James Stewart Parker (1941 - 1988) was a Northern Irish poet and playwright. He was born in Sydenham, Belfast, of a Protestant working class family. 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 America at Hamilton College and Cornell University. Parker was a member of a group of young writers which included Seamus Heaney and Bernard MacLaverty in the early sixties 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 Britain where he wrote for radio, television and the stage. The musical landscape of Belfast is integral to his work as a playwright. One could arguably call him the Van Morrison of the Irish Theatre. He would be honoured by the title, as Van Morrison was one of his favourite artists.
