Literature
Macdara Woods
Born in Dublin in 1942, Macdara Woods’ work began being published in the early 1960s. His poetry collections include Decimal D. Sec Drinks in a Bar in Marrakesh (1970); Early Morning Matins (1973); Stopping the Lights in Ranelagh (1987); Miz Moon (1988); The Hanged Man Was Not Surrendering (1990); Notes From the Countries of Blood-Red Flowers (1994); Selected Poems (1996); Knowledge in the Blood: New & Selected Poems (2001); The Nightingale Water (2001); Artichoke Wine (2006); Knowledge In The Blood (Reissue, 2007); The Cotard Dimension (2010); Collected Poems (2012).
His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Two books of his poems have been published in Italian, Biglietto di Sola Andata (1998) and Con Pesaro ai Miei Piedi (1999), which included an audio CD with readings by the author and music by the Italian group Militia. Currently engaged with new online/CD/book project with Militia, 2013.
He frequently worked with musicians and wrote a number of songs: most notably Winter Fire and Snow with Brendan Graham. In 2002 he collaborated with composer Benjamin Dwyer on a sequence of poetry and music, In The Ranelagh Gardens, performed around Ireland and issued as a CD in 2005. In 2003 he completed The Cello Suites to accompany a performance of the six Bach cello suites on double bass by American musician Richard Hartshorne, performed jointly in USA and Canada – most recently in St Bartholomew’s Cathedral, New York, December 2004.
In 1975, he co-founded the literary journal Cyphers with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson, and served as its editor.