Michael Donaghy

Michael Donaghy (May 24, 1954 – September 16, 2004) was a New York City poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985.

Life and career Donaghy was born into an Irish family and grew up with his sister Patricia in the Bronx, New York, losing both parents in their early thirties. He continued to play in various Irish music groups, as well as the early line-up of Lammas, the jazz/traditional crossover band led by Tim Garland and poet Don Paterson. David Wheatley wrote in The Guardian: "The death of Michael Donaghy in 2004 at the age of 50 has been one of the most deeply felt losses to the poetry world in recent years. Not since Sylvia Plath almost half a century ago had an American poet living in Britain so decisively entered the bloodstream of his times." His fourth collection Safest was published posthumously in 2005 and a prose collection The Shape of the Dance in 2009. His ashes were interred in Highgate Cemetery on the anniversary of his death in 2005.

Honours and awards 1987: National Poetry Competition (2nd Prize) 1989: Whitbread Prize for Poetry 1990: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 1992: Arts Council Writers Award 1994: Selected for New Generation Poets Promotion 1999: Arts Council Writers Award 1999: The Poetry Society Reader in Residence 1999: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature 2000: Poetry Book Society Choice, Conjure 2000: Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) for Conjure

Selected works 1988 Shibboleth, Oxford University Press 1993 Errata, Oxford University Press 1997 Penguin Modern Poets 11 (contributor with Andrew Motion and Hugo Williams), London: Penguin 2000 Dances Learned Last Night: Poems 1975-1995, London: Picador 2000 Conjure Picador 2005 101 Poems about Childhood (editor), London: Faber & Faber 2005 Michael Donaghy Reading from his poems (CD), The Poetry Archive 2009 Collected Poems, Picador (posthumous) 2009 The Shape of the Dance: Essays, Interviews and Digressions Picador (posthumous)