Sydney Bernard Smith was born in Glasgow in 1936 and raised in Portstewart, Co Derry.
His work has been broadcast on RTÉ, BBC and Channel 4 (UK), and staged in Ireland, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in the US.
His poetry collections include Girl With Violin (The Dolmen Press [Poetry Ireland Editions 3], Dublin 1968); Priorities (Raven Arts Press, Dublin 1979); Sensualities (Raven, 1981); Scurrilities (Raven 1981), and New and Selected Poems (Raven, 1984).
His plays include Sherca (1976, published Newark, Del, Proscenium Press, 1979); Don Bosco, Grainne and the Dole (1977); The Impertinence of being Frank (1978); The Illaunapsppie Triangle (1978); Houseparty (1979); Swim Away Babies (1984); On Course for Brazil (1985); How to Roast a Strasbourg Goose ( Dublin Theatre Festival, 1985); Up for Bloomsday (1985); The 2nd Grand Confabulation of Drum Ceat (Dublin Theatre Festival,Andrews Lane Theatre, 1989); Reason not the Need (1992); and The Shaming of the True (1995).
He has published one novel, Flannery (Dublin, Odell & Adair, 1991). A second, The Book of Shannow, has been mostly published in literary magazines.
A member of Aosdána, he died in 2008.
Sydney Bernard Smith’s Storefront
Sydney Bernard Smith at Irish Playography
Sydney Bernard Smith at The National Library of Ireland