Robert Ian Duhig is a British poet. In 2014, he was a chair of the final judging panel for the T. S. Eliot Prize awards.
Life
He was the eighth of eleven children born to Irish parents. He graduated from Leeds University. He worked for 15 years with homeless people. He is a writer and teacher of creating writing at various institutions, including the Arvon Foundation. Duhig writes occasional articles for magazines and newspapers including Moving Worlds, The Sunday Times and the Independent on Sunday. He has also worked on a variety of commissions, particularly involving music. He wrote 'In the Key of H' with the contemporary composer Christopher Fox for the Ilkley Festival, co-operating again with Fox on an insert to 'The Play of Daniel', which can be heard on Fox's DVD 'A Glimpse of Sion's Glory'. He was commissioned by The Clerks, a vocal consort specialising in pre-baroque music, to write new poems for 'Le Roman de Fauvel', which was first performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank in 2007, and enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times when performed in that city in 2009. Duhig is an anthologisedshort story writer, represented in the award-winning 'The New Uncanny' from Comma Press, a creative updating of Freud's famous essay with other writers including A.S Byatt and Hanif Kureishi. He has also written for radio and the stage, the latter most recently with Rommi Smith, directed by Polly Thomas, on 'God Comes Home' at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2009. This considered the ramifications of the case of David Oluwale, a homeless Nigerian immigrant to Leeds, who died after a campaign of persecution by two local policemen. Duhig has written poems about this tragic story, one of which appears in Kester Aspden's 'The Hounding of David Oluwale', published by Jonathan Cape.
Teaching Fellowships at Lancaster and Leeds Universities. Northern Arts Literary Fellow 2000, International Writer Fellow, Trinity College Dublin 2003.
"Among recent writers indebted to the modernist masters in that respect are Paul Muldoon, WN Herbert and Ian Duhig: erudite and venturesome poets who specialise in a complexity which has one puzzling and laughing together. "The Celtic input into this tradition of humorous difficulty is intriguing. Muldoon is an Ulsterman, Herbert a Scot, Duhig the London-born child of Irish Catholic parents. Duhig is the most economical. The Lammas Hireling, shortlisted for this year's TS Eliot Prize, is his fourth book in 12 years and, at 69 pages, his longest by a short head. In his last volume, Nominies, he seemed to opt for a more direct and accessible style. This book requires greater concentration." Alan Brownjohn
"The lightness of touch and the humour of this collection are subversive in contexts where many might fear to speak. Without pretension or presumption, 'The Speed of Dark' stands up against some of the worst aspects of 'civilisation' and stands with the very best of contemporary poetry." Fran Brearton
