James Harpur

James Harpur
Born1956 (age 69–70)
Weybridge, Surrey, UK
EducationTrinity College, Cambridge
OccupationPoet
Writing career
Notable worksAngels and Harvesters; The White Silhouette; The Examined Life; The Pathless Country (novel)
Websitewww.jamesharpur.com

James Harpur (born 1956) is a British-born Irish poet who has published twelve books of poetry. He has won a number of awards, including the Michael Hartnett Award and the UK National Poetry Competition. He has also published books of non-fiction and a novel, The Pathless Country. He lives in West Cork and is a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of the arts. In 2025 Harpur became a Visiting Research Fellow and Visiting Writer at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Trinity College, Dublin. In 2026 he initiated and gave the first series of the Dr John Dee Talks at the centre. Topics included the nature of the Muse and inspiration, the need for the poetic imagination to safeguard trees and rivers from despoliation, and the life and teachings of J Krishnamurti.

Biography

James Harpur was born in Britain in 1956 to an Irish father and a British mother and now lives near Clonakilty in County Cork. His father was born in Timahoe, County Laois, the son of a Church of Ireland minister, and his mother was born in Le Vésinet, Paris. Harpur studied Classics and English at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a joint-winner of the Powell Prize for Poetry. He taught English on the island of Crete and has subsequently worked as a lexicographer and freelance writer.

Works

Poetry

Many of the poems of his first collection, A Vision of Comets, take their inspiration from his time on Crete and from the Aegean area. In 1995 he won the UK National Poetry Competition with a sonnet sequence, ‘The Frame of Furnace Light’, about the death of his father. The poem was published in his second book, The Monk’s Dream. In 2000 Harpur became poet in residence in Exeter Cathedral, as part of the UK’s ‘Year of the Artist’ scheme. In 2002 he moved to Ireland and settled in West Cork, near the town of Clonakilty. His book, The Dark Age, featuring a sequence on Irish Dark Age saints, won the 2009 Michael Hartnett Award. Further books include The White Silhouette (2018), described by the Irish Times as a ‘resonant, moving pilgrimage of great beauty’, and The Examined Life (2021), described by Stephen Fry as a ‘quite marvellous work … an Odyssey, a Ulysses shaken up in the snow-dome of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’ More recent work includes The Magic Theatre (2025), a verse memoir of Harpur’s undergraduate years at Cambridge, described by Nicholas Shakespeare as ‘A terrific, moving homage to an invincibly formative period’; and The Gospel of Gargoyle (2024), a poetic sequence featuring an animate gargoyle on the rooftop of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris. This was described in the High Window journal as: ‘Huge in vision, it is a very special original, ambitious work of epic proportion, worthy of its great antecedents Dante’s Paradiso and Milton’s Paradise Lost.’

Fiction

In 2021 Harpur published his first novel, The Pathless Country, winner of the J.G. Farrell Award and an Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair award. The story is set in early-1900s Ireland and London and features a number of historical characters, including W.B. Yeats, Annie Besant, and J. Krishnamurti.

Poetry style

According to the introduction to Harpur on the Poetry International website, he ‘is essentially an interior poet with a fascination for spirituality, and his poems are full of references to Christian as well as to other religious traditions. Stylistically, he has a deep sympathy with the mythopoeic strand of poetry, from Homer, Virgil and Dante to the Romantics and Yeats, Eliot and Ted Hughes. His non-literary influences include Carl Jung and J. Krishnamurti’. In a review of The White Silhouette, Michael O’Neill wrote: ‘I have rarely encountered a contemporary voice that brings out as strongly and convincingly as does James Harpur’s in The White Silhouette the way in which spiritual wrestlings and traditions can live again in poetry.’

