A leading Irish poet and literary scholar, Robert Greacen earned critical success internationally for more than 50 years, notably for his collected poems, which won the Irish Times Award for Literature in 1995. His poetry, quiet-toned, urbane and socially aware, was always engaging and this, together with his scholarly elegance, won him a legion of admirers, including Seamus Heaney and Kathleen Raine.

Greacen was born of Scots and Irish stock in Derry in 1920 and lived in urban Belfast and rural Monaghan.

A stranger among strangers

I look for my house of birth.

Pulled down years ago.

I show the paper: “I certify . . .”

Ich bin ein Derryman
(From Homecomings)

The origin of his surname was from the Scottish “grieve” — a farm bailiff or overseer. His father’s family came from a poor farming background. Greacen had a tense and troubled relationship with his father, who was an alcoholic and a failed businessman and he was subsequently brought up in the strict Presbyterian tradition by his maternal grandmother and two aunts.

At Methodist College, Belfast, he discovered his gift for writing and developed a strong interest in left-wing politics. Later, at Trinity College, Dublin, he pursued a diploma in social studies.

In Dublin he befriended the writers Patrick Kavanagh and Frank O’Connor and his poems began appearing in magazines such as The Bell. Early collections of his poetry included The Bird (1941), One Recent Evening (1944) and The Undying Day (1948).

Moving to London in 1948 he worked for the United Nations Association and then became a lecturer in adult education. In 1949, at the request of T. S. Eliot, he co-edited the Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry with Valentin Iremonger and also became a regular writer of political articles for Tribune.

Throughout the Fifties and Sixties in London he amassed a considerable body of prose, including critical essays, as well as biographical studies of Noël Coward and C. P. Snow.

It was not until 1975 that he went back to writing poetry full-time, after returning to Dublin, when he published the critically acclaimed A Garland for Captain Fox. Other collections followed — many of them encompassing themes of voyage and exile — including Young Mr Gibbon (1979), A Bright Mask (1985) and Protestant Without a Horse (1997). With his return to Ireland he was nominated for membership of Aosdána, the association of leading Irish writers.

In 1969 he published Even Without Irene, an autobiographical memoir, which he wrote following the death of his wife, the writer Patricia Hutchins. She had written critical books about Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Greacen’s second volume of autobiography, The Sash My Father Wore, appeared in 1987. In the book he revealed that he had used the drug LSD, under psychiatric supervision, in the 1950s as treatment for depression.

His book Brief Encounters (1991) was a memoir of literary Belfast and Dublin in the 1940s.

In his later years Greacen was lionised by younger Irish writers and honoured by his peers for his achievements. He was a witty and sharp observer of human nature and although essentially a shy and modest man, he enjoyed entertaining old and new friends at his Dublin flat.

“Poetry can help to make sense of life,” he observed recently. “Things often have not turned out as I expected. There were frustrations and disappointments I had not foreseen. At the same time positive things have happened and poetry helps to come to terms with hurts and disappointments.”

He is survived by his daughter.

Robert Greacen, poet, was born on October 24, 1920. He died on April 13, 2008, aged 87