Justin Quinn (born 1968 in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

) is an Irish poet and critic. He received a doctorate from

Trinity College, Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Univ ...

, where his contemporaries included poets David Wheatley,

Caitriona O'Reilly Caitríona O'Reilly (born 1973) is an Irish poet and critic. Life She earned BA and PhD degrees in Archaeology and English at Trinity College, Dublin, where she was awarded a PhD on American poetry, and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish ...

and

Sinéad Morrissey Sinéad Morrissey (born 24 April 1972 in Portadown, County Armagh) is a Northern Irish poet. In January 2014 she won the T. S. Eliot Prize for her fifth collection ''Parallax: And Selected Poems, Parallax'' and in 2017 she won the Forward Priz ...

, and now lives with his wife and sons in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

. He is a lecturer at

Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...

and the

University of West Bohemia The University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (, ZČU) is a university in Plzeň, Czech Republic. It was founded in 1991 and consists of nine faculties. History The university was formed by the merger of the ''College of Mechanical and Electrical E ...

. 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. With David Wheatley, he was a founding editor of the influential journal ''Metre'', which stressed internationalism and contributed to a burgeoning interest in formalism in Irish poetry. 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 Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

, but also

Anthony Hecht Anthony Evan Hecht (January 16, 1923 – October 20, 2004) was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, an ...

and James Merrill, as well as Irish writers such as

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the ...

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 Ivan Blatný (; 21 December 1919 in Brno, Czechoslovakia – 5 August 1990 in Colchester, United Kingdom) was a Czech poet and a member of '' Skupina 42 (Group 42). Life Blatný, the son of the writer Lev Blatný, was a member of the '' Skupina ...

Books

Poetry

*''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)

Novel

*''Mount Merrion'' (Penguin Ireland, 2013)

Criticism

*''Gathered Beneath the Storm: Wallace Stevens, Nature and Community'' (UCD Press, 2002) *''American Errancy: Empire, Sublimity and Modern Poetry'' (UCD Press, 2005) *''The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000'' (Cambridge UP, 2008) *''Between Two Fires: Transnationalism and Cold War Poetry'' (Oxford, 2015).

Translations

*''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)

Art books

*''Jiří Mědílek, Obrazy'' (Prague: Opus, 2008)

References

Short biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quinn, Justin 1968 births Living people Irish literary critics Irish male poets Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Academic staff of Charles University Academic staff of the University of West Bohemia Writers from County Dublin 20th-century Irish poets 21st-century Irish poets