CURRICULUM VITAE: PAT BORAN

Pat Boran is a poet, fiction writer, publisher and radio broadcaster. He was born in Portlaoise in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin.

He has published four collections of poetry: The Unwound Clock (1990), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996) and As the Hand, the Glove (2001). His New and Selected Poems was first published by Salt Publishing, UK, in 2005 and reissued by Dedalus in 2007.

In addition to poetry, he has published a collection of short stories, Strange Bedfellows (1991) and a fiction title for children, All the Way from China (1999) which was shortlisted for the Bisto Book of the Year Award. His non-fiction works include the popular writers' handbook The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (1999), reissued in a revised and expanded edition in 2005, and A Short History of Dublin (2000).

For many years he was the Programme Director of the Dublin Writers Festival, and he has held writer-in-residence posts with Dublin Corporation, Dublin City Libraries and Dublin City University. Until recently the presenter of The Poetry Programme on RTÉ Radio 1 (see archive at www.rte.ie), he is also a regular contributor to a number of other radio programmes.

In 2005 he took over the running of the Dedalus Press, one of Ireland’s longest-standing literary imprints, specializing in contemporary poetry from Ireland and poetry from around the world in English translation. In 2006, he edited the anthology Wingspan: A Dedalus Sampler.

In 2007 Pat Boran was elected to the membership of Aosdána. In 2008 he received the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry in St. Paul, MN, USA.

PUBLICITY PHOTOGRAPH For a high-resolution author publicity photograph (620 K), save this link.

PUBLICATIONS

POETRY

New and Selected Poems. Salt, UK, 2005 / Dedalus Press. 2007.
As the Hand, the Glove. Dedalus Press, 2001.
The Shape of Water. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 1996.
Familiar Things. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 1993.
History and Promise: Poems from Laois. Portlaoise: IUP, 1990.
The Unwound Clock. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 1990 (Winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award).

POETRY IN TRANSLATION

Italian

Il Jukebox Castlecomer, selected poems of Pat Boran. Edizioni del Leone, Venezia, 2008.
Come La Mano Il Guanto, Italian edition of As the Hand the Glove, Rimini. Raffaelli Editore, 2007.

Hungarian

Válogatott versek. Selected Poems of Pat Boran. Budapest. C.E.T., 2006.

Macedonian

Answering Machine. Selected Poems of Pat Boran. Skopje. Blesok, 2007.

Norwegian

A significant selection appears in Grøne Dikt, 9 Modern Irish Poets (Cappelen, 2005).
The journal Prosopopeia (Nr. 1/2 2006) also includes an interview and poems (trans. Endre Ruset)

PAT BORAN'S TRANSLATION WORK

Forgotten Music, poems from the Catalan of Alex Susanna. Dublin: Dedalus, 2003.
Man and his Masks, poems from the French of Jean Orizet. Dublin: Dedalus, 1998.

He has also been a member of the Poetry Network Irish translation team which produced book-length volumes of the work of contemporary Greek, Italian and Romanian poets.

FICTION

All the Way from China. For children. Dublin: Poolbeg, 1998.
Finalist for the Bisto Book of the Year Award.

Strange Bedfellows. Stories. Salmon Publishing, 1991.

NON-FICTION

The Portable Creative Writing Workshop. Salmon Publishing, 1998/ New Island Books, 2005).

A Short History of Dublin. Mercier Press, 2000.

RADIO DRAMA

The Right Hand, RTÉ Radio 1, 1994.
Pearl, RTÉ Radio 1, 1993.
Not Dead But Lifeless, BBC Radio 4, 1988.

Prizes, Awards, Honours

The Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry, 2008.
The Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry, 1989.
Various awards and bursaries from The Arts Council
/ An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Election to Aosdána, 2007.

RESIDENCIES

Writer-in-Residence, Dublin City University, 1998-1999.
City of Dublin Writer-in-Residence, 1997 - 1998
County Fermanagh Writer-in-Residence, 1993.
Poet-in-Residence, Dublin City Libraries, 1992.

EDITORIAL AND BROADCASTING

Editor / Publisher of the Dedalus Press.
Editor, Portal, an arts and culture journal, EXPO2000.
Co-editor / co-producer of Dublin 15: Poems of the City, an audio CD anthology of poetry relating to Dublin city. Irish Writers Centre / Dublin Corporation, 1997.
Editor, Poetry Ireland Review, 1993-1994.

A frequent broadcaster, he has also been the presenter of a number of RTÉ radio and television literature and arts programmes, among them The Poetry Programme, The Enchanted Way, The Arts Show and Undercover.