Frank Ormsby

Francis Arthur Ormsby (born Irvinestown, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland in 1947) is a Northern Irish poet.^[1]

He was educated at St Michael's College, Enniskillen and Queen's University Belfast. He was editor of The Honest Ulsterman from 1969 to 1989, and has also edited the Poetry Ireland Review. Since 1976 he has been Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. The man has been an inspiration for everyone who has been lucky enough to have him as a teacher or a friend. In 2010, after 34 years in the post, he announced his decision to retire from the role of 'Head of English' at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.

In 1992 he received the Cultural Traditions Award, given in memory of John Hewitt, and in 2002 the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry from the University of St. Thomas at St Paul, Minnesota.

Recently he has returned to writing with a new collection Fireflies, published by Carcanet in 2009. The work features poems set in rural Fermanagh, Belfast and America.

Publications

• Ripe for Company, Belfast: Ulsterman Publications, 1971.
• A Store of Candles, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
• A Northern Spring, London: Secker & Warburg, 1986.
• The Ghost Train, Oldcastle, Co. Meath: The Gallery Press, 1995.
• Fireflies, Manchester: Carcanet / Oxford Poets, 2009.

Edited volumes

• Poets from the North of Ireland, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1979; revised edition, 1990.
• Northern Windows: An Anthology of Ulster Autobiography, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1987.
• The Long Embrace: Twentieth Century Irish Love Poems, London: Faber & Faber, 1987.
• Thine in Storm and Calm: An Amanda McKittrick Ros Reader, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1988.
• The Collected Poems of John Hewitt, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1991.
• A Rage for Order: Poetry of the Northern Ireland Troubles, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1992.
• The Hip Flask: Short Poems from Ireland, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2001.
• The Blackbird's Nest: An Anthology of Poetry from Queen's University Belfast, Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2006.
• The Selected Poems of John Hewitt (co-edited with Michael Longley), Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2007.

References

See also

• List of Northern Irish writers