Kinsella, Thomas (1928-2021), was a leading Irish poet and literary scholar. Kinsella’s poetry ranges among a number of themes, including love and the social and political situation in modern Ireland. His poetry is generally serious, and sometimes morbid, as in “Downstream II”:
We saw the barren world obscurely lit By tall chimneys flickering in their pall, The haunt of swinish man—each day a spit That, turning, sweated war, each night a fall Back to the evil dream where rodents ply, Man rumped, sow-headed, busy with whip and maul …
Reproduced by kind permission of the Dolmen Press Ltd.
Kinsella was born on May 4, 1928, in Dublin. He worked in the Irish civil service from 1946 to 1965. He then taught at universities in the United States. Kinsella taught at Southern Illinois University from 1965 to 1970. He was a professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia from 1970 to 1990.
Kinsella’s first poetry collections were published in the 1950’s. Much of his poetry is included in Collected Poems: 1956-2001 (2001). Several later short collections are gathered in Late Poems (2013). The Táin (1969) is Kinsella’s translation of Táin Bó Cuailnge, the early Irish saga also known as The Cattle Raid of Cooley. Kinsella died on Dec. 22, 2021.
