Haldane, Seán

Seán Haldane was born in Sussex, England, of an Irish-Scots father and an English-German mother, in 1943. He grew up in Belfast. After university at Oxford and sojourns in Italy and Portugal he spent 25 years in Canada, first as co-publisher with the American poet Marnie Pomeroy at the Ladysmith Press (Quebec), then (having taken a doctorate in psychology) as a neuropsychologist – a profession he has continued in England since 1995.

His poetry collections are Desire in Belfast (Belfast, Blackstaff Press 1992); Lines from the Stone Age (London, Greenwich Exchange 2000); and Always Two – Collected Poems 1966-2009 (Greenwich Exchange 2009).

He has also written critical studies of John Donne (Greenwich Exchange, 1996); and Thomas Hardy (Greenwich Exchange, 1998). He has published various essays in PN Review and Dark Horse Magazine on poets John Clare, Wilhelm Lehmann, Sorley MacLean, Robert Graves, Robert Garioch and James Fenton.

As a neuropsychologist he has published the general psychology books Emotional First Aid (New York, 1984) and Couple Dynamics (New York, 1985).

He was nominated for Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 2010 and came 3rd in a long list of candidates. He is co-publisher at the newly founded Rún Press.

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Seán Haldane’s website

Rún Press

Sean Haldane: ‘I now think poetry has more capacity to change people than psychotherapy’ Interview in The Observer

Seán Haldane at The National Library of Ireland

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