THE poet Bernard O'Donoghue has won the 1995 Whitbread award for his collection of poetry, Gunpowder.
Mr O'Donoghue, who was born in Co Cork, now joins four other Whitbread award winners, including Sal man Rushdie for The Moor's Las Sigh, as a contender for the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year award (worth £21,000), to be announced in London on January 23rd.
Speaking from his home in Oxford, Mr O'Donoghue told of his delight and surprise at winning the £2,000 Whitbread Poetry Award.
"I knew I was short listed so I had some inkling for a few weeks that I might win. However, I am quite content where I stand," he said, referring to his chances for the Whitbread Book of the Year award. "Irish poets and writers are well received in England and I'm appreciative of that," he added.
A latecomer to poetry, Mr O'Donoghue began writing seriously only in his 30s. "My father, who was a farmer in Cullen, Co Cork, died when I was 16 and then we moved to Manchester, where my mother taught for some time. I still feel very rooted to my locality in north Cork, which is an area of great interest and commitment to literature and music," he said.
Most of his poetry is set in this north Cork rural landscape.
Now a teacher of medieval literature, linguistics and contemporary Irish poetry at Wadham College, Oxford, Mr O'Donoghue returns with his wife and three children to Cullen during the school holidays.
The poet and critic Denis O'Driscoll said "The hallmark of Bernard's work is modesty. The modesty of his personality transfers to his poetry, which at first reading seems direct, so simple and so unassuming as to have no depth.
"It is, on the contrary, quite profound and, although it is rooted deeply in his childhood memories, he never lapses into nostalgia."
Mr O'Donoghue's poetry includes Poaching Rights (Gallery Press, 1987), The Weakness (Chatto & Windus, 1991) and Gunpowder (Chatto) for which he won the Whitbread award.
