Bernard O'Donoghue is a noted contemporary Irish poet and academic.

Born in Cullen, County Cork

County Cork

County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...

, Ireland, he moved to Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, England when he was 16, where he attended St Bede's College

St Bede's College, Manchester

St Bede's College, Manchester is an independent Roman Catholic day school situated on Alexandra Road South in the Whalley Range area of the city, and is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference....

. He has lived in Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, England since 1965. O'Donoghue is currently fellow and tutor in Old English and Medieval English, Linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 and the History of the English Language

History of the English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the...

 at Wadham College, Oxford University. He was previously Reader at Magdalen College

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

, Oxford, and was a colleague of John Fuller

John Fuller (poet)

John Fuller is an English poet and author, and Fellow Emeritus at Magdalen College, Oxford.Fuller was born in Ashford, Kent, England, the son of poet and Oxford Professor Roy Fuller, and educated at St Paul's School and New College, Oxford. He began teaching in 1962 at the State University of New...

 and David Norbrook

David Norbrook

David Norbrook is Merton Professor of Renaissance English literature at Oxford University. He is a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He specializes in literature, politics and historiography in the early modern period, and in early modern women's writing. He is currently writing a biography and...

.He supports Manchester City Football Club.

In 2006, Penguin Books

Penguin Books

Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

 published O'Donoghue's new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...

. O'Donoghue has a wide range of specialities. He has written on courtly love

Courtly love

Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....

, Thomas Hoccleve and Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

.

His published poetry collections include Poaching Rights (1987), The Absent Signifier (1990), The Weakness (1991), Gunpowder (1995, which won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry), and Here Nor There (1999), Poaching Rights (1999) and Outliving (2003).

O'Donoghue has said that the Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

 elegies

Elegies

is the Hello! Project 2005 shuffle group consisting of Ai Takahashi and Reina Tanaka of Morning Musume, along with Melon Kinenbi's Ayumi Shibata and Country Musume's Mai Satoda. The name comes from the word elegy. They released the single "" on June 22, 2005....

 such as The Seafarer and The Wanderer

The Wanderer (poem)

The Wanderer is an Old English poem preserved only in an anthology known as the Exeter Book, a manuscript dating from the late 10th century. It counts 115 lines of alliterative verse...

are his "model for the perfectly formed lyric poem" .

Along with the British poet and translator David Constantine

David Constantine

David Constantine is a British poet and translator.Constantine is a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford University, and a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford. He is co-editor of the literary journal Modern Poetry in Translation...

, O'Donoghue is an editor of the distinguished Oxford Poets

Oxford Poets

Oxford Poets is an imprint of the British poetry publisher Carcanet Press.The imprint was established in March 1999 when the founder and editor of Carcanet Press, Michael Schmidt, acquired the Oxford University Press poetry list. OUP's authors had included such critically acclaimed poets as Fleur...

 imprint of Carcanet Press

Carcanet Press

Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt.Carcanet Press is now in its fourth decade. In 2000 it was named the Sunday Times millennium Small Publisher of the Year...

. He is the senior member of the Oxford University Poetry Society

Oxford University Poetry Society

The Oxford University Poetry Society aims to be the centre of poetic life within the University of Oxford, and was founded in 1946 by Martin Starkie.-Society activities:...

.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

in 1999.