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Thomas McCarthy (born 1954) is an Irish poet, novelist, and critic, born in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, Ireland. He attended University College Cork where he was part of a resurgence of literary activity under the inspiration of John Montague. Among his contemporaries, described by Thomas Dillon Redshaw as "that remarkable generation," there were Theo Dorgan poet and memoirist, Sean Dunne, poet, Greg Delanty, poet, Maurice Riordan poet and William Wall, novelist and poet. McCarthy edited, at various times, The Cork Review and Poetry Ireland Review. He has published seven collections of poetry with Anvil Press Poetry, London, including The Sorrow Garden, The Lost Province, Mr Dineen's Careful Parade, "The Last Geraldine Officer" ("a major achievement", in the view of academic and poet Maurice Harmon)and Merchant Prince, described as "an ambitious and substantive book". The main themes of his poetry are Southern Irish politics, love and memory. He is also the author of two novels; Without Power and Asya and Christine. He is married with two children and lives in Cork City where he works in the City Libraries. He won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1977.

In his work "the ludicrous and the homely go hand-in-hand but the relaxed, conversational style can switch from emphatic narration to literary observation, as when the poet quotes Henry James’s remark, ‘As the picture is reality so the novel is history/And not as the poem is: a metaphor and closed thing."

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