Brian Coffey
Encyclopedia
Brian Coffey was an Irish
poet and publisher. His work was informed by his Catholicism
and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic culture. Two of his long poems published in later years, Advent (1975) and Death of Hektor (1979), are widely considered to be among the most important works in the canon of Irish poetic modernism
. He also ran Advent, a small press
, during the 1960s and 1970s.
. He attended the Mount St Benedict boarding school in Gorey
, County Wexford
from 1917 to 1919 and then James Joyce
's old school. Clongowes Wood College
, in Clane
, County Kildare
from 1919 until 1922. In 1923, he went to France to study for the Bachelor's degree
in Classical Studies at the Institution St Vincent, Senlis, Oise
.
His father, Denis Coffey, was a professor of anatomy
and served as first president of University College Dublin
(UCD) from 1908 to 1940. Coffey entered UCD in 1924 and earned advanced degrees in mathematics
, physics
, and chemistry
. He also represented the college in boxing tournaments.
While still at college, Coffey began writing poetry. He published his first poems in UCD's The National Student under the pseudonym Coeuvre. These poems, which have never been collected, showed the influence of French Symbolism and of T. S. Eliot
. During this time, Coffey met Denis Devlin
, and together they published a volume entitled Poems in 1930. Coffey and Devlin both also participated in college dramatics, taking roles in French plays.
under Jean Baptiste Perrin
, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926. He completed these studies in 1933, and his Three Poems was printed in Paris by Jeanette Monnier that same year, as was the poem card Yuki Hira, which was admired by Æ
and William Butler Yeats
. He also became friendly with other Irish writers based in the city, including Thomas MacGreevy
and Samuel Beckett
. In his 1934 essay Recent Irish Poetry, Beckett picked out Coffey and Devlin as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland'.
He then entered the Institut Catholique de Paris
that year to work with the noted French philosopher Jacques Maritain
, taking his licentiate examination in 1936. He them moved to London for a time and contributed reviews and a poem to Eliot's Criterion
magazine. On trips home to Dublin, he contributed to programmes on literary topics on RTÉ
radio and published poems in Ireland Today
.
He returned to Paris in 1937 as an exchange student to work on his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the work of Thomas Aquinas
. In 1938, Coffey's second volume of poetry, Third Person, was published by George Reavey
's Europa Press
. He also contributed translations to the same publisher's Thorns of Thunder (1936), the first collection of Paul Éluard
's work published in English. The poems of this period saw Coffey shake off his earlier influences and begin to find his own voice, but, for a variety of reasons, Third Person was to be his last poetry publication for a quarter century.
, leaving his young family in Dublin. After the war, he returned to Paris and completed his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the writings of Thomas Aquinas
. The family then moved so that Coffey could take up a teaching post at the Jesuit Saint Louis University
. During this period, Coffey seems to have done very little if any creative writing as he focused mainly on philosophical work based on his thesis, publishing a number of essays in The Modern Schoolman
. By the early 1950s, Coffey became uncomfortable for a number of reasons, including the nature of his work, his distance from Ireland and the pressures that inevitably came to bear on an academic who had previously associated with well-know left-wing writers in Paris. For these reasons, he began to look for a suitable opportunity to leave the United States, and resigned, possibly on a matter of academic principle, in 1952.
. He began again to publish his poetry and translations, mainly of French poetry
. The first work in English to appear after this period of silence was Missouri Sequence, apparently begun in St. Louis but first appearing in the University Review in 1962. This poem deals with the experience of exile, memories of the poet's dead parents and the premature birth of a child. It is written in a much more conventional syntax than most of Coffey's work and, thanks to this greater accessibility is one of his most widely-read works.
Over the next decade or so, he published regularly in the University Review (later known as the Irish University Review), a relationship that culminated in the 1975 special issue. This featured an introduction by Dr. J. C. C. Mays, a selection of translations from the French, the satire Leo and Advent, a meditation on death inspired by the death of the poet's son in a motorcycle accident. The poem is in seven sections, based, according to Coffey in an interview with Parkman Howe, on the canonical hours of the Catholic Church
. Another key work of this period was Death of Hektor, which uses the myth of Troy
as a framework for a meditation on war and its victims. The trade editions of Advent and Death of Hektor were both published by the Menard Press
. He also edited Devlin's Collected Poems, first for a University Review Devlin special issue and later as a book from Dolmen Press
.
