Contemporary Irish Women Poets

Ashley O’Neal is an award-winning poet, artist, and philosopher who lives in the Gaeltacht area of Ballyvourney. She was the winner of the 2014 Michael Hartnett Original Poem award and the winner of the 2018 Kanturk Poetry Slam Competition. She has read her poems for the 2018 Sliabh Luachra Scully’s Fest. She was officially selected for the 2018 Biennial Edition of Women Cinemakers for her work in film and writing. The book has been shortlisted for the 2020 Shine Strong Poetry Award.

Ellen Nic Thomás is a bilingual poet from Dublin. She graduated from Trinity College with a BA in English and Irish. Her work has been published by headstuff.org, Tales From the Forest and The Attic.

“Beochaoineadh Máthar Maoise”and other poems  by Ellen Nic Thomás

Leeanne Quinn was born in Drogheda, Co. Louth, and grew up there and in nearby Monasterboice. Her debut collection of poetry, Before You, was published by Dedalus Press in 2012, a poem from which was highly commended in the Forward Prize for Poetry. Her second collection, Some Lives, is published by Dedalus on October 1st 2020. Her poems have been published in a variety of journals including Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Cyphers, PN Review, and Long Poem Magazine, and anthologised in Windharp: Poems of Ireland Since 1916 and The Forward Book of Poetry 2013, among others. Having lived in Dublin for most of her adult life, she recently relocated to Munich, Germany.

Freda Laughton (1907-1995) was born in Bristol and moved to Co. Down after her marriage. She published one collection of poetry, A Transitory House (Jonathan Cape, 1945), little else is known of her life and work. She may have lived in Dublin for sometime, as her poem The Welcome details the textures of Dublin City and its suburbs, and suggests she knows the city by heart.  Freda Laughton’s poems were submitted by Emma Penney, a graduate of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin. Her thesis, Now I am a Tower of Darkness: A Critical History of Poetry by Women in Ireland, challenges the critical reception of Eavan Boland and the restrictive criteria, developed in the 1970s, under which poetry by women in Ireland has been assessed. She considers the subversive nature of women’s poetry written between 1921 and 1950, and calls into question the critical assumption that Eavan Boland represents “the first serious attempt in Ireland to make a body of poems that arise out of the contemporary female consciousness”. In Object Lessons, Boland concluded that there were no women poets before her who communicated “an expressed poetic life” in their work. Emma’s thesis reveals how this view has permeated the critical landscape of women’s poetry, facilitating an absurd privation of the history of poetry by women in Ireland and simplifying it in the process.

Now I Am A Tower of Darkness at Jacket2

Áine Uí Fhoghlú comes from the County Waterford Gaeltacht of An Rinn. Her published works include Poetry: Aistear Aonair (1999); An Liú sa Chuan (2007); Ar an Imeall (2011). Adult fiction: Crúba na Cinniúna (2009); Uisce faoi Thalamh (2011); Éalú (2013). Teenage fiction: Pincí sa Ghaeltacht (2012); Labhairamach.com (2017). Her latest teenage fiction is due for publication in 2021. Non-fiction: Scéalta agus Seanchas – Potatoes, Children & Seaweed (2019) – a bilingual memoir recorded from the older generation in her area. She has won commissions and bursaries from The Arts Council, Ealaíon na Gaeltachta, and Foras na Gaeilge. Prizes won for her writing include the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award, Oireachtas na Gaeilge Literary awards, Strokestown Duais na Gaeilge award, Listowel Writers’ Week. Prescribed texts for second-level schools’ curriculum include her work.

Máire Mhac an tSaoi (born 4 April 1922) is one of the most acclaimed and respected Irish language scholars, poets, writers and academics of modern literature in Irish. Along with Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máirtín Ó Direáin she is, in the words of Louis de Paor, ‘one of