Michael O’Neill was born in Aldershot in 1953 and moved to Liverpool in 1960. He read English at Exeter College, Oxford, and from 1979 he lectured in English at Durham University, where he was Professor of English and Assistant Director of the Centre for Poetry and Poetics. He co-founded and co-edited Poetry Durham from 1982 to 1994.
He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1983 for his poetry and a Cholmondeley Award for Poets in 1990. His four previous collections of poems are The Stripped Bed (Collins Harvill, 1990), Wheel (Arc, 2008), Gangs of Shadow (Arc, 2014) and Return of the Gift (Arc, 2018).
Michael O’Neill died in December 2018, leaving a wife and two children.
