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02 October 2020Derek Mahon died aged 78 after a brief illness last night in the Irish city of Cork.

The Northern Irish writer is regarded as one of the most original of contemporary English-speaking poets, with his voice stubbornly raised against the tensions and violence of Northern Ireland.



The mantra "Everything will be alright"


At the start of the coronavirus pandemic last March, Mahon read on Irish public television, his iconic poem "Everything will be alright", published in 2011. A poem that became a mantra in Ireland during the Covid, and a worldwide slogan



Irony and melancholy


Mahon outlined in his poems everyday life, but also identity, cultural roots, the brutality of history.

Traits with an ironic, alienated or melancholy tone.

He established himself with "Night crossing" (1968), a poetic work with which he elaborated themes drawn from everyday life.

The scholar Enrico Reggiani has dedicated the essay "In Attesa della Vita, Introduction to the poetics of Derek Mahon" (Vita e Pensiero, 1996) to his work.



Among his collections of verses translated into Italian "The last king of fire" (Trauben, 2000) and the short story "The bridge of rain" (Red suitcases, 2019).



Who is Derek Mahon


Born in Belfast on 23 November 1941, Mahon specialized in French at Trinity College in Dublin (1965);

after teaching for a few years and spending a period in Canada and the United States, in 1970 he settled in London where he devoted himself to journalism and working for newspapers such as "Atlantis", "Vogue" and "New statesman") .

He has also collaborated with the BBC writing numerous adaptations for television.



The comparison with Louis MacNeice and Samuel Beckett,


Straniamento, wit, irony bring Mahon closer to Louis MacNeice and Samuel Beckett, even if in his poetic collections the melancholy and disturbing element of his inspiration becomes more and more evident: "Lives" (1972) and "The snow party" (1975), are often concentrated on isolated and marginal figures, "Light music" (1977) and "Poems 1962-1978" (1979).



In "The hunt by night" (1982), which takes its title from a poem dedicated to the painting "The night hunt" by Paolo Uccello, Mahon tackles the civilization-barbarism knot in a dry language that underlines the impotence of man facing the violence of history.



Translations and adaptations for TV


Mahon is the author, as well as translations, of television adaptations and theatrical rewrites from Greek classics such as "The Bacchae: after Euripides", 1991, and the French "The school for wives: a play in two acts after Molière "of 1986;

"Racine's Phaedra" 1996, and "Cyrano de Bergerac" in 2004. In 1990 he edited, together with Peter Fallon, "The Penguin book of contemporary Irish poetry".



His collections


His journalistic works are collected in "Journalism: selected prose 1970-1995" (1996).

Numerous collections of his poems such as "Collected poems", 1999 and "Selected poems" of 2000.