Denis Devlin (15 April 1908 – 21 August 1959) was, along with

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

, Thomas MacGreevy and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was also a career

diplomat A diplomat (from ; romanization, romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state (polity), state, International organization, intergovernmental, or Non-governmental organization, nongovernmental institution to conduct diplomacy with one ...

Early life and studies

He was born in

Greenock Greenock (; ; , ) is a town in Inverclyde, Scotland, located in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. The town is the administrative centre of Inverclyde Council. It is a former burgh within the historic county of Renfrewshire, and forms ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

of Irish parents, and his family returned to live in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

in 1918. He studied at

Belvedere College Belvedere College Society of Jesus, S.J. (sometimes St Francis Xavier's College) is a fee-paying voluntary secondary school for boys in Dublin, Ireland. Formally established in 1832 at Hardwicke Street in north inner city Dublin, the school was ...

and, from 1926, as a seminarian for the

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

priesthood at Clonliffe College. As part of his studies, he attended a degree course in modern languages at

University College Dublin University College Dublin (), commonly referred to as UCD, is a public research university in Dublin, Ireland, and a collegiate university, member institution of the National University of Ireland. With 38,417 students, it is Ireland's largest ...

(UCD), where he met and befriended Brian Coffey. Together they published a joint collection, ''Poems'', in 1930. In 1927, Devlin abandoned the priesthood and left Clonliffe. He graduated with from UCD his BA in 1930 and spent that summer on the

Blasket Islands The Blasket Islands () are an uninhabited group of islands off the west coast of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland. The last island to hold a significant population, Great Blasket Island, was abandoned in 1954 due to population decl ...

to improve his spoken Irish. Between 1930 and 1933, he studied literature at Munich University and the Sorbonne in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, meeting, amongst others, Beckett and Thomas MacGreevy. He then returned to UCD to complete his MA

thesis A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

Montaigne Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne ( ; ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the essay as ...

. His niece Denyse Woods went on to become a writer.

Diplomatic career and later writings

He joined the Irish Diplomatic Service in 1935 and spent a number of years in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

as the Irish Ambassador (1958), New York and Washington. During this time he met the French poet Saint-John Perse, and the Americans

Allen Tate John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979), known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and poet laureate from 1943 to 1944. Among his best known works are the poems " Ode to th ...

and

Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern ...

. He went on to publish a translation of ''Exile and Other Poems'' by St-John Perse, and Tate and Warren edited his posthumous ''Selected Poems''. Since his death, there have been two ''Collected Poems'' published; the first in 1964 was edited by Coffey and the second in 1989 by J.C.C. Mays. His personal papers are held in University College Dublin Archives.

References

Sources

* Coffey, Brian. Biographical note in Denis Devlin ''Collected Poems'' (The Dolmen Press, 1964)
Denis Devlin at Ricorso
* Jack Morgan
''Denis Devlin (1908-1959)''.
In: ''Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook''. Alexander G. Gonzalez (Editor), pp. 64–68. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. * Wilson, James Matthew: ''Catholic modernism and the Irish "avant-garde": the achievement of Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, and Thomas MacGreevy'', Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023,

External links

at Wake Forest University Press {{DEFAULTSORT:Devlin, Denis 1908 births 1959 deaths University of Paris alumni Irish modernist poets Scottish people of Irish descent Irish diplomats Writers from Greenock People educated at Belvedere College 20th-century Irish poets Irish expatriates in France Ambassadors of Ireland to Italy