Biographical Note

Michael Smith is a poet who has given a lifetime of service to the art of poetry both in English and Spanish. He has been described as a classical modernist, a poet of modern life. Born in Dublin in 1942, Michael Smith was co-founder of New Writers’ Press in 1967 and has been responsible for the publication of over 50 books and magazines. He was keen to promote the modernist tradition in Irish poetry, publishing the work of Thomas MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, Anthony Cronin, Michael Hartnett, among others. He was co-founder and editor of the influential literary magazine The Lace Curtain. From 1984 to 1989 he was a member of the Arts Council.

He has translated into English and published some of the most difficult and exhilarating poets in Spanish, including Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Hernández (Unceasing Lightning) and the two great Spanish masters of the baroque, Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora. He has also translated Gerardo Diego´s Manual de espumas, a Selected Poems of José Hierro and selections of the poems of Jiménez and Luis Cernuda, among others. Among his two most recent books (2004) are The Purpose of the Gift - Selected Poems and Maldon & Other Translations (NWP/Shearsman). He has published in three volumes the poetry of the great 20th century Peruvian poet, César Vallejo, Trilce and Complete Later Poems 1923-1938, The Black Heralds and Selected Poems (Shearsman), in which he has collaborated with the Peruvian scholar, Valentino Gianuzzi, thus bringing all of Vallejo’s poetry into English. His translations of the Selected Poems of Rosalía de Castro and,(with Luis Ingelmo) the Collected Poems - Rimas of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer appeared this year (Shearsman, 2008). At present he is working with the Spanish scholar, Luis Ingelmo, on the Complete Poems of Claudio Rodríguez and (with Beatriz White) a Selected Poems of Juan Antonio Villacañas. Also in preparation is Nostalgia for Death by the Mexican poet Villaurrutia, Froth: A Manual by Gerardo Diego, and Poems from Arabic Andalusia (an anthology of Arabaic Spanish poetry from the 11th century to the 13 century.

Michael Smith is a member of Aosdána, the Irish National Academy of Artists. He was the first Writer-in-Residence to be appointed by University College, Dublin. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Polish, French and German. For many years now he has been a regular literary reviewer and features writer for The Irish Times. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazine both in Ireland and abroad and in many important anthologies of contemporary Irish poetry, including The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry, Edited by Derek Mahon and Peter Fallon, and Contemporary Irish Poetry, Edited by Anthony Bradley (University of California Press, 1980, 1988). In 2001, he was the first Irish recipient of the European Academy Medal for distinguished work in the translation of poetry in Spanish, awarded by the European Academy of Poetry.