Michael Donaghy has been called the best-kept secret in American poetry. Though his work is little known in the United States, where he was born and lived until the age of thirty, Donaghy is one of the most original, influential, and respected younger poets in England. Sean O'Brien, poetry critic for the London Sunday Times (1 May 1994), has called him "one of the half dozen contemporary poets whose work is essential reading." Donaghy's stature derives in part from his versatility: he has shown equal facility with the techniques of formal and free verse, and lyric and dramatic poetry.

The son of Patrick and Eveline Sheehy Donaghy, Michael John Donaghy was born in the Bronx, New York, on 24 May 1954. His father was a machinist in a factory that made printing presses, and his mother worked as a hotel maid before leaving her job to care for Michael and his sister...