Author: Desmond O’Grady

On 18 March 2007, Alex Med launched the third in its monograph series, My Alexandria: Poems and Prose by the Irish poet and academic, Desmond O’Grady. O’Grady came to live and teach in Alexandria in the late 1970s. He followed the trail of Callimachus, Cavafy and Durrell through the streets of the city, and composed poems about his impressions of the Alexandria immortalized by writers. O’Grady also wrote about yet another Alexandria, the one he himself experienced. Then, after a thirteen year break he returned to find a city altered almost beyond recognition. In this monograph, his autobiographical Alexandrian reflections during both the 1970s and 1990s, supported by the poetic anthology, reveal their author’s attempt to come to terms with his own lost youth.