Derek Mahon
- Northern Ireland
Biography
Derek Mahon was born in Belfast in 1941.
He studied French Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the Sorbonne, then lived for a time in London, where he worked adapting literary texts for television adaptation, and as poetry editor of the New Statesman.
His plays include two adaptations from Molière - The School for Wives: a play in 2 Acts after Molière (1986) and High Time, after Molière's The School for Husbands (1985); and The Bacchae (1991), after Euripides. He also wrote the screenplay, Summer Lightning, which is based on Turgenev's First Love and was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1985.
He translated several works, including Racine's Phaedra (1996); Selected Poems/Philippe Jaccottet (1987), winner of the 1987 Scott-Manriet Translation Prize and the 1989 Moncrieff Translation Prize; The Chimeras (1982), a version of Gérard Nerval's Les Chimeres; and Birds (2002), a version of Oiseaux by Saint John-Perse.
He published many poetry collections, including a Collected Poems in 1999; The Yellow Book (1997); Harbour Lights (2005); and Life on Earth (2008), shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada) in 2009.
He was also the editor of Modern Irish Poetry (1972) and co-edited the Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry in 1990. He was a member of Aosdána, and lived in Dublin.
