Brian Coffey was born in Dublin in 1905, and lived abroad for much of his life, in France, The United States and England, during which time he taught philosophy and mathematics. His first book, Poems, shared with Dennis Devlin, was published in 1930, and was described by Samuel Beckett as constituting ‘the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland.‘
His collections include Poems (with Denis Devlin, privately printed, Dublin, 1930); Yuki-Hira (1933?); Third Person (London, The Europa Press, 1938); Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance (Dublin, The Dolmen Press, 1965); Monster (London, 1966); The Time, The Place (London, Advent Press, 1969); Selected Poems (Dublin, New Writers’ Press, 1971, Dublin, Raven Arts Press, Belacqua Series, 1983) which included Mindful of You (1965), fromFour Poems (1964), Missouri Sequence (1962), from Nine a Musing (1960), fromThird Person (1938) and Observations Poems Experiments (1931-1971).
His subsequent books are Advent (London, The Menard Press, 1975) The Death of Hektor (The Menard Press, 1979); Chanterelles (Cork, The Melmoth Press, 1985, which includes extracts from Topos ([Bath, The Mammon Press]); and Poems and Versions 1929 -1990 (Dublin, Dedalus, 1991).
He died in England in 1993.
Brian Coffey at the old SoundEye website, which includes the full Missouri Sequence
Brian Coffey Papers at the University of Delaware
Potted history of Coffey’s career at Geogiasam
Brian Coffey at Wikipedia
Brian Coffey at The National Library of Ireland