Maurice Riordan
Quick Facts
Biography
Maurice Riordan (born 1953) is an Irish poet, translator, and editor.
Born in Lisgoold, County Cork, his poetry collections include: A Word from the Loki (1995), a largely London-based collection which was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize; Floods (2000) which took a more millennial tone, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award; The Holy Land (2007) which contains a sequence of Idylls or prose poems and returns to Riordan's Irish roots more directly than his earlier work.It received the Michael Hartnett Award.
His anthologies include A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems about Science (2000),a collaboration with Jon Turney, an anthology of ecological poems Wild Reckoning (2004) edited with John Burnside, and Dark Matter (2008) edited with astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell.He has also edited a selection of poems by Hart Crane (2008) in Faber's 'Poet to Poet' series.
He has translated the work of Maltese poet Immanuel Mifsud. His collection for children The Moon Has Written You a Poem is adapted from the Portuguese of José Jorge Letria.
In 2004 he was selected as one of the Poetry Society's 'Next Generation' poets. He was Poetry Editor of Poetry London from 2005 to 2009and Editor of The Poetry Review from 2013 to 2017.
Riordan was educated in St. Colman's College, Fermoy, University College Cork and McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.
He has taught at Goldsmiths College and at Imperial College and is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam University.He lives in London.
Publications
Poetry collections
A Word from the Loki, Faber 1995
Floods, Faber 2000
The Holy Land, Faber 2007
The Water Stealer, Faber 2013
For children
The Moon Has Written You a Poem, Winged Chariot 2005
As editor
A Quark for Mister Mark (with Jon Turney), Faber 2000
Wild Reckoning (with John Burnside), Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation 2004
The Best of Irish Poetry (with Colm Breathnach), Southword 2006
Dark Matter: Poems of Space (with Jocelyn Bell Burnell), Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation 2008
Hart Crane: Selected Poems, Faber 'Poet to Poet' 2008
The Finest Music: Early Irish Lyrics in Translation, Faber 2014
Translations
Confidential Reports (Immanuel Mifsud), Southword 2005
The Play of Waves (Immanuel Mifsud), Arc 2017