Brian Coffey Biography | Poet

Brian Coffey (8 June 1905 – 14 April 1995) was an Irish poet and publisher. His work was informed by his Catholicism and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic culture. Two of his long poems published in later years, Advent (1975) and Death of Hektor (1979), are widely considered to be among the most important works in the canon of Irish poetic modernism. He also ran Advent, a small press, during the 1960s and 1970s.