1965-2009; b. 6 Sept., in Mullingar; suffered from cerebral palsy and was mute and quadraplegic from birth; taught to write by his mother Bernadette, using an attachment to his head which he called the “unicorn stick”; she spotted his lyrical turn when he was 11 (‘a lovely fairy-like effect to the work of nature’); his father Joseph read to him from Joyce’s Ulysses; ed. Central Remedial Clinic School, Mount Temple Comprehensive School (Clontarf - where he studied with the members of U2), and TCD; issued his first poems as Dam-burst of Dreams (1981), followed by Under the Eye of the Clock (1987), an autobiography and winner of the Whitbread Award;

he went on to write Banyan Tree (1999), a novel, concerns the story of a mother, Minnie O’Brien, married in 1922, who struggles to keep her small farm at Drumhollow from encroaching neighours as a rural shopkeeper while her three children leave her in lonely widowhood; received DLitt. from Lancaster University, awarded medal of excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers, and named Person of the Year in Ireland, 1988; there is a biography in 100 Irish Lives (Gill and Macmillan 1998); d. Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, having choked on food, 20 Feb. 2009. DIL