Frank Ormsby
Literature
Frank Ormsby was born in 1947, in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, and was educated at Queens University in Belfast. He was Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.
His books of poetry include the collections Ripe for Company (1971), A Store of Candles (1977), A Northern Spring (1986), The Ghost Train (1995) and Fireflies (2009).
He has also edited a number of anthologies, including Thine in Storm and Calm: An Amanda McKittrick Ros Reader (1988), The Collected Poems of John Hewitt (1991) and Northern Windows: An Anthology of Ulster Autobiography (1987). In 1992 he received the Cultural Traditions Award, given in memory of John Hewitt, and in 2002 the Lawrence OShaughnessy Award for Poetry from the University of St Thomas at St Paul, Minnesota.
Frank Ormsby was editor of the Honest Ulsterman from 1969-89, and has edited the Poetry Ireland Review (Numbers 53-56). Most recently he has edited The Hip Flask: Short Poems from Ireland (2001), a collection of Irish lyric poems including work by W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge and Seamus Heaney and The Blackbirds Nest (2006), an anthology of poems from Queens University, Belfast.
Selected Writings:
Ripe for Company, Ulsterman Publications, 1971
Business As Usual, Ulsterman Publications, 1973
A Store of Candles, Oxford University Press, 1977
Being Walked by a Dog, Ulsterman Publications, 1978
Poets from the North of Ireland (editor - revised edition, 1990), Blackstaff Press, 1979
A Northern Spring, Secker & Warburg, 1986
Northern Windows: An Anthology of Ulster Autobiography (editor), Blackstaff Press, 1987
The Long Embrace (editor), Blackstaff Press, 1987
Thine in Storm and Calm: An Amanda McKittrick Ros Reader (editor), Blackstaff Press, 1988
The Collected Poems of John Hewitt (editor), Blackstaff Press, 1991
A Rage for Order (editor), Blackstaff Press, 1992
The Ghost Train, Gallery Press, 1995
The Hip Flask: Short Poems from Ireland (editor), Blackstaff Press, 2001
The Blackbirds Nest: An Anthology of Poems from Queens University, Belfast (editor), Blackstaff Press, 2006
Fireflies, Carcanet, 2009