Details

Pádraic Fiacc was born Patrick Joseph O’Connor on Elizabeth Street, in West Belfast on 15th April 1924. His father was Bernard O’Connor from Arvagh, County Cavan and his mother was Annie Christina McGarry originally from Lisburn.

Before his parent met and married in Belfast, his mother’s family had been burned out of their house in the Lisburn pogroms in 1920. The family fled to Belfast where she met Bernard where he worked in the bar trade and they married.

Pádraic notes that he was the ‘first born alive’, referring to his mother’s trauma from the pogroms in 1920s Belfast evading street violence and gun battles, common at the time. At about one year old Pádraic moved with his parents Annie and Bernard to his aunt’s house in the Market.

Here in a two-up-two-down house lived Annie’s’ parents, her sister Mary and now these three new inhabitants. Patrick has written about these tumultuous times after garnering stories from his aunts, grandfather and especially his mother, with whom he had a very close bond.

In 1928 Pádraic’s father Bernard left Belfast to set up a new life in New York. By this time Pádraic had two brothers, Brian and Rory. In early 1929 Annie and the 3 boys cross the Atlantic on board the ‘Antonia’ to join her husband, Bernard. Pádraic’s father had an apartment in well-off neighborhood of Amsterdam Avenue and 2 grocery stores. However, later that year in Wall Street Crash, Bernard’s businesses fail and the family are forced to relocate to infamous tenements in Hell’s Kitchen.

Pádraic was a gifted scholar at Haaren High school. Here he formed the Literary Society, wrote and performed plays, wrote poetry and essays. He also painted. His poetry came to the attention of the great Irish American writer Pádraic Colum, who recognised the boy’s unique talent, and mentored him in New York. He told Annie that she 'The eagle makes his nest of cut glass and diamonds – you have a genius there, don’t make life too easy for him'! Patrick in honor of Colum changed his name to Pádraic Fiacc, Fiacc meaning ‘Raven/Dark Bird’ in Gaelic, and in contrast to Colum meaning ‘Dove’.

Pádraic attended a seminary in upstate NY after school, but he was never ordained. In tandem with academic study, he found time to paint and continued his poetry and writing. He wrote scathingly about WWII and the bodies of soldiers returning from Europe and the Pacific in great numbers. Many of his contemporaries, including his two brothers, returned with significant physical and psychological injuries.

While in the seminary he wrote about the wonderful Native Redman culture that existed there. He grew to dislike America. After the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he vowed to return to Ireland. This he did in 1946 aged just 22 years.

In 1947 he gave a lecture in Armagh and his iconic poem 'At The Tomb of King Brian Boru' was published in the Irish Times that same year. He visited his relatives in Arvagh, Cavan in 1952 accompanied by his brother Brian who was in his US army uniform.

He had corresponded with Michael McLaverty from New York, and now in Belfast the two became good friends. In 1948 Pádraic was published in ‘New Irish Poets’, (Devin and Adair, New York 1948), he being the youngest poet in the book. His future wife Nancy Wayne from Detroit, read his work in this collection and contrived to meet him. This happened in 1954 while Pádraic was back in New York on family business. Subsequent to this meeting they eventually married in ‘Holy Cross’ Church in Ardoyne, Belfast. It was 1956. They moved to Glengormley in that year and lived there until 1974.  A daughter Brigid was born in 1962.

In 1957 he won the prestigious AE George Russell Award, the first writer in Ulster to do so. This brought him to the attention of a whole generation of poets like Hewitt, Mahon, Dawe, Heaney and John Deane. He also became close friends with the West Belfast poet Brendan Hamill.

Published in October 1974, 'The Wearing of The Black' was compiled by Fiacc and included works by over sixty poets from varied backgrounds and experiences – a monumental achievement.

Pádraic became known as 'The Poet of The People'. He moved to Belfast and inhabited many bedsits and rooming houses as he continued writing. Refusing to be silenced, he continued what was now an ostracised modus with few friends in the literary world. He lived in Iveagh near Broadway becoming friends with West Belfast modernist poet Mairtin Crawford, who made a film about him.

In 1981 Fiacc was elected to membership of Aosdána, the Irish Arts Academy, who provided a monthly stipend to facilitate his writing. Also in the 1980s, Fiacc collaborated with artist Seamus Carmichael, who produced a series of colour prints, based on Fiacc anthologies, one of which is included in this current exhibition.

In 2006 ‘SEA Sixty Years of Poetry’ was launched in the Linen Hall Library Belfast. In that same year Trinity College, Dublin Professor Gerald Dawe said Pádraic was probably the 'greatest city or urban poet we have produced in Ireland, ever'.

Many artists have depicted the poet and his work including Neil Shawcross, Paul Bradley, Dan Dowling, Rory Lambe, Michael McKernon, Gearoid MacLoughlann, Helena Solana (Spain), Denise McShannon (Dublin), Seamus Carmichael (USA), and Marion Jordan. Photographers who have depicted Padraic Fiacc include: Frankie Quinn, Bill Kirk, John Minehan, Stevie Raeylon (Chicago), Jeff Russell (London), and Patricia Pyne. Their work can be viewed as part of the current exhibition.

Padraic died on the 19 January 2019 and is buried in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast. One week before his death in Jan 2019 Michael D Higgins paid Pádraic a state visit and thanked him for his contribution to Irish Literature.

This exhibition is supported by Pádraic's literary executor and curator of The Fiacc Archive, Michael McKernon.

2024 was the Centenary year of Pádraic’s birth in Belfast, 1924. Many events were celebrated in this special year in Belfast, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Cullyhanna. Two books were published as part of the celebrations - ‘TEAR THE DEAD DAY BACK ALIVE’, unpublished poems of Pádraic Fiacc, (Edited by M McKernon and Fiona Gault, MH Press 2024), and Pádraic’s first Bilingual collection of work ‘TURAS FÍLIOCHTA’, (Edited & Illustrated by M McKernon, MH Press 2024). Both are available for purchase in the museum bookshop.

The exhibition will run until February 2026.