Brian Coffey (June 8, 1905 - April 14, 1995) was an Irish poet and publisher. His work was informed by his Catholicism and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic culture Two of his long poems published in later years, Advent (1975) and Death of Hektor (1979), are widely considered to be among the most important works in the canon of Irish poetic modernism. He also ran Advent, a small press, during the 1960s and 1970s. June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (160th in leap years), with 206 days remaining. ... 1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... April 14 is the 104th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (105th in leap years). ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Poet is a term applied to a person who composes poetry, including extended forms such as dramatic verse. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... This article considers Catholicism in the broadest ecclesiastical sense. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... Mountebanks ... The Dun Emer Press in 1903 with Elizabeth Yeats working the hand press Small press is a term often used to describe publishers who typically specialize in genre fiction, or limited edition books or magazines. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ...

Brian Coffey, circa 1980 at Bournemouth, with grandaughter Ailve Chapman (photo by daughter Mary Coffey Chapman)

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1326x1047, 61 KB)Photo of Brian Coffey and Ailve Chapman (grandaughter), circa 1980, by Mary Coffey Chapman (daughter) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...

Early life and work

Coffey was born in Dublin in the suburb of Dun Laoghaire. He attended the Mount St Benedict boarding school in Gorey, County Wexford from 1917 to 1919 and then James Joyce's old school. Clongowes Wood College, in Clane, County Kildare from 1919 until 1922. In 1923, he went France to study for the Bachelor's degree in Classical Studies at the Institution St Vincent, Senlis, Oise. Dublin (Irish: Baile Átha Cliath), is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Ireland, located near the midpoint of Irelands east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region. ... Dún Laoghaire (pronounced Doonlairah or, roughly, Dunleary) is a seaside town and a ferry port situated 11 km (7 miles) south of Dublin in the council area of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown in County Dublin. ... This article is about the town in Ireland. ... Wexford (Loch Garman in Irish) is a maritime county in the southeast of Ireland, in the province of Leinster. ... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (February 2, 1882 – January 13, 1941) was an expatriate Irish writer and poet, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. ... Clongowes Wood College is a prestigious boys-only secondary school in County Kildare, Ireland run by the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits) since 1814, making it one of Irelands oldest Catholic schools. ... Clane is a small Irish town situated on the River Liffey. ... County Kildare (Irish: Contae Chill Dara) is an Irish county located to the southwest of Dublin in the province of Leinster. ... 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... A bachelors degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three or four years. ... Senlis is a city and commune located about 50km north of central Paris, France in the Picardie région, in the Oise département. ... Oise is a département in the north of France named after the Oise River. ...

His father, Denis Coffey, was a professor of anatomy and served as first president of University College Dublin (UCD) from 1908 to 1940. Coffey entered UCD in 1924 and earned advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He also represented the college in boxing tournaments. Anatomical drawing of the human muscles from the Encyclopédie. ... University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin - more commonly University College Dublin (UCD) - is Irelands largest university, with over 20,000 students. ... 1908 (MCMVIII) is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1924 (MCMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Mathematics is often defined as the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. ... A black hole concept drawing by NASA. Physics (from the Greek, φυσικός (physikos), natural, and φύσις (physis), nature) is the science of the natural world dealing with the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the results produced by these forces. ... Chemistry (derived from the Arabic word kimia, alchemy, where al is Arabic for the) is the science that deals with the properties of organic and inorganic substances and their interactions with other organic and inorganic substances. ...

While still at college, Coffey began writing poetry. He published his first poems in UCD's The National Student under the pseudonym Coeuvre. These poems, which have never been collected, showed the influence of French symbolism and of T. S. Eliot. During this time, Coffey met Denis Devlin, and together they published a volume entitled Poems in 1930. Coffey and Devlin both also participated in college dramatics, taking roles in French plays. T.S. Eliot (by E.O. Hoppe, 1919) Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an American-born poet, dramatist, and literary critic, whose works, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land and Four Quartets, are considered major achievements of twentieth... Denis Devlin (April 15, 1908 - August 21, 1959) was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. ...

Paris

In the early 1930s, Coffey moved to Paris where he studied Physical Chemistry under Jean Baptiste Perrin, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926. He completed these studies in 1933, and his Three Poems was printed in Paris by Jeanette Monnier that same year, as was the poem card Yuki Hira, which was admired by Æ and W. B. Yeats. He also became friendly with other Irish writers based in the city, including Thomas MacGreevy and Samuel Beckett. In his 1934 essay Recent Irish Poetry, Beckett picked out Coffey and Devlin as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland'. The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Physical Chemistry is the combined science of physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics which functions to provide molecular-level interpretations of observed macroscopic phenomena. ... Jean Baptiste Perrin, generally known as Jean Perrin (September 30, 1870, Lille – April 17, 1942, New York), was a French physicist. ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Physics from 1901 to the present day. ... 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ash (Æ, æ; pronounced ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet for English. ... A 1907 engraving of Yeats. ... This article is about the poet, also spelled McGreevy. For the Canadian politician, see Thomas McGreevy. ... Samuel Barclay Beckett (April 13, 1906 – December 22, 1989) was an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. ... 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...

