The Non-Aligned Storyteller

In his third book McCarthy develops both personal and public themes in eloquent, incisive and moving poems. Ian McMillan wrote of his work PN Review: "Thomas McCarthy is very young and very good...he mostly shines his torch on subtle, difficult and almost unclassifiable areas of experience and thought, almost in the same way that Andrew Motion does, but with an additional and indefinable musical quality" Born in 1954, McCarthy works for the Cork City Library. He was the 1984 recipient of the American-Irish Foundation's literary award; an earlier collection received the 1977 Patrick Kavanagh Award.