Thomas MacGreevy

Thomas MacGreevy (born Thomas McGreevy; 26 October 1893 – 16 March 1967) was a pivotal figure in the history of Irish literary modernism. A poet, he was also director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1950 to 1963 and served on the first Irish Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon).

Thomas McGreevy was born in Tarbert, County Kerry, the son of a policeman and a primary school teacher. At age 16, he joined the British Civil Service as a boy clerk.

At the outbreak of the First World War, he was promoted to an intelligence post with the Admiralty. He enlisted in 1917, and saw active service at the Ypres Salient and the Somme, being wounded twice. After the war, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin. He then became involved in various library organisations, and began publishing articles in Irish periodicals and wrote his first poems.

In 1924, MacGreevy was first introduced to James Joyce in Paris. The following year he moved to London, where he met T. S. Eliot and began writing for The Criterion and other magazines. He also began publishing his poetry.

In 1927, MacGreevy moved to Paris to teach English at the École Normale Supérieure. Here he met Samuel Beckett and resumed his friendship with Joyce. His essay The Catholic Element in Work In Progress was published in 1929 in Our Exagmination round His Factification for Incamination of Work In Progress, a book intended to help promote Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Along with Beckett, he was one of those who signed the Poetry is Vertical manifesto which appeared in issue 21 of transition.

...
Wikipedia