He also set up his own publishing enterprise, Advent Press, which published work by himself and by younger writers he wanted to support. He learned printmaking and produced a good deal of original work, including an interesting set of images based on the plays of his old friend Beckett. His interest in visual art also led to some experiments in concrete poetry
, most notably his 1966 Advent Press book Monster: A Concrete Poem. His work was championed by a number of younger Irish poets, especially Michael Smith
and Trevor Joyce
. These two published poetry, prose and translations by Coffey in their journal, The Lace Curtain
and his Selected Poems (1971) from their New Writers Press
imprint. This book was instrumental in helping establish his reputation as a leading Irish exponent of Modernist poetry. The appearance in 1991 of a major selection Poems and Versions 1929-1990 and his translations Poems from Mallarmé helped confirm his status as one of the leading Irish modernists. He died at the age of 89, and was buried in Southampton, England.
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
poet and publisher. His work was informed by his Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic culture. Two of his long poems published in later years, Advent (1975) and Death of Hektor (1979), are widely considered to be among the most important works in the canon of Irish poetic modernism
Modernist poetry
Modernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature in the English language, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the biases of the critic setting the...
. He also ran Advent, a small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
, during the 1960s and 1970s.
Early life and work
Coffey was born in Dublin in the suburb of Dún LaoghaireDún Laoghaire
Dún Laoghaire or Dún Laoire , sometimes anglicised as "Dunleary" , is a suburban seaside town in County Dublin, Ireland, about twelve kilometres south of Dublin city centre. It is the county town of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County and a major port of entry from Great Britain...
. He attended the Mount St Benedict boarding school in Gorey
Gorey
Gorey , is a market town in north County Wexford, Ireland, situated beside the main M11 Dublin to Wexford road. The town is also connected to the railway network along the same route. Local newspapers include the Gorey Guardian and Gorey Echo....
, County Wexford
County Wexford
County Wexford is a county in Ireland. It is part of the South-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wexford. In pre-Norman times it was part of the Kingdom of Uí Cheinnselaig, whose capital was at Ferns. Wexford County Council is the local...
from 1917 to 1919 and then James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's old school. Clongowes Wood College
Clongowes Wood College
Clongowes Wood College is a voluntary secondary boarding school for boys, located near Clane in County Kildare, Ireland. Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1814, it is one of Ireland's oldest Catholic schools, and featured prominently in James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the...
, in Clane
Clane
Clane is a town on the River Liffey and in the barony of Clane in County Kildare, Ireland, from Dublin.Its population of 4,968 makes it the eighth largest town in Kildare and the 78th largest in the Republic of Ireland....
, County Kildare
County Kildare
County Kildare is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county...
from 1919 until 1922. In 1923, he went to France to study for the Bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in Classical Studies at the Institution St Vincent, Senlis, Oise
Senlis, Oise
Senlis is a French commune located in the Oise department near Paris. It has a long and rich heritage, having traversed centuries of history. This medieval town has welcomed some of the most renowned figures in French history, including Hugh Capet, Louis IX, the Marshall of France, Anne of Kiev and...
.
His father, Denis Coffey, was a professor of anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
and served as first president of University College Dublin
University College Dublin
University College Dublin ) - formally known as University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin is the Republic of Ireland's largest, and Ireland's second largest, university, with over 1,300 faculty and 17,000 students...
(UCD) from 1908 to 1940. Coffey entered UCD in 1924 and earned advanced degrees in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, and chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
. He also represented the college in boxing tournaments.
While still at college, Coffey began writing poetry. He published his first poems in UCD's The National Student under the pseudonym Coeuvre. These poems, which have never been collected, showed the influence of French Symbolism and of T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. During this time, Coffey met Denis Devlin
Denis Devlin
Denis Devlin was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was also a career diplomat.-Early life and studies:...
