Rudi Holzapfel
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Rudolf Patrick (Rudi) Holzapfel, born in Paris, France, on December 11, 1938, died February 6, 2005 in Bonn, Germany was an Irish poet and teacher.
His father, Rudolf Melander Holzapfel (1900-1982), was a Shakespeare scholar, expert on Old Master paintings, and art dealer. His mother, Mona Trew Holzapfel, was an original member of the renowned Bluebell Girls, the Parisian dance troupe founded in 1932 that continues to perform elaborate shows at the Lido de Paris. The family relocated to America, living in California between 1946 to 1956, where Rudi Holzapfel was graduated from Santa Barbara Catholic High Schoo]. From 1956 to 1970, Holzapfel worked various jobs in England and Ireland, and studied at Trinity College in Dublin. It was during these years that Holzapfel began to identify with Ireland and the cause of Irish nationalism; he has said he would like to be considered a true inheritor of the spiritual legacy of the Gaelic Bards. He began a lifelong study and appreciation of James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), the greatest Irish poet before Yeats. In 1969, Holzapfel published James Clarence Mangan: A Checklist of Printed and Other Sources (Dublin: Scepter).
From 1970 to the late 1980s, Holzapfel lived in Germany, teaching English and Literature. Holzapfel has published more than twenty-five books of poetry, some under his own imprint, Sunburst Press (Blackrock, County Dublin). An early book of poetry, Cast a Cold Eye, was written with Brendan Kennelly (Dolmen Press, 1959). Holzapfel has published with other Irish authors, including Oliver Snoddy and John Farrell, and his work has been anthologized in the Penguin Book of Irish Verse and Modern Irish Poets. With a circle of other Mangan scholars, including Jacques Chuto, Peter Van de Kamp, Peter MacMahon, and Ellen Shannon-Mangan, Holzapfel has edited selections of Mangan's prose and poems for the Irish Academic Press. Rudi Holzapfel died in Bonn, Germany, on 6th February 2005. His grave ist to be found at the Poppelsdorfer Friedhof.
[edit] Works
- Cast a Cold Eye, 1959, with Brendan Kennelly
- The Rain, the Moon, 1961, with Brendan Kennelly
- The Dark About Our Loves, 1962, with Brendan Kennelly
- Green Townlands, 1963, with Brendan Kennelly
- The Rebel Bloom, 1967
- Parasites Lost with John Farrell 1970
- Soledades, 1974
- Whom a Dream hath possessed, 1975
- A Smile dies, 1978, Sunburst Press
- Ask Silence Why, 1961-1982, selected poems edited by Ellen Shannon-Mangan, Dublin, Beaver Row Press, 1987
- Poems Written Swiftly, 1982, Sunburst Press
- Buckshot (Aphorisms), 1983
- Turning and Manipulation, 1986, Sunburst Press
