Justin Quinn

He has published seven poetry collections: The 'O'o'a'a' Bird (1995), Privacy (1999), Fuselage (2002), Waves & Trees (2006), The Months (2009), Close Quarters (2011) and Early House (2015). The 'O'o'a'a' Bird was nominated for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. He has published three critical studies, Gathered Beneath the Storm: Wallace Stevens, Nature and Community, American Errancy: Empire, Sublimity and Modern Poetry and Between Two Fires: Transnationalism and Cold War Poetry. He has also translated extensively from Czech, in particular the work of Petr Borkovec and Bohuslav Reynek, and has written non-fiction prose on life in the Czech Republic for the Dublin Review. Quinn's work shows the influence of American writers such as, principally, Wallace Stevens, but also Anthony Hecht and James Merrill, as well as Irish writers such as W. Yeats and Paul Muldoon. It is characterised by a sensual lushness informed by an awareness of the violence of history, as inflected by the author's experiences of living in the Czech Republic. In its mix of formalist sophistication and openness to experiment, Quinn's work confounds perceptions of Irish poetry as rigidly dichotomised between formal conservatism and 1930s-derived innovation, a distinctiveness confirmed by the editorial decision to award him the single largest share of the 2004 Bloodaxe anthology The New Irish Poets. He has recently translated the work of Czech poet Ivan Blatný.

• The 'O'o'a'a' Bird (Carcanet, 1995) • Privacy (Carcanet, 1999) • Fuselage (Gallery Press, 2002) • Waves and Trees (Gallery Press, 2006) • The Months (2009) • Close Quarters (Gallery Press, 2011) • Early House (Gallery Press, 2015) • Shallow Seas (Gallery Press, 2020)

• Mount Merrion (Penguin Ireland, 2013)

• The Drug of Art: Selected Poems of Ivan Blatný (trs Justin Quinn et al., Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007) • Petr Borkovec: From the Interior, Poems 1995-2005 (Seren, 2008) • Bohuslav Reynek: The Well at Morning: Selected Poems 1925-1971 (University of Chicago Press, 2018) • Jan Zábrana: The Lesser Histories (University of Chicago Press, 2023)