, and together they published a volume entitled Poems in 1930. Coffey and Devlin both also participated in college dramatics, taking roles in French plays.
Paris
In the early 1930s, Coffey moved to Paris where he studied Physical ChemistryPhysical chemistry
Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic, atomic, subatomic, and particulate phenomena in chemical systems in terms of physical laws and concepts...
under Jean Baptiste Perrin
Jean Baptiste Perrin
Jean Baptiste Perrin was a French physicist and Nobel laureate.-Early years:Born in Lille, France, Perrin attended the École Normale Supérieure, the elite grande école in Paris. He became an assistant at the school during the period of 1894-97 when he began the study of cathode rays and X-rays...
, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926. He completed these studies in 1933, and his Three Poems was printed in Paris by Jeanette Monnier that same year, as was the poem card Yuki Hira, which was admired by Æ
George William Russell
George William Russell who wrote under the pseudonym Æ , was an Irish nationalist, writer, editor, critic, poet, and painter. He was also a mystical writer, and centre of a group of followers of theosophy in Dublin, for many years.-Organisor:Russell was born in Lurgan, County Armagh...
and William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
. He also became friendly with other Irish writers based in the city, including Thomas MacGreevy
Thomas MacGreevy
Thomas MacGreevy was a pivotal figure in the history of Irish literary modernism. A poet, he was also director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963 and served on the first Irish Arts Council .-Early life:MacGreevy was born in County Kerry, the son of a policeman and a primary...
and Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. In his 1934 essay Recent Irish Poetry, Beckett picked out Coffey and Devlin as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland'.
He then entered the Institut Catholique de Paris
Institut Catholique de Paris
The Institut Catholique de Paris, or the Catholic University of Paris, is a private university located in Paris, France. The institute was founded in 1875, under the name Université Catholique de Paris, by Maurice Le Sage d'Hauteroche d'Hulst....
that year to work with the noted French philosopher Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
, taking his licentiate examination in 1936. He them moved to London for a time and contributed reviews and a poem to Eliot's Criterion
The Criterion (magazine)
The Criterion was a British literary magazine published from October 1922 to January 1939. The Criterion was, for most of its run, a quarterly journal, although for a period in 1927-28 it was published monthly. It was created by the poet, dramatist, and literary critic T. S...
magazine. On trips home to Dublin, he contributed to programmes on literary topics on RTÉ
Raidió Teilifís Éireann
Raidió Teilifís Éireann is a semi-state company and the public service broadcaster of Ireland. It both produces programmes and broadcasts them on television, radio and the Internet. The radio service began on January 1, 1926, while regular television broadcasts began on December 31, 1961, making...
radio and published poems in Ireland Today
Ireland Today
Ireland Today was a literary magazine that ran from June 1936 to March 1938. It was edited by Frank O'Connor and published work by many emerging and established Irish writers of the time, including Brian Coffey, Daniel Corkery, Denis Devlin, Michael MacLaverty, Ewart Milne, Seán Ó Faoláin, Liam...
.
He returned to Paris in 1937 as an exchange student to work on his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the work of Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
. In 1938, Coffey's second volume of poetry, Third Person, was published by George Reavey
George Reavey
George Reavey was a Russian-born Irish surrealist poet, publisher, translator and art collector. He was also Samuel Beckett's first literary agent. In addition to his own poetry, Reavey's translations and critical prose helped introduce 20th century Russian poetry to an English-speaking audience...
's Europa Press
Europa Press
The Europa Press was a publishing house founded and run by the Irish surrealist poet George Reavey. The press was based in Paris from its inception in 1932 until 1935, when Reavey moved to London...
. He also contributed translations to the same publisher's Thorns of Thunder (1936), the first collection of Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
's work published in English. The poems of this period saw Coffey shake off his earlier influences and begin to find his own voice, but, for a variety of reasons, Third Person was to be his last poetry publication for a quarter century.
