KEVIN MCGRATH

McGRATH, Kevin Kevin McGrath, poet, classicist, scholar of Homeric poetry, Sanskrit, and the Mahabharata, and beloved tutor and poet-in-residence at Harvard University's Lowell House, died on November 4, 2023, after a brief illness. A resident of Cambridge, MA, he was born in Hong Kong, China, on August 22, 1951, to Joan and George McGrath, and spent his early youth in the New Territories of southern China and in Lancashire, England. After completing his MA in Modern History at Dundee University in Scotland, he moved to Paris and, subsequently, to Greece (Paros, Hydra, and southern Lakonia), with periods of travel in north and east Africa and India. He completed a PhD in Sanskrit at Harvard University, was an Associate of the Harvard Department of South Asian Studies, and taught classes on the classical hero and Bronze Age poetry for more than thirty years. He was engaged in fieldwork in the Kachcch region of Western Gujarat on poetry, kinship, landscape, and migration. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and prose (Saint Julian Press), a memoir, and seven monographs on the Mahabharata (Brill and Harvard University Press), as well as a frequent contributor to literary magazines, including the Temenos Academy Review and the Harvard Review. A devoted walker, swimmer, sailor, and rower, he swam the Hellespont at the age of fifty and raced annually in the Head of the Charles Regatta. He is survived by his sons, Guy Murdo Christian McGrath and Max McGrath; daughter, Xanthe Hero Mankhi McGrath; and dear friends and colleagues in the US, the UK, Greece, India, and beyond. He is buried in the Cambridge Cemetery in Cambridge, MA; a memorial celebration at Lowell House will take place in May 2024. (Photo credit: Akos Szilvasi)

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