Biography

James Stewart Parker (20 October 1941 – 2 November 1988) was a Northern Irish poet and playwright. He was born in Sydenham, Belfast, of a Protestant working-class family. His birthplace is marked by an Ulster History Circle blue plaque. While still in his teens, he contracted bone cancer and had a leg amputated. He studied for an MA in Poetic Drama at Queen's University, Belfast, on a scholarship, before commencing teaching in the United States at Hamilton College and Cornell University.

Parker was a member of a group of young writers that included Seamus Heaney and Bernard MacLaverty in the early 1960s at Queen's University in Belfast. In British Poetry since 1945, Edward Lucie-Smith calls him "a rawer, rougher, more unformed poet than either of the other two Belfast poets presented here" (i.e. Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon). He notes that all three are post-Movement and neo-Georgian, owing little to William Butler Yeats and not much more to Patrick Kavanagh.

Following his return to Northern Ireland he worked as a freelance writer, contributing a column on pop music to The Irish Times. He later moved to Great Britain, where he wrote for radio, television and the stage. The musical landscape of Belfast is integral to his work as a playwright; Van Morrison was one of his favourite artists.Parker died of stomach cancer in London on 2 November 1988.