St Louis
During the war, Coffey taught in schools in London and YorkshireYorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, leaving his young family in Dublin. After the war, he returned to Paris and completed his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the writings of Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
. The family then moved so that Coffey could take up a teaching post at the Jesuit Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Jesuit university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1818 by the Most Reverend Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg SLU is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. It is one of 28 member institutions of the...
. During this period, Coffey seems to have done very little if any creative writing as he focused mainly on philosophical work based on his thesis, publishing a number of essays in The Modern Schoolman
The Modern Schoolman
The Modern Schoolman is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering all major areas of philosophy from antiquity to the present. Established in 1925, it is one of the oldest philosophy publications in North America. The journal publishes both articles and reviews, and occasionally publishes special...
. By the early 1950s, Coffey became uncomfortable for a number of reasons, including the nature of his work, his distance from Ireland and the pressures that inevitably came to bear on an academic who had previously associated with well-know left-wing writers in Paris. For these reasons, he began to look for a suitable opportunity to leave the United States, and resigned, possibly on a matter of academic principle, in 1952.
Later life and work
In 1952, Coffey returned to live in London and, from 1973, SouthamptonSouthampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
. He began again to publish his poetry and translations, mainly of French poetry
French poetry
French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.-French prosody and poetics:...
. The first work in English to appear after this period of silence was Missouri Sequence, apparently begun in St. Louis but first appearing in the University Review in 1962. This poem deals with the experience of exile, memories of the poet's dead parents and the premature birth of a child. It is written in a much more conventional syntax than most of Coffey's work and, thanks to this greater accessibility is one of his most widely-read works.
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
. Another key work of this period was Death of Hektor, which uses the myth of Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
as a framework for a meditation on war and its victims. The trade editions of Advent and Death of Hektor were both published by the Menard Press
Menard Press
The Menard Press is a small press publisher that started life as a magazine in 1969. Founded and run by Anthony Rudolf, the press specialises in literary texts and criticism, and writings on nuclear power, nuclear weapons and by survivors of Nazism. In 2007 it announced it would be publishing its...
. He also edited Devlin's Collected Poems, first for a University Review Devlin special issue and later as a book from Dolmen Press
Dolmen Press
The Dolmen Press was founded by Liam and Josephine Miller in 1951. The Press operated in Dublin from 1951 until Liam Miller's death in 1987. A printing division was opened in the late 1950s as an additional revenue source, and was eventually shut down in 1979...
.
He also set up his own publishing enterprise, Advent Press, which published work by himself and by younger writers he wanted to support. He learned printmaking and produced a good deal of original work, including an interesting set of images based on the plays of his old friend Beckett. His interest in visual art also led to some experiments in concrete poetry
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
, most notably his 1966 Advent Press book Monster: A Concrete Poem. His work was championed by a number of younger Irish poets, especially Michael Smith
Michael Smith (poet)
Michael Smith is an Irish poet, author and translator.A member of Aosdána, the Irish National Academy of Artists, Michael Smith was the first Writer in-Residence to be appointed by University College, Dublin and is an Honorary Fellow of UCD. He is a poet who has given a lifetime of service to the...
and Trevor Joyce
Trevor Joyce
Trevor Joyce is an Irish poet, born in Dublin.He co-founded New Writers' Press in Dublin in 1967 and was a founding editor of NWP's The Lace Curtain; A Magazine of Poetry and Criticism in 1968....
. These two published poetry, prose and translations by Coffey in their journal, The Lace Curtain
The Lace Curtain
The Lace Curtain was an occasional literary magazine founded and edited by Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce under their New Writers Press imprint...
and his Selected Poems (1971) from their New Writers Press
New Writers Press
New Writers Press is an Irish small press that specialises in poetry publishing. The press was founded in 1967 by the poets Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce and Smith's wife Irene in response to what they felt to be the stagnant state of Irish poetry at the time....
imprint. This book was instrumental in helping establish his reputation as a leading Irish exponent of Modernist poetry. The appearance in 1991 of a major selection Poems and Versions 1929-1990 and his translations Poems from Mallarmé helped confirm his status as one of the leading Irish modernists. He died at the age of 89, and was buried in Southampton, England.