Dermot Healy

Dermot Healy Poems

Dermot Healy Biography

Dermot Healy (18 July 1947 - 29 June 2014) was an Irish novelist, playwright, poet and short story writer. A member of Aosdána, Healy was also part of its governing body, the Toscaireacht. Born in Finnea, County Westmeath, he lived in County Sligo, and was described variously as a "master", a "Celtic Hemingway" and as "Ireland's finest living novelist". Often overlooked outside of Ireland due to his relatively low public profile, Healy's work is admired by his Irish literary predecessors, peers and successors alike, many of whom idolise him—among the writers to have spoken highly of him are Seamus Heaney, Eugene McCabe, Roddy Doyle, Patrick McCabe and Anne Enright. Throughout his career left out of the running for literature's bigger mainstream awards (not even longlisted for the Booker Prize which was instead awarded to admirers of his such as Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright), Healy won the Hennessy Award (1974 and 1976), the Tom Gallon Award (1983), and the Encore Award (1995). In 2011, he was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award for his 2010 poetry collection, A Fool's Errand. Long Time, No See was selected for the International IMPAC Literary Award, the world's most valuable literary award for a single work in the English language, by libraries in Russia and Norway.)

The Best Poem Of Dermot Healy

The No-Tree

Sometimes the moon

gets caught in the high branches

of the No-tree,

and you have to shake

and shake the No-tree

to set it free.

Even this may never be enough.

Dermot Healy Comments