Rodgers, W(illiam) R(obert) (1909–1969)

Irish writer, born in Belfast and educated at Queen's University, Belfast. Rodgers was a Presbyterian minister at Loughgall, County Armagh, 1935–45. His early poetry was uneven, but his second collection, Europa and the Bull (1952), contained original and energetic rewritings of both Christian stories and classical mythology.

Rodgers worked for the BBC in London 1947–65, where his literary portraits of W B Yeats, J M Synge, and James Joyce, among others, were very popular and later published. In 1966 he became writer in residence at Pitzer College, California, but died soon after in Los Angeles.