John Montague
John Montague was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 28, 1929, to James Montague, an Ulster Catholic from County Tyrone. James immigrated to the United States in 1925, where his brother, John, was already residing. Montague’s paternal grandfather, also named John, had been appointed a justice of the peace by Queen Victoria. Montague’s mother Mary Montague (née Carney), sometimes called Molly, immigrated to the U.S. three years after her husband with her three sons in tow. Montague lived in New York City during the Great Depression. His uncle ran a speakeasy in which Montague’s father was also employed. In 1933, Montague and his two brothers, Seamus and Turlough, were sent back to Ireland when their mother fell ill. Montague’s brothers went to live at their maternal grandmother’s home. John was sent to his paternal family’s home in the hamlet of Garvaghey, County Tyrone, where he lived with two aunts. He worked on the family farm while also attending the Garvaghey School. He then attended primary school in nearby Glencull, where he received a more rigorous education.
Montague later won a scholarship to St. Patrick’s College in Armagh, a junior Diocesan Seminary where another uncle, Thomas Montague, had studied before becoming a Jesuit. Montague studied under Seán Ó Boyle, a leading scholar of Irish poetry and folk music. In 1946, Montague enrolled at University College Dublin, where Thomas Kinsella was a fellow student at the time. Montague published his first poems in literary journals while still a university student. In 1953, he went to Yale University on a Fulbright scholarship. While there, he studied under Robert Penn Warren. The following year, Montague enrolled in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied from 1954 to 1955.
Montague published his first book of poetry, Poisoned Lands (MacGibbon & Kee, 1961), while working at the Irish Tourist Office. He moved to Paris in the same year, where he became a neighbor and friend of Samuel Beckett’s. Montague published more than thirty books of poetry, essays, and short stories during his lifetime. His poetry collections include the posthumous A Spell to Bless the Silence: Selected Poems (Wake Forest University Press, 2018); New Collected Poems (Gallery Books, 2012); Collected Poems (Wake Forest University Press, 1995); Time in Armagh (The Gallery Press, 1991); New Selected Poems (The Gallery Press, 1989); Selected Poems (Exile Editions, 1982), reissued in 1991; The Great Cloak (The Dolmen Press, 1978); A Slow Dance (The Dolmen Press, 1975), a collection of lyrics; The Rough Field, Ulster 1961–1971 (The Dolmen Press, 1974); A New Siege (The Dolmen Press, 1970), which was dedicated to the Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey; Patriotic Suite (The Dolmen Press, 1966); Tides (Colin Smythe Limited, 1970); and A Chosen Light (MacGibbon & Kee, 1967). His second and third collections were published in the United States by Swallow Press, while The Rough Field, A Slow Dance, and The Great Cloak were published by Wake Forest University Press. His final book of poetry, Second Childhood (2017), was posthumously published by The Gallery Press. Montague was also the editor of the anthologies Bitter Harvest: An Anthology of Contemporary Irish Verse (Scribner, 1989) and The Faber Book of Irish Verse (Faber & Faber, Inc., 1974).
Montague’s prose works include his first short story collection, Death of a Chieftain: And Other Stories (MacGibbon & Kee, 1964), reissued in 1978 and 1998 by Poolbeg Press and Wolfbound Press, respectively. The Irish folk band The Chieftains took their name from the book’s title. Montague also published the memoir The Pear Is Ripe (Liberties Press, 2007); Born in Brooklyn: John Montague’s America (White Pine Press, 1991), a collection of poetry, essays, and short stories; the essay collection The Figure in the Cave (Syracuse University Press, 1989); and the novella The Lost Notebook (Mercier Press, 1987).
Montague’s awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Australia’s Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award (1995), honorary doctorates from universities in Ireland and the U.S., and France’s Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, which he received in 2010. Several weeks before his death, Montague was also awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards.
Montague started his writing career as a journalist, working as a correspondent for the Irish Times in Paris. In 1972, he returned to Ireland to live and teach in Cork. He helped establish Claddagh Records, which releases traditional Irish music, including Montague’s live performance of The Rough Field, accompanied musically by The Chieftains, in London in 1973. Montague taught at University College Cork from 1973 to the late 1980s, then held faculty positions at Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, University College Dublin, the University of California, Berkeley, SUNY Albany, and the New York State Writers Institute, where he was a distinguished writer in residence. In 1998, he became the first person to hold the Ireland Chair of Poetry.
John Montague died on December 10, 2016, in Nice, France. He is buried in his family’s cemetery in Garvaghey.