Michael Donaghy

Michael Donaghy (May 24, 1954 – September 16, 2004) was an award-winning New York poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985. Donaghy was born into an Irish family and grew up in the Bronx, New York, losing both parents in early life. He studied at Fordham University and did postgraduate work at the University of Chicago, where, at 25, he edited the Chicago Review. Donaghy commented “I owe everything I know about poetry to the public library system (in New York City) and not to my miseducation at university [...] I mean, the Bronx, who knows, now it may be full of cappuccino bars and bookshops, but back in those days it wasn’t. My parents would say something like ‘go out and play in the burning wreckage until dinnertime’ and I’d...