The poet, playwright and critic Tom Paulin was born in Leeds, to a Northern Irish mother and an English father, and moved to Belfast when he was four, where he grew up within the Protestant community. He was educated at Annadale Grammar School, the University of Hull and University of Oxford. His first major publication was a critical study,
Thomas Hardy: the poetry of perception(1975), but by this time his poetry was gaining recognition as part of a younger generation of Northern Irish poets, following the success of Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon among others. In 1976 he won an Eric Gregory Award, and the following year his first collection of poetry,
A State of Justice, appeared. He won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1978, and a second volume,
The Strange Museum, was published in 1980.…
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Citation: Brewster, Scott. "Tom Paulin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 October 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3508, accessed 26 April 2024.]