He then entered the Institut Catholique de Paris that year to work with the noted French philosopher Jacques Maritain, taking his licentiate examination in 1936. He them moved to London for a time and contributed reviews and a poem to Eliot's Criterion magazine. On trips home to Dublin, he contributed to programmes on literary topics on RTE radio and published poems in Ireland Today. Institut Catholique de Paris or the Catholic Institute of Paris is a university (in France, the term university can only be used for publicly-owned institutions of higher learning - prior to 1880, the institute was known as the University of Paris) devoted to the study of all aspects of Catholicism. ... Jacques Maritain (November 18, 1882 – April 28, 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ... Criterion DVD Series The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films, is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements. ... Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ; English: Radio and Television of Ireland) is the national state broadcaster of Ireland. ... Ireland Today was a literary magazine that ran from June, 1936 to March, 1938. ...

In 1937 he returned to Paris as an exchange student to work on his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the work of Thomas Aquinas. In 1938, Coffey's second volume of poetry, Third Person, was published by George Reavey's Europa Press. He also contributed translations to the same publisher's Thorns of Thunder (1936), the first collection of Paul Eluard's work published in English. The poems of this period saw Coffey shake off his earlier influences and begin to find his own voice, but, for a variety of reasons, Third Person was to be his last poetry publication for a quarter century. 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Saint Thomas Aquinas [Thomas of Aquin, or Aquino] (c. ... George Reavey (May 1, 1907 – August 11, 1976) was a Russian-born Irish surrealist poet, publisher, translator and art collector. ... The Europa Press was a publishing house founded and run by the Irish surrealist poet George Reavey. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Paul Éluard was the nom de plume of Eugène Grindel (December 14, 1895 - November 18, 1952), a French poet. ...

St Louis

During the war, Coffey taught in schools in London and Yorkshire, leaving his young family in Dublin. After the war, he returned to Paris and completed his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The family then moved so that Coffey could take up a teaching post at the Jesuit Saint Louis University. During this period, Coffey seems to have done very little if any creative writing as he focused mainly on philosophical work based on his thesis, publishing a number of essays in The Modern Schoolman. By the early 1950s, Coffey became uncomfortable for a number of reasons, including the nature of his work, his distance from Ireland and the pressures that inevitably came to bear on an academic who had previously associated with well-know left-wing writers in Paris. For these reasons, he began to look for a suitable opportunity to leave the United States, and resigned, possibly on a matter of academic principle, in 1952. London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ... The White Yorkshire rose. ... Saint Thomas Aquinas [Thomas of Aquin, or Aquino] (c. ... The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu), commonly known as the Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order. ... DuBourg Hall serves as the administration building for St. ... // Events and trends This map shows two essential global spheres during the Cold War in 1959. ... 1952 (MCMLII) was a [[leap year starting on Tueday] (link will take you to calendar). ...

Later life and work

In 1952, Coffey returned to live in London and, from 1973, Southampton. He began again to publish his poetry and translations, mainly of French poetry. The first work in English to appear after this period of silence was Missouri Sequence, apparently begun in St. Louis but first appearing in the University Review in 1962. This poem deals with the experience of exile, memories of the poet's dead parents and the premature birth of a child. It is written in a much more conventional syntax that most of Coffey's work and, thanks to this greater accessibility is one of his most widely-read works. 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... Civic Centre, Southampton Southampton is a city and major port situated on the south coast of England. ... French poetry is a category of French literature. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Poems and Versions 1929-1990, Coffey's last major publication.

Over the next decade or so, he published regularly in the University Review (later known as the Irish University Review), a relationship that culminated in the 1971 special issue. This featured an introduction by Dr. J. C. C. Mays, a selection of translations from the French, the satire Leo and Advent, a meditation on death inspired by the death of the poet's son in a motorcycle accident. The poem is in seven sections, based, according to Coffey in an interview with Parkman Howe, on the canonical hours of the Catholic church. Another key work of this period was Death of Hektor, which uses the myth of Troy as a framework for a meditation on war and its victims. The trade editions of Advent and Death of Hektor were both published by the Menard Press. He also edited Devlin's Collected Poems, first for a University Review Devlin special issue and later as a book from Dolmen Press. Image File history File links Coffey_collected. ... Image File history File links Coffey_collected. ... 1971 (MCMLXXI) is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... Walls of the excavated city of Troy (Turkey) Troy ( Turkish: Truva, Greek Τροία Troia also Ἰλιον; Latin: Troia, Ilium) is a legendary city, scene of the Trojan War, part of which is described in Homers Iliad, an epic poem in Ancient Greek, composed in the 8th or 7th century BC, but... The Menard Press is a small press publisher that started life as a magazine in 1969. ...

