“Heaney’s Great Contemporaries”: a lecture by the Poet Grey Gowrie

Grey Gowrie: “Heaney’s Great Contemporaries” (lecture and reading)

Boston University

Grey Gowrie was born in Dublin in 1939. Educated and professionally engaged in England and the USA, he made his home in Ireland until 1983 when he moved to the Welsh Marches. He taught English and American literature at Harvard and University College London and in 1972, on publishing his first collection of poems, exchanged an academic career for business and public life. He has been a company chairman, a Cabinet minister, Chairman of the Arts Council of England and Provost of the Royal College of Art. While at Harvard, he acted as an assistant to Robert Lowell. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Postcard from Don Giovanni (OUP, 1972), The Italian Visitor (Carcanet Press, 2013) and Third Day: New and Collected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press, 2013) as well as a book on the Irish painter, Derek Hill. He is married to the German journalist Adelheid von der Schulenburg and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Co-sponsored by the BUCH, the Editorial Institute, the Center for the Study of Europe, CITL at CGS and the Institute for the Study of Irish Culture.