John Ennis – Portrait by Rodney Mercer

Poetry-Related Interviews and Studies

… Brendán O Caoimháin, RTE, Documentary 1982.

Mack Furlong, CBC, St. John’s, on Postponing Asbyrgi 2013

Claire O’Brien, Encore, Midlands 103, Tribute on Seventieth Birthday.

Cori Hurley, Western Star, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, on books launched.

Face-to-Face, Midlands Arts and Culture Review

Ennis Interview with Irish Philosopher, Richard Kearney, Poetry Ireland Review 24.

En Sus Proprias Palabras / In Their Own Words, Entrevistas a escritores irlandeses contemporaneos, Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, Argentina, 2011…

Biographical Note

John Ennis is the author of twenty books of poetry. He retired (31 August 2009) as Head of the School of Humanities at Waterford Institute of Technology, where he was also Chair of the Centre for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies.

He holds a first class honours BA (English and Spanish) from UCC (1966). He studied for a subsidiary degree in Philosophy at the same time. He is a postgraduate of UCD’s MA in English and American Studies (1969), for which he wrote his thesis on Wilfred Owen. He took a H. Dip.in Education (NUIM, 1970). He holds a PhD from The National Council for Educational Awards specialising in Myth and Archetype, What Verities Remain(1997), his extern being Dr. Robert Welch (dec.) University of Ulster at Coleraine. In 2008, Memorial University of Newfoundland at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Laws “. . . [for] fostering links between Ireland and Newfoundland, and for his poetry”.

Ennis worked in Education for some forty years building up the Humanities at the Waterford Institute of Technology.

Among his many works is Oisín’s Journey Home(2006): a long poem in praise of the workers who built and served Newfoundland’s now defunct railway.

A reviewer, essayist and critic, and facilitator in creative writing, John Ennis has acted as editor for Poetry Ireland Review. He served on the Executive of Poetry Ireland for eleven of its formative years. Awards have included The Patrick Kavanagh Award in 1975, numerous firsts in the Listowel Open, Ireland’s premier literary festival, a Jury’s Achievement Award and The Irish American Cultural Institute Award, Butler Award in 1996. Since 2003, he has co-edited three anthologies of Canadian-Irish Poetry: The Backyards of Heaven (2003), However Blow the Winds (2004, and The Echoing Years (2007); he himself edited a further All-Canadian Anthology How the Light Gets in … (2009). In 2010, his own work was substantially represented in the Harvard Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, edited by Wes Davis. In 2011, he was commissioned as librettist for the anthem of Come the Sails, a choral work to honour The Tall Ships arriving in Waterford. He remains creatively active, his work appearing in recent years in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Riddle Fence, Outburst, New Hibernia Review, The Burning Bush, The Clifden Anthology, Boyne Berries and Catechism Poems for Pussy Riot. His Postponing Ásbyrgi (poems in response to Iceland’s Sìgur Rós) was published by Three Spires Press in March 2013 and launched in Newfoundland at The March Hare Festival. He recently published on-line Nine Lives We Hope (poems for Pussy Riot, 2014). He has since published further collections: A Pullet for Jack (2014), Going Home to Geatland (2014), Gaza Ground Zero (2015), Midlandia (2015), Eurydice 29 (2016) and Going Back for all I’d on . . .(2017)