He also set up his own publishing enterprise, Advent Press, which published work by himself and by younger writers he wanted to support. He learned printmaking and produced a good deal of original work, including an interesting set of images based on the plays of his old friend Beckett. His interest in visual art also led to some experiments in concrete poetry, most notably his 1966 Advent Press book Monster: A Concrete Poem. His work was championed by a number of younger Irish poets, especially Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce. These two published poetry, prose and translations by Coffey in their journal, The Lace Curtain and his Selected Poems (1971) from their New Writers Press imprint. This book was instrumental in helping establish his reputation as a leading Irish exponent of Modernist poetry. The appearance in 1991 of a major selection Poems and Versions 1929-1990 and his translations Poems from Mallarmé helped confirm his status as one of the leading Irish modernists. He died at the age of 89, and was buried in Southampton, England. Brian Coffey (June 8, 1905 - April 14, 1995) was an Irish poet. ... Poetry that visually conveys the poets meaning through the graphic arrangement of letters, words, or symbols on the page. ... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... Michael Smith (born 1942) is an Irish poet, author and translator. ... Trevor Joyce (born October 26, 1947) is an Irish poet, born in Dublin. ... The Lace Curtain was an occasional literary magazine founded and edited by Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce under their New Writers Press imprint. ... 1971 (MCMLXXI) is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... New Writers Press is an Irish small press that specialises in poetry publishing. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This page discusses the English city of Southampton. ...

Bibliography

Poetry

• Poems (1930), (with Denis Devlin)
• Three Poems (1933)
• Third Person (1938)
• Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance (1965).(trans. of Mallarmé’s Coup de Dés)
• Monster: A Concrete Poem (1966)
• Selected Poems (1971),
• Advent in Irish University Review, Vol. 5., No. 1 (Spring 1975)
• The Big Laugh (1976)
• Death of Hektor (1979), ill. S.W. Hayter
• Topos and Other Poems (Bath: Mammon Press 1981)
• Death of Hektor: Poem (1982)
• Advent (1986)
• Chanterelles: Short Poems 1971-83 (1985)
• Poems and Versions 1929-1990, pref. by J. C. C. Mays (1991),
• Poems from Mallarmé (1991)

Philosophy & Criticism

• ‘The Philosophy of Science and the Scientific Attitude: I’, in The Modern Schoolman, 36 (1948), pp.23-35
• ‘The Notion of Order According to St. Thomas Aquinas’, in The Modern Schoolman, 28, 1 (1949), pp.1-18
• ‘Notes on Modern Cosmological Speculation’, in The Modern Schoolman, 29, 3 (1952), pp.183-96
• ‘Memory’s Murphy Maker’, in Threshold vol. 17 (1962), p.33 [on Beckett]
• ‘Of Denis Devlin: Vestiges, Sentences, Presages’, in Irish University Review 2, 10 (1965), pp.3-18
• ‘A Note on Rat Island’, in Irish University Review, Vol. 3. no. 8 (1966), pp.25-8 *‘Denis Devlin: Poet of Distance’, in Andrew Carpenter, ed., Place, Personality and the Irish Writer (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977), 137-57
• ‘Extracts from “Concerning Making”’, in The Lace Curtain, 6 (Autumnn 1978), pp.31-7
• “About Poetry”, Dedalus Irish Poets: An Anthology [ed. J. F. Deane] (Dublin: Dedalus Press 1992) [c.p.253-54].

As editor

• Denis Devlin Poems University Review [Special Issue] (1963; Dolmen 1964)
• Denis Devlin’s The Heavenly Foreigner (1967)

References

Print

• Coughlan, Patricia & Davis, Alec eds. Modernism and Ireland: The Poetry of the 1930s (1995),
• Howe, Parkman: "Brian Coffey: An Interview" in Eire Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies. 13:1 (1978): 113-123.
• Mays, Dr. J. C. C.: Introduction to Irish University Review, Vol. 5., No. 1 (Spring 1975) (Coffey Special Issue).
• Mills, B: Behind all Archetypes: on Brian Coffey (1995).
• Moriarty, Donal. The Art of Brian Coffey. (2000).

Online

• The Poetry of Brian Coffey - by Fred Beake
• Biography and bibliography
• The Brian Coffey papers