James Simmons (poet)
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James Simmons (1933 - 2001) was a poet, literary critic and songwriter from Northern Ireland.
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[edit] Biography
He was born into a middle-class Protestant family in Derry in 1933 and attended Campbell College in Belfast before moving to the University of Leeds to read for a degree in English. He married Laura Stinson and they had five children: Rachel, Sarah, Adam, Helen and Penelope. He then returned to Northern Ireland to teach at Friends' School Lisburn for five years before going to the new Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria where he stayed for three years. This time he returned to Northern Ireland for good. In 1968 he took a position at the New University of Ulster in Coleraine which had just opened. He remained there until 1984 when he took early retirement. Near the end of his teaching career at the University of Ulster, Simmons and his first wife Laura divorced. Subsequently, James married Imelda Foley, the sister of Derry poet and fiction writer Michael Foley. James and Imelda had one child. After the end of his marriage to Imelda, he established an independent poetry school, with his third wife poet Janice Fitzpatrick, with whom he had a son,The Poets' House, initially in Islandmagee in County Antrim and subsequently in Falcarragh in County Donegal. The Poets' House Centre for Creative Writing is now located at Waterford Institute of Technology where his widow is head of creative writing.
[edit] Career
When Simmons returned to Northern Ireland he took part in meetings of The Belfast Group. This was a group of poets who met regularly in Belfast to discuss their work. The group included Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. In 1968, with his nephew Michael Stephens, Simmons went on a poetry reading tour of universities in England. At that time he had an idea for a literary magazine. When he returned to Ireland, he established The Honest Ulsterman a literary journal that ran for thirty-five years and became the most original and important Irish literary journal of its time. After Simmons edited 17 of the first 19 issues, control of the magazine was assumed by a series of younger editors: there were 111 issues in all. The Honest Ulsterman published a series of more than 30 poetry chapbooks that included the first collections of work by Paul Muldoon ("Knowing My Place"), Michael Foley ("The Acne and the Ecstasy") and Michael Stephens ("Blues for Chocolate Doherty"). Members of the Belfast Group frequently published in The Honest Ulsterman.
He won several prizes for his poetry including the Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards.
He also wrote a critical biography of Sean O'Casey (London: Macmillan).
Throughout his career Simmons wrote and performed songs about various contemporary issues. He produced four collections of his own songs.
[edit] Works
- Ballad of a Marriage (1966)
- Late but in Earnest (London: Bodley Head; 1967)
- Ten Poems (1969)
- In the Wilderness (London: Bodley Head; 1969)
- No Ties (1970)
- Energy to Burn (London: Bodley Head; 1971)
- The Long Summer Still to Come (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1973)
- West Strand Visions (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1974)
- Judy Garland and the Cold War (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1976)
- Constantly Singing (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1980)
- From the Irish (Belfast: Blackstaff Press; 1985)
- Poems, 1956-1986 ([Introduction by Edna Longley] Dublin, The Gallery/UK, Bloodaxe 1986)
- Sex, Rectitude and Loneliness (Belfast: Lapwing Publications; 1993)
- Mainstream (Galway: Salmon Poetry; 1995);
- The Company of Children (Galway: Salmon Poetry; 1999)
[edit] Prizes
[edit] References
McKenna, Bernard; Gonzalez, Alexander G. (Ed.) (1997). Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313295573.
McCormack, W.J. (2001-07-13), “Obituary”, The Independent, <http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article35402.ece>