Prizes and awards

Poetry

Fiction

(for The Pathless Country)

Bibliography

Poetry

Translation

Fiction

Non-fiction

Author's work in translation

Official website https://www.jamesharpur.com

Introduction to Harpur’s work on the Poetry International website: https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-12503_Harpur

Interview with Harpur by Poetry Ireland Review (via author’s website): https://www.jamesharpur.com/pirpiece.htm

Interview with Harpur by Kevin Brophy for Axon magazine (Australia): https://axonjournal.com.au/issues/8-2/james-harpur-process-20132017

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Author biog Versopolis".
  2. 1 2 3 "Author biog on Aosdána website". Aosdána.
  3. 1 2 3 "Publisher's website (Cinnamon Press)".
  4. ↑ "Trinity Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies - People".
  5. ↑ "Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences - The Dr John Dee Talks HT 2026".
  6. 1 2 "An interview with James Harpur for Poetry Ireland Review 105, Winter, 2011/12".
  7. ↑ Poole, A; Leighton, A, eds. (2017). Trinity Poets. Carcanet. p. 321.
  8. ↑ "Author biog on Poetry International website".
  9. 1 2 "Poetry Society archive".
  10. ↑ "Oxford Brookes University Weekly Poems (notes from Anvil Press)". 4 March 2013.
  11. ↑ "Irish Times Books of 2018". The Irish Times.
  12. ↑ "Two Rivers Press". 9 October 2020.
  13. ↑ "Two Rivers Press".
  14. ↑ "The High Window - James Harpur: The Gospel of Gargoyle".
  15. ↑ "Patrick Cotter writing about Harpur on Poetry International website".
  16. ↑ "Michael O'Neill, 'Coloured Flares', London Magazine, 1 October 2018".
  17. ↑ "Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, University of Melbourne".
  18. ↑ Looney, Patricia (ed.). Cork Words. Cork City Libraries. p. 16.
  19. ↑ "Limerick Post, 19 March 2009". 19 March 2009.
  20. ↑ "Eric Gregory Award, Society of Authors".
  21. ↑ Harpur, James (2025). A Place Where Ireland Is Invisible. Eblana Press. ISBN 978-0-9933090-6-9.
  22. ↑ Harpur, James (2025). The Magic Theatre. Two Rivers Press. ISBN 978-1-915048-23-3.
  23. ↑ Harpur, James (2025). The Gospel of Gargoyle. Eblana Press. ISBN 978-0-9933090-4-5.
  24. ↑ Harpur, James (7 June 2021). The Oratory of Light. Wild Goose Publications. ISBN 9781849527903.
  25. ↑ Harpur, James (2021). The Examined Life. Two Rivers Press. ISBN 9781909747876.
  26. ↑ Harpur, James (2018). The White Silhouette. Carcanet Press Limited. ISBN 9781784105822.
  27. ↑ Harpur, James (2012). Angels and Harvesters. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 9780856464478.
  28. ↑ The Gospel of Joseph of Arimathea. ISBN 9781905010356.
  29. ↑ Harpur, James (2007). The Dark Age. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 9780856464041.
  30. ↑ Harpur, James (2001). Oracle Bones. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 9780856463259.
  31. ↑ Harpur, James (1996). The Monk's Dream. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 9780856462788.
  32. ↑ Harpur, James (1993). A Vision of Comets. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 9780856462573.
  33. ↑ Boethius; Harpur, James (2007). Fortune's Prisoner: The poems of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. Anvil Press Poetry. ISBN 9780856464034.
  34. ↑ Harpur, James (2021). The Pathless Country. Liquorice Fish Books (Imprint of Cinnamon Press). ISBN 9781911540113.
  35. ↑ Dazzling Darkness: The Lives and Afterlives of the Christian Mystics. Hurst Publishers. 2025. ISBN 978-1-911723-90-5.
  36. ↑ Harpur, James (2025). With Sappho in the Antipathies. Hybrid Publishers. ISBN 9781922768391.
  37. ↑ Harpur, James (October 2015). The Pilgrim Journey. BlueBridge. ISBN 9781629190006.
  38. ↑ Harpur, James (1994). The atlas of sacred places: meeting points of heaven and earth. A Henry Holt reference book (1st ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 978-0-8050-2775-4.
  39. ↑ Harpur, James (2025). Il Vangelo della Gargouille. ISBN 979-12-81759-20-6.
  40. ↑ Harpur, James (2024). Il vento e la creta. Molesini Editore. ISBN 979-12-81270-05-3.