[4] His work has been translated into Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese, Latvian, Mexican Spanish, Romanian, Slovakian and German.
"[4] Sweeney's work has been considered "barely touched by the mainstream of English writing" and more so by the German writers Kleist, Büchner, Kafka, Grass and Böll, as well as the aforementioned Trakl.
[3] He went on to study German and English at the Polytechnic of North London, spending a year at the University of Freiburg,[9] before graduating with a BA Honours degree in 1978.
Sometime in the late 1980s I attended one of these workshops in an upstairs room of a pub in Lamb's Conduit Street, Bloomsbury, where the poems were circulated anonymously and carefully read and commented on by all.
[3] Having been diagnosed with motor neuron disease the previous year (a fate that had earlier befallen a sister of his), Sweeney died aged 65 at Cork University Hospital on 5 August 2018, surrounded by family and friends.
"[4] Among those attending a special ceremony on 8 August 2018 at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork city to celebrate Sweeney's life were fellow poets Jo Shapcott, Thomas McCarthy, Gerry Murphy, Maurice Riordan and Padraig Rooney.