Bernard O’Donoghue was born in Cullen, County Cork, in 1945 and later moved to Manchester, England. He was educated at Oxford University, where he is a Fellow of Wadham College. His collections of poetry include Gunpowder (1995), which received the Whitbread Poetry Prize, Here Nor There (1999) and Outliving (2003). Other works include an edition of the i (1982), an anthology, The Courtly Love Tradition (1984) and a work of criticism, Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry (1994). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His most recent book is a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2006). Selected Poems is forthcoming.