
A SPECIAL reading in memory of the late Limerick poet Desmond OโGrady will be held this month.
As part of April is Poetry Month in Limerick, The Desmond OโGrady Memorial Reading, hosted by the Limerick Writersโ Centre, will take place at The Peopleโs Museum of Limerick on Wednesday April 19 at 7.30pm.
Guest readers will include American-Irish poet Jamie OโHalloran, Eleanor Hooker, and Kilkenny-born writer Ciaran OโDriscoll.
Of the late Limerick poet, a representative of the Limerick Writersโ Centre said: โDesmond O’Grady was unusual among Irish poets of his generation for both his interest in modernist experimentation and his immersion in the poetry of other cultures. He was, in the true sense, a citizen of world poetry.โ
Local poet Eleanor Hooker will be the judge of the Desmond OโGrady International Poetry Competition on the night, and she will announce the winner of this yearโs competition after her poetry reading.
Born in Limerick in 1935, Desmond O’Grady started writing poetry in his teens.
This early work was strongly influenced by TS Eliot andย Ezra Pound, whose poems he encountered at weekly meetings of the Limerick Poetry Circle in the White House Bar.
O’Grady “at the age of 19 he moved to Paris to teach English at the Berlitz School and to immerse himself in the artistic life of the city. He met Picasso, moved in the same circles as Beckett and, in 1956, got to know friends of Joyce and published his first book, Chords and Orchestrations, with the financial assistance of his admirers at home in Limerick,” according to the Limerick Writers’ Centre.