John Kelly

"The publication of my first poetry collection Notions has provoked, in the main, the following responses from my friends. Some say they had no idea that I wrote poetry at all and others, those who have known me for thirty years or more, are asking why it has taken me so long? And that’s not a question I can answer easily.

Back in the late eighties I was one of a bunch of undergraduate poets at Queen’s University in Belfast. I say ‘bunch’ because the world ‘group’ refers specifically to Heaney, Mahon and Longley who were, of course, the hardest imaginable act to follow. That said, the poets of my generation were published in all the journals and gathered together in the best anthologies. To the outsider, some of us might have appeared to be up and running."

read full article here

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2018/1024/1006362-notions-john-kelly-on-his-new-poetry-collection/