New York at Albany. He also taught at University College Cork, Queen’s University in Belfast, Trinity College Dublin, and his alma mater University College Dublin.
In addition to receiving honourary doctorates in the United States and Ireland, France invested him a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.
For there is no sea it is all a dream there is no sea except in the tangle of our minds : the wine dark sea of history on which we all turn turn and thresh and disappear.