Description
The first in a two-volume memoir, "Company" takes as its theme the curious fact that as a young poet in 1950s Dublin and Paris, John Montague adopted "bohemia" as a surrogate family, having been abruptly separated at the age of four from his own family, and the country of his birth, America.
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The first volume of John Montague's memoir gives an account of a phenomenally vibrant era in poetry and letters, told by one who lived at its very centre. Separated from his own family at the age of four in the 1930s, John Montague threw himself into the literary life of 1950s Dublin and Paris as into the arms of a surrogate family. Basking in the freedom of the bohemian world, the ghosts of the great poetic figures who populate Company include Samuel Beckett, a friend and neighbour in Paris for a decade, and in Dublin, the 'inspired lunatic' Brendan Behan and Mrs Yeats.An internationally renowned poet and writer, John Montague's collections of poetry include The Rough Field, The Dead Kingdom, Mount Eagle and Collected Poems which appeared in 1995, the year he received the America Ireland Fund Literary Award. His prose works include The Lost Notebook, which received the first Hughes Award for fiction, Death of a Chieftan and A Love Present and Other Stories.
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