Gifts of Fortune

Peter McDonald was born and grew up in Belfast. He won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry and an Eric Gregory Award. A University teacher, he is currently Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in the English Language at Christ Church, Oxford. A prominent critic of modern and contemporary poetry, he has published a book on Louis MacNeice, a study of Northern Irish poetry entitled Mistaken Identities, and, most recently, "Serious Poetry: Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill". He has edited MacNeice's Selected Plays, and is also the editor of the forthcoming new edition of MacNeice's "Collected Poems".