Bernard O’Donoghue at Trinity

In April the School of English welcomed Bernard O’Donoghue during his term as a visiting research fellow in the Trinity Long Room Hub. Widely acclaimed as a poet, translator, and critic, Bernard O’Donoghue is an emeritus fellow in English at Wadham College, Oxford. During his time at Trinity his research encompassed work on his two major interests – in medieval poetry, and in modern Irish poetry. He consulted the Library’s manuscript of William Langland’s fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman (TCD MS D. 4.1), which is the most important manuscript for suggesting who Langland was. He is currently translating Piers Plowman for Faber. In addition to this project, he is preparing an edition of Seamus Heaney’s Collected Poems, also for Faber, and he spent time in the National Library of Ireland during his fellowship in Dublin, exploring the Seamus Heaney Literary Papers.

To celebrate Bernard O’Donoghue’s residency the Hub and the School of English co-hosted a special event on Monday 16 April, ‘With a Brother’s Arms: An Evening with Bernard O’Donoghue’. After reading from his work, he took part in an interview with the poet Martin Dyar, Arts Council writer-in-residence at the University of Limerick. In a wide-ranging conversation which looked closely at O’Donoghue’s work, the poets explored questions of translation, authority, and the writing process, drawing on O’Donoghue’s engagement with the Classics as well as medieval English literature, his work on Heaney, and his early encounters with literature in English and Irish as a teenager in Cork. The event can be viewed in full on the Facebook page of the Trinity Long Room Hub:  https://business.facebook.com/trinitylongroomhub/videos/1751439464912668/

Poet, Bernard O'Donoghue