Irish Poet/Playwright to be Artist-in-Residence at Alfred University 9/22/99
Alfred, NY -- Eamon Grennan, the distinguished Irish poet, will visit Alfred University Thursday and Friday, Sept. 23- 24. He will give a reading from his work at noon on Friday in Nevins Theatre, Powell Campus Center.Grennan will also lead a discussion of Brian Friel's play, Translations, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, in the C. D. Smith Theatre, Miller Performing Arts Center. Both appearances are free and open to the public.Alfred University's Division of Performing Arts' production of Translations runs from Oct. 6 - 9, in the C.D. Smith Theatre, Miller Performing Arts Center, at 8 p.m.. For reservations, call 607 871-2828.Grennan's play, Translations, was first produced in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1980, Translations probes the historical and linguistic dimensions of the Anglo-Irish conflict. Grennan will discuss these and other cultural aspects of the play during the Thursday session. Although of direct benefit to the cast and crew members of the play, this discussion is open to all students and interested University community members. Grennan's work has been widely acclaimed. In the view of his fellow poet John Montague, Grennan has "the eye of a painter, the quiet ferocity of a Bonnard or Vermeer, intent on transfixing the moment. He has developed a long crackling line, with sentences like whiplashes, making poems that seem at once both mobile and at rest."Grennan is the author of four collections of poems, most recently Relations: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf 1998), and one volume of
translations. His diverse subjects include married life, Dutch interior art, sexual intimacy, and the sectarian violence of Northern Ireland.Grennan has been described as a "Celtic amphibian, at home both in Ireland and North America."
Born in Dublin in 1941, he was educated at University College, Dublin and Harvard University. An Irish citizen who has lived in the United States for three decades, he teaches English at Vassar College. His poems appear frequently in The New Yorker and other American journals.His appearance on the Alfred University campus is being sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities Steering Committee of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.For further information on the Grennan residency, call 607 871-2562.
