Austin Clarke
Poet
Irish poet and author best known for incorporating Gaelic poetic devices into English-language poetry. His poetic works include Ancient Lights, Tiresias, and Mnemosyne Lay in Dust.
He was born in Dublin, Ireland and studied at University College, Dublin.
He co-founded the Lyric Theatre Company, for which he wrote several verse plays.
He suffered a major emotional breakdown only days after marrying his first wife, Cornelia Cummins. After Cummins' death, Clarke happily remarried Norah Esmerelda Patricia Walker, with whom he had three children.
Clarke's early poetry was deeply influenced by the work of William Butler Yeats, and he came to be regarded as one of the greatest Irish poets in the generation following Yeats.