Literature

Born in Derry in 1920, Robert Greacen was educated in Belfast and Trinity College, Dublin.  Much of his adult life was spent in London where he worked first in journalism and later in adult education.  On retirement in 1986 he settled in Dublin on election to Aosdána.

Greacen began publishing poems, essay, and book reviews in magazines such as The Bell in Dublin and Horizon in London while still a student.  His ten collections of poetry, with Belfast, Dublin and London imprints, include One Recent Evening (1944), The Undying Day (1948), Young Mr. Gibbon (1979) A Garland for Captain Fox (1975) and Protestant Without a Horse (1997). His Collected Poems won the 1995 Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry.  Selected and New Poems appeared in 2006.

A prolific writer of articles and book reviews in Ireland and Britain, he has published critical works on Noel Coward and C.P.Snow, and on nine Northern writers in Rooted in Ulster.  The Sash My Father Wore (1997) is an extended version of his earlier memoir Even Without Irene (published in 1969 and revised in 1995).  He co-edited the Faber Contemporary Irish Poetry with Valentin Iremonger.

He has served on the committee of the Irish Writers’ Union and on five occasions was Poetry Consultant at Winthrop University in South Carolina.