{"product_id":"smith-9781447281979","title":"Smith","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMichael Donaghy was born to Irish parents, and grew up amongst the Irish community in the Bronx, New York. He studied at Fordham, and began a PhD at the University of Chicago. Becoming dismayed with academia (of his experiences at the time, he wrote 'gradually I became aware that professing English because I loved poems was like practising vivisection because I loved dogs'), he dropped out of the PhD program to pursue a career in writing and in traditional Irish music. In Chicago he met his future partner, Maddy Paxman, and joined her in London in the mid-1980s. Here he spent the rest of his life, writing, teaching and playing music. In September 2004, Donaghy died of a brain haemorrhage. He was fifty years old. At the time of his death he had long been in the front rank of British poets, a hugely popular performer (who would always recite entirely form memory), and an influential teacher. Donaghy published only three volumes of poetry in his lifetime: \u003ci\u003eShibboleth\u003c\/i\u003e (1988), \u003ci\u003eErra\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Pan Macmillan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50578004181335,"sku":"9781447281979","price":12.28,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781447281979.jpg?v=1746097539","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/smith-9781447281979","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}