GERRY MC DONNELL was born in Dublin in 1950. He has had five collections of poetry published. He has also written for stage, radio and television. His play Making It Home, a two-hander father and son relationship, was first performed at the Crypt Theatre at Dublin Castle in 2001. A radio adaptation of this play was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 in 2008 starring the acclaimed Irish actor David Kelly as the father and Mark Lambert as the son. In 2013 it was translated into Breton and was published and performed in Brittany. His play Whose Veins Ran Lightning, based on the life and work of the Irish poet James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849), was performed at The New Theatre in Dublin in 2003. He also wrote a radio play on Mangan which was produced by RTE Radio 1. He wrote a libretto for a chamber opera, (music by composer John Byrne) also dealing with Mangan. He has written for the Irish television series Fair City.
His interest in Irish Jewry has resulted in the play Song of Solomon; a chapbook Jewish Influences in Ulysses and a collection of monologues, Mud Island Elegy, in which Jews of 19th century Ireland speak about their lives from beyond the grave. Lost and Found concerns a homeless Jew living in a public park. Mud Island Anthology, concerning ‘ordinary’ Dublin gentiles who lived in the latter half of the 20th centurywas published by Lapwing Publications in 2009 and is a companion collection to the ‘Elegy’ poems. His latest collection of poetry, Ragged Star, a memoir in verse, was published in 2011. A novella called Martin Incidentally was published in 2013. In 2015 Lapwing published I Heard an Irish Jew, a selection of poetry and prose which has been translated into Romanian. Two short stories have been translated into Russian.
He is a member of the Writers Guild of Ireland and the Irish Writers’ Union.
