Brian Coffey - Later Life and Work

Later Life and Work

In 1952, Coffey returned to live in London and, from 1973, Southampton. He began again to publish his poetry and translations, mainly of French poetry. The first work in English to appear after this period of silence was Missouri Sequence, apparently begun in St. Louis but first appearing in the University Review in 1962. This poem deals with the experience of exile, memories of the poet's dead parents and the premature birth of a child. It is written in a much more conventional syntax than most of Coffey's work and, thanks to this greater accessibility is one of his most widely-read works.

Over the next decade or so, he published regularly in the University Review (later known as the Irish University Review), a relationship that culminated in the 1975 special issue. This featured an introduction by Dr. J. C. C. Mays, a selection of translations from the French, the satire Leo and Advent, a meditation on death inspired by the death of the poet's son in a motorcycle accident. The poem is in seven sections, based, according to Coffey in an interview with Parkman Howe, on the canonical hours of the Catholic Church. Another key work of this period was Death of Hektor, which uses the myth of Troy as a framework for a meditation on war and its victims. The trade editions of Advent and Death of Hektor were both published by the Menard Press. He also edited Devlin's Collected Poems, first for a University Review Devlin special issue and later as a book from Dolmen Press.

He also set up his own publishing enterprise, Advent Press, which published work by himself and by younger writers he wanted to support. He learned printmaking and produced a good deal of original work, including an interesting set of images based on the plays of his old friend Beckett. His interest in visual art also led to some experiments in concrete poetry, most notably his 1966 Advent Press book Monster: A Concrete Poem. His work was championed by a number of younger Irish poets, especially Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce. These two published poetry, prose and translations by Coffey in their journal, The Lace Curtain and his Selected Poems (1971) from their New Writers Press imprint. This book was instrumental in helping establish his reputation as a leading Irish exponent of Modernist poetry. The appearance in 1991 of a major selection Poems and Versions 1929-1990 and his translations Poems from Mallarmé helped confirm his status as one of the leading Irish modernists. He died at the age of 89, and was buried in Southampton, England.