Patrick Galvin

Patrick Galvin (born 1927) is an Irish writer and poet born in Cork off Barrack Street, a poor part of Cork known for its variety of local characters.

Biography

Galvin spent some time at St. Conleth's Industrial School (Daingean Co. Offaly). He spent time in England and joined the RAF in 1943 and returned to Ireland 1974. He is noted in particular for his poem The Mad Woman of Cork. He has been the writer in residence at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast (1974 - 1978), East Midlands, and University College Cork among others. He has written eight stage plays, including The Last Burning, which explored themes of ostracisation and witchcraft around the burning in County Tipperary, of Bridget Cleary by her husband, because he believed she was a witch. His memoir Song For a Raggy Boy became a film, starring Aidan Quinn as a socialist returning to Ireland after the Spanish Civil War and taking up a post as a teacher in an Industrial School (Reformatory). He suffered a serious stroke in 2003 but still continues to translate poetry.

Selected Works

Prose and poetry

• Song for a poor Boy,Raven Arts Press, Dublin 1990,
• Irish Songs of Resistance,Worker's Music Association 1955
• Heart of Grace, Linden Press 1957
• Christ in London, Linden Press 1960
• Five Cork Poets, Mercier Press 1970
• Letter to a British Soldier on Irish Soil 1972
• Wood Burners, New Writers Press, Dublin 1973
• Man on the Porch, 1979 (Martin Brien & O'Keeffe ISBN 0-85616-161-6)
• Folk Tales for the General,Raven Arts Press, Dublin,1989
• The Death of Art O'Leary,1994
• New and Selected Poems,Cork University Press,1996
• The Raggy Boy Trilogy, New Island Books, Dublin 2002

Plays

• Cry The Believers,1960 (Eblana Theatre, Dublin)
• And Him Stretched,1961 (Eblana Theatre, Dublin)
• Boy in the Smoke,1965 (BBC Wednesday Play)
• The Last Burning, 1974 (Lyric Theatre, Belfast)
• We Do It For Love, 1975 (Lyric Theatre, Belfast)
• Nightfall to Belfast, 1973 (Lyric Theatre, Belfast)
• The Devil's Own People, 1976 (Abbey Theatre, Dublin)
• The Class of '39, 1980 (BBC Radio 4)
• My Silver Bird, 1981 Lyric Theatre, Belfast
• City Child, Come Trailing Home,1983, RTE Radio
• Landscape and Seascape, 1983, RTE Radio
• Quartet for Nightown, 1984, RTE Radio
• Wolfe, 1984, RTE Radio

 'The Cage', 2006, Cork Arts Theatre, Cork

References

• Irish Writers Online: [1]
• Aosdana (Irish Guild of Creative Artists)