Augustus
Young was born in Cork, Ireland, worked in London as
an epidemiologist
and now lives in France. His first collections of poems, Survival (1969) and
On
Loaning Hill (1972), already manifested a departure from
the ‘reach for the
shovel’ tendency in Irish writing. Since then he has
regularly published
collections of poems, including Danta
Gradha: Love Poems from the Irish (1975,
1980), the three-part extended verse work The Credit
(1980/1986) and Lampion
and His Bandits: Literature of the Cordel in Brazil
(1994). This period is
covered in detail in The
Oxford Companion to Irish Literature
(1996).
More
recent poetry publications include Diversifications
(2009), a revised edition
of Rosemaries
(2009, first edition 1976), Days
and Nights in Hendon (2002) and
Lightning in Low Places
(2000). He has also
published many scientific papers.
The widely acclaimed autofiction Light Years (2002), his first full length work in prose, was followed by Storytime (2005), The Secret Gloss: A Film Play on the Life and Work of Soren Kierkegaard (2009), and The Nicotine Cat and Other People (2009),m.moire (2014),The invalidity of all guarantees (2016), Brazilian Tequila (2017), Heavy Years – inside the head of a health worker (forthcoming 2017/8)
Augustus Young’s poems and prose appear in anthologies and periodicals in Ireland, America and the UK, and international online reviews (Cyphers, Sniper Logic, Books Ireland, London Magazine, Hopscotch, Modern Poetry in Translation, Leviathan Quarterly, Arete, Ars Interpres, Stand, An Sionnach, New Hibernia Review, Temporel, Golden Handcuffs, Carte Allineate etc).