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| Seán Haldane can claim three passports: British he
was born in England, in 1943; Irish - through his father, and
he grew up mainly in Northern Ireland; and Canadian - through
a long period of residence, 1967-94. By ancestry he is something
of a human compass: a quarter each English, German, Scottish
and Irish. His poems are simply English. |
He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution,
University College, Oxford and Saybrook Institute, San Francisco.
He has been a lecturer, part-time farmer, small press publisher,
and psychotherapist. He now works as a consultant clinical
neuropsychologist in London.
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| Haldane has published volumes of poems from 1968 on, in Canada
and in the UK. Although he has not attracted academic attention
his poems have always had a circle of readers. |
| Robert Graves wrote in 1968: “I like Seán’s
poems: clean, accurate and no nonsense - they still have the
original poetic nap on them. They make sense, which is rare
these days.” |
| Martin Seymour-Smith in his Guide to Modern World Literature
(1986) wrote: “His early poems ... are imaginative and
always intelligent ... In later poems he has at last allowed
himself to be overtly satirical (something he had previously
forbidden) and to express his sense of evil. But he has sacrificed
none of his lyricism. The recent poems, more dramatic than the
earlier ones, are often impressive and moving.” |
| Robert Nye wrote in The Times in 1993: “He can be sure
of his place among the English poets.” |
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