1. Derek Mahon was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland but lived in a number of cities around the world.
12 Facts About Derek Mahon
1. 2.
Derek Mahon was born on 23 November 1941 as the only child of Ulster Protestant working-class parents.
3.
The school produced a magazine in which Derek Mahon produced some of his early poems.
4.
Derek Mahon pursued third level studies at Trinity College Dublin in French, English, and Philosophy and where he edited Icarus, and formed many friendships with writers such as Michael Longley, Eavan Boland and Brendan Kennelly.
5.
Derek Mahon left Trinity in 1965 to take up studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.
6.
Derek Mahon later taught in a school in Dublin and worked in London as a freelance journalist.
7.
Derek Mahon won the Poetry Now Award in 2006 for his collection, Harbour Lights, and again in 2009 for his Life on Earth collection.
8.
In March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, RTE News ended its evening broadcast with Derek Mahon reading his poem Everything Is Going to Be All Right.
9.
On 1 October 2020, Derek Mahon died in Cork after a short illness, aged 78.
10.
Derek Mahon is survived by his partner Sarah Iremonger and his three children, Rory, Katy, and Maisie.
11.
Thoroughly educated and with a keen understanding of literary tradition, Derek Mahon came out of the tumult of Northern Ireland with a formal, moderate, even restrained poetic voice.
12.
Derek Mahon has explored the genre of ekphrasis: the poetic reinterpretation of visual art.