Maurice Harmon, a distinguished academic, literary critic and scholar, has published studies of Irish writers from William Carleton to Seán O'Faoláin, Mary Lavin, and Benedict Kiely, from Austin Clarke to Thomas Kinsella, Seamus Heaney, and Dennis O’Driscoll. Harmon’s career as editor-founder of the Irish University Review and his publications, including Sean O’Faolain: A Life, 1994; the ground-breaking anthology, Irish Poetry after Yeats, 1979; Selected Essays, 2006; Thomas Kinsella: Designing for the Exact Needs, 2008; with The Dialogue of the Ancients of Ireland, his translation of Accalam na Senórach, the medieval compendium of stories and poems, 2009, among others, affirm him as one of the elect. His reputation as a poet has grown with the publication of the stylish and humane Loose Connections (Salmon, 2012) and the compassionate Hoops of Holiness (Salmon, 2016). afterwords (Salmon, 2020) is his seventh collection.
