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Life
1931-2001; b. 12 March, in Bombay [Mumbai], son of an Irish officer in the British Army who returned to Ireland on resigning his commission in 1935; ed. Glenstal Abbey Sch., Murroe, Co. Limerick, and afterwards at UCC (BA & MA); served two years as Army Education Officer in England and taught as Snr. English Master at Prior Park [School], in Bath; m. Patricia Kennedy, with whom five children; returned to Ireland, 1960; appt. lecturer at UCC [NUI Cork], 1962, and chair of Modern English, 1967-88; formed close friendship with Seán Ó Riada [q.v.]; he invited John Montague to join the English Dept., and encouraged writers and especially poets among students who included Seán Dunne, Theo Dorgan, Tom McCarthy, Gerry Murphy, Maurice Riordan, Greg Delanty, Gregory O’Donoghue, et al. as well as future scholars of irish literature such as Robert Welch and Colbert Kearney;
ed., Love Poems of the Irish (1968); ed., Five Irish Poets (1970); ed., Irish Poets in English: The Thomas Davis Lectures (1972); co-fnd. the UCC Summer School for American students, 1979; issued Unfinished Sequence and Other Poems (1979), and Goldsmith: The Gentle Master (1984); he was visiting professor at Loyola University, Chicago, 1980-81; separated from his wife Patricia and took early retirement, 1986; moved to America and married Susan Leah Lederman, a fellow-poet; lectured in Irish literature at the Newberry Library of Loyola College (Chicago) and the Irish-American Heritage Centre; d. of heart attack, 25 July 2001, following a traffic accident. OCIL [WIKI]
Works
Seán Lucy, ed., Love Poems of the Irish (Cork: Mercier Press 1968), 185pp.; Five Irish Poets (Cork: Mercier Press 1970), 240pp. [incls. also Patrick Galvin, Donal Murphy, Seán Ó Criadain and Lucy].
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Commentary
Colbert Kearney writes: ‘Asked to single out the most characteristic note of Irish poetry, Professor Seán Lucy chose what he termed “dramatic self-awareness”: something which for good or ill contains the power and appetite to see ourselves, and those things and people that catch our imagination, in terms of dynamic, imaginatively-compelling role. (Kearney, ‘Borstal Boy: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Prisoner’, in Ariel: A Review of International English Literature [ed. A. N. Jeffares], 1976; quoting Irish Poets in English [Thomas Davis Lectures on Anglo-Irish Poetry], ed. by Lucy (Cork & Dublin: Mercier Press, 1973, p. 27.) Kearney regards this self-awareness as the mark of Behan.
Notes
Commemorative Lecture: The Sean Lucy Series, was inaugurated in 2002 by Declan Kiberd (“Seán Lucy and Irish Writing: The Uses of Tradition”, 6 Feb.); Robert Welch (“Meetings with the Famous Dead: Encountering Writing”, 13 Feb.; John A. Murphy (“The Political Ballad in Irish History”, 20 Feb.); Eibhear Walshe (“Elizabeth Bowen and the Fields of North Cork”, 27 Feb.); Clíona Ó Gallchoir (“Maria Edgeworth and Early American Women Writers”, 6 March); Patricia Coughlan (“Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy: Irish America and the Necessary Lie”, 13 March).
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