Richard Power (writer)
Richard Power was an Irish novelist and script-writer.
Early life and education
Power was born in 1928 into a family of Waterford lineage and raised in Naas, Co. Kildare, where his father was a banker.Educated locally in Naas, he moved to Dublin studying at both UCD and Trinity College Dublin and took two degrees, one in commerce and the other a dual external degree in English and Irish.
He entered the Civil Service in 1945 and was employed in the Department of Local Government.
Writing career
In 1958, Power's career began in teaching: from 1958 to 1960, he taught at State University in Iowa.Power's Irish-language novel Úll i mBarr an Ghéagáin won the Gaelic Book Club Award, which “described life on the Aran Islands and with Irish-speaking labourers in England” after he had spent a spell living with a family in Inis Oirr. After his death it was published in an English translation by his brother Victor Power as Apple on the Treetop. In 1964 his novel The Land of Youth was published.
Power wrote poetry as well as one-act plays, Saoirse, and An Oidhreacht. He also wrote scripts for the Irish broadcaster RTE.
Power's most notable and critically acclaimed novel was The Hungry Grass, which covered in close detail the last days of a village priest, Fr Tom Conroy. His novel The Mohair Boys was unfinished at his death in Bray in 1970.
He died only months after the publication of "The Hungry Grass" 10 days before his 42nd birthday.
In 2016 "The Hungry Grass" was reprinted and hailed as a "forgotten classic of Irish literature" and "truly masterful" because of the "sympathetic glimpse into the inner life of Father Tom Conroy" a character of depth and complexity.
Works
Úll i mBarr an Ghéagáin The Land of Youth The Hungry Grass ;Also: ‘Poems translated from the Irish,' Poetry Ireland, 19, pp.7-8; ‘Peasants: A Story,' The Bell, XVIII, 7, pp.424-30; ‘An Outpost of Rome,’ The Dubliner, Vol. 3, 1, pp. 14–26. See also extract from The Mohair Boys in The Irish Press
''Water Wisdom''