The Wandering Celt

Desmond O'Grady was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1935. He left Ireland during the 1950s to teach and write in Paris, Rome and America. While a teaching fellow at Harvard University, he received a M.A. and Ph.D. in Celtic languages and literatures and comparative studies. He also taught at the American University in Cairo and the University of Alexandria in Egypt. While teaching in Rome, he was a founder member of the European Community of Writers, the European editor of The Transatlantic Review, and played the role of an Irish poet in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita. He published 19 poetry collections including Sing Me Creation, The Road Taken: Poems 1956-1996, and The Wandering Celt. He also published 12 collections of translated poetry including Trawling Tradition 1954-1994, Selected Poems of C. P. Cavafy, The Song of Songs, and Kurdish Poems of Love and Liberty. He died on August 25, 2014 at the age of 78.