Padraic Fiacc (real name Patrick Joseph O'Connor) was born in 1924 on the Lower Falls in Belfast. The family moved to East Street in Belfast's Markets area, where he spent his first five years. He grew up in two cities, Belfast and New York. His father was involved in the IRA during the sectarian violence of the late 1920s and had to flee to New York. Reluctantly, his wife, accompanied by her two young sons, joined him a few years later in 1929, at the onset of the Depression. When the father's grocery business went bankrupt, the family had to move to the Hell's Kitchen ghetto, a veritable melting pot of nationalities – Irish, Italians, Latin Americans, Jews, Russians and Germans. Here the sensitive young poet was early introduced to the brutalising urban realities of crime, violence, drug abuse and other social problems. ‘Standing Water (A Rag)’ describes the transatlantic journey:

America stirs none of the usual immigrant feelings of excitement about fresh new starts and hopeful futures, only a deadly sense of oppression (‘A yellow wolf cold/ Sits on the leaden Atlantic’ RP 89), and apprehension (‘The Russian Orthodox priest who/ Has a beard, is the Bogey Man/ Will put me in his bag/ Is “America” the Bury Hole he'll/ Put me in if I cry?’ RP 89).