Thomas Kinsella

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Thomas Kinsella (4 May 1928 – 22 December 2021) was an Irish poet, translator, editor and publisher. He was born in Inchicore, Dublin, to working‑class parents; his father worked for Guinness. He went to the Model School in Inchicore and the O’Connell School, then studied at University College Dublin while working in the civil service.

Kinsella began publishing poetry in the early 1950s. His first pamphlet, The Starlit Eye (1952), and his book Poems (1956) appeared from Dolmen Press. He later translated early Irish poetry into English, producing versions of Longes Mac Usnig, The Breastplate of St Patrick and Thirty-Three Triads. His notable translation, The Táin (1969), was illustrated by Louis le Brocquy. In 1981 he co-edited An Duanaire: 1600–1900 with Seán Ó Tuama; it won a Rooney Prize special award in 1982.

Kinsella left the civil service in 1965 to teach at Southern Illinois University, and in 1970 he became a professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia, helping start Temple's Irish studies program. He also started Peppercanister Press in 1972 to publish his own work. His poetry from the late 1960s onward drew on American modernist poets and Jungian psychology, focusing on personal and public life. Notable later works include Nightwalker and Other Poems, Notes from the Land of the Dead, One, Her Vertical Smile, Out of Ireland, St Catherine’s Clock and Poems from Centre City.

He received the Freedom of the City of Dublin in 2007 and an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in 2018. He was married to Eleanor Walsh from 1955 until her death in 2017. His brother was the composer John Kinsella. Thomas Kinsella died in Dublin on 22 December 2021, aged 93.