John Montague

In the late twentieth century, Irish poetry achieved an historic quality, a golden era to compare with the verse of the Elizabethan and the Romantic periods. A Poet’s Life is the definitive biography of one of the first and foremost poets in this golden generation, John Montague. Inspired by the examples of Yeats and Joyce, he consciously educated himself to play a central role in the self-understanding of his people. Ahead of the public recognition of such issues, Montague wrote personally about abortion, divorce, alcoholism, domestic violence, and clerical abuse in education.

His poetry offered to others release from a painful past. Out of where he was most hurt, his best work issued. When the Troubles erupted in his home province, he was to the forefront in engaging with events directly, sometimes in a cross-community effort with fellow poets of the other faith.

This record of his life is also an intimate, familial account of modern Irish poetry and its precision, documentary basis, and reliable chronology, it is sure to become a vital conduit into a body of poetry that will never be forgotten. Already a highly lauded biographer, Adrian Frazier was a close acquaintance of Montague for more than forty years. In this fully authorised narrative that is clear, candid, and marbled with humour, Frazier reveals the sources of poetry in Montague’s life and traces the progress of his style from book to book. Based on Montague’s archive of private papers, and informed by the counsel of the poet’s lifelong friends, partners, and fellow poets, this is a monumental work of Irish literary biography, sure to be a classic of the genre.