Damian Gorman

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Damian Gorman
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Damian Gorman (born June 16, 1961) is an Irish poet, writer, and dramatist.

Broadcast work

Gorman wrote and/or directed documentaries for the BBC and Channel Four, including the verse documentary Devices of Detachment (BBC 2, dir: Hugh Thomson), which was selected for INPUT as one of the twelve best public service broadcasts of the year. He contributed to BBC Radio 3’sThe Essay (2009). He wrote three television dramas for teenagers, and many radio dramas produced by BBC Northern Ireland for younger children. He wrote The Last Days Of Love (2002) for BBC Radio Three, the fictitious musical memoir “Minty” Walsh – Liner Notes for the Third Album (2004) for BBC Music Live, and Morning Glory, a six-part drama development commission for RTE television.

Gorman adapted Michael MacLaverty’s School for Hope for Radio Four, and Padraic Colum’s Viking legends for Radio Ulster. He wrote and/or presented many features for BBC Northern Ireland’s religion department, and two series of broadcast interviews for the same department. He wrote and presented Great Journeys – Mexico for BBC 2, and 10,000 words for the BBC/Penguin book accompanying the series. He worked on Dust on the Bible as script editor and narrator.

He is the subject of a number of television documentaries, including A Private Resort (C4); Personal Visions (BBC NI); and Would You Believe? (RTE).

Stage plays

• Broken Nails (Winner of four Peacock Ulster Theatre Awards, including Best Writer).
• All Being Well (Stewart Parker winner).
• Ground Control To Davy Mental (Best Production nomination, and Best Actress award in the EMAs).
• The Man In The Moon (toured by the Fallen Angels theatre company)
• Stones (EMA – nominated)
• Loved Ones (OMAC production in 1995, and 1996 tour and also presented in USA. Loved Ones was selected for the book and exhibition State of Play as one of the thirty most socially-significant dramas to come out of Northern Ireland in the twentieth century.)
• Sometimes (Best Production nomination, Belfast City Council Arts Awards).
• Judge’s Room (for Convictions – Irish Times Best Production).
• A Scene From The Bridge (with Owen McCafferty).
• Smear Campaign (for Tinderbox Theatre Company’s Vote, Vote, Vote! Project, 2003)
• Arts Council Residency The Dreaming of “Bones” (Red Ladder/Contact Theatre UK tour, 2003)
• Darkie (three productions, including a tour, Blue Box, 2005. Darkie, a play with songs, premiered in Tower Street Theatre in May 2005, toured in September 2005 and had a third production at the Belfast Festival at Queen’s (the play was featured on BBC television and Radio 5 Live).)
• 1974 – The End of the Year Show (Lyric Theatre Belfast, 2006)
• Something For Africa (OMAC, Spring 2007)

• Sleep Eat Party (Tinderbox tour, November 2009)

• STARS – A Ballycastle Nativity (December 2009; also directed)
• The Burmese for One (2011, and 2013)
• The Conquest of Happiness (2013. As Artistic Collaborator)

Publications

• Up and Coming (poems, published by Channel 4 to accompany series of the same name).
• Devices of Detachment (script of verse documentary on ‘the Troubles’, published by BBC to accompany Words on Film).
• Mexico (part of BBC Great Journeys book accompanying series of the same name).
• Remembrance (essay published by the Ulster Society in book of the same name).
• Judge’s Room (published by Tinderbox as part of the Convictions project).
• Loved Ones (play script, published in a special edition of the US literary journal Nua).
• Glow-Worms for Stories in Conflict, chapter on the use of story during and after the “Troubles” (TUH and YES! publications, August 2008).
• “What My Own Wee Divil Bids me” feature interview on own work for 2013 edition of the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.
• The Great Book of Ireland, (vellum manuscript containing the handwritten work of a number of poets and composers).

As an occasional columnist, has contributed pieces to the Sunday Times, the Sunday Life, the Belfast Telegraph, and Fortnight magazine, among others. He collaborated with the composer Joan Green on a choral piece "Will You Still Hear If I Call To You?", which premiered in Strasbourg.

Teaching and lecturing

Gorman worked as a consultant and facilitator on City University London’s Olive Tree Programme involving Israeli and Palestinian students for nine years, until 2016. Over almost twenty-five years has worked with thousands of people as a creative writing tutor. Has worked on behalf of the WEA, An Crann, the Creative Writers Network (as a mentor), Ards Council, Derry City Council, Down District Council, Fermanagh District Council, Corrymeela reconciliation centre, the ‘TELL’ mental health group, HAUL Arts-in-Health (Aberystwyth), Aberystwyth Arts Centre and many other bodies in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. 

He was playwright-in-residence with the Centre for Excellence in the Creative and Performing Arts at Queen’s University Belfast. In January 2009 he was appointed the first long-term writer-in-residence at a Northern Irish School, based at St Patrick’s High School Downpatrick, working there and in other schools in the surrounding area. This residency was extended twice. In 2018 he was poet-in-residence in Hankavan at the Hannah Huntley memorial camp organized for the 60 Armenian National Poetry Recitation Contest finalists. He was writer-in-residence at Belfast’s new Metropolitan Arts Centre until July 2013.

Poetry

In 2011 he produced a verse documentary around 9/11 with the Emmy-Award winning director Hugh Thomson and the editor Ben Taylor.

In 2017 he wrote a poem (Human Threads) to accompany an international exhibition of arpilleras, and in 2018 wrote a poem (If I Was Us, I Wouldn't Start From Here) “marking 20 years of the Good Friday Agreement, and looking to the future”. This poem has been featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 6 Music and was specially recorded by the Irish state broadcaster RTE. The text was featured in a special anniversary edition of the Belfast Telegraph on 10 April 2018.

As a poet he has given many readings including at the Southbank; the National Concert Hall in Dublin; Harvard University; Framingham State and North Eastern universities in Boston; at the American Conference of Irish Studies New England conference; the Project Theatre in Dublin; the Lyric Theatre, Belfast; “Levellers’ Day”, Oxford ; Ledbury Poetry Festival (2012) and at the Drill Hall in London (the latter was broadcast by Channel Four Television.) He also represented Northern Ireland at the Passaporta International House of Literature, Brussels.

Awards

• Arts Council Residency at St James Cavalier Centre, Malta (November 2008).
  • Recipient of a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (January 2007).
  • Recipient of an MBE for services to the arts.

• Writer of the thirty-minute drama United (1998, dir: Michael McGowan), winner of BBC Northern Ireland’s first BAFTA.
• Recipient of the Stewart Parker Bursary, the premier award for younger Irish dramatists.
• Writer of Broken Nails (1989), winner of four Peacock Ulster Theatre Awards.
• Co-author of Convictions (2000), Irish Times Awards, Best Production.
• Writer of The King’s Wake, winner of the Animation section of the International Celtic Film Festival.
• Writer and narrator of Steelchest (dir: David Hammond. Winner of the Golden Harp, the Celtic Film Festival’s top award).
• Winner of a Rothman’s Press Award for journalism.
• Recipient of Down District Council’s Literature Award, and a special presentation from Fermanagh District Council. This work with Fermanagh District Council was nominated for a special award from the Commission for Racial Equality in London.
• Founding editor of the Belfast Review magazine (winner of a Bass Ireland Arts Award).
• Founding director of the charity An Crann/ The Tree, which helped people “to tell, and to hear, the stories of Northern Ireland’s Troubles” (winner of a Better Ireland Award in 1997, and credited with being “a prescient vision of what might be possible” in Northern Ireland).

External links

Damian Gorman on IMDb

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