What is astonishing is that such a singular, original and unfashionable voice should be so widely acknowledged. None of the sexiness of Northern Ireland subject matter, sub-Muldoonesque ironies or New Formalism populates his work. Instead Coady has mined poetic gold from the small, intimate, urban community (surrounded by rural countryside) to which he belongs. In a way, his literary strategy follows that of Patrick Kavanagh in celebrating the local and parochial, but in being town-based rather than field-based he avoids being derivative of that great Irish mid-20th-century bog-and-potato literary vogue. Intimacy is the key word in considering Coady; the intimacy and insularity of the voices he produces to mimic the many characters who inhabit his poems. The main structure of tensions in his work is formed by the juxtaposition of these intimate voices with concern for the public life of the community they share. The celebration by Coady of the small intimate community mirrors the role of the bard in Gaelic Ireland, where the work of a poet was very much a public, community concern.

Bibliography

Poetry 

Two for a Woman, Three for a Man, The Gallery Press, Dublin 1980
Oven Lane, The Gallery Press, Dublin 1987
All Souls, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle 1997
One Another, The Gallery Press, Oldcastle 2003 

Miscellany

Full Tide, Relay Books, County Tipperary 1999

Links

Michael Coady’s author page on the Gallery Press website

RTE Radio 1, Poetry Programme. Click on April 25th’s programme for Michael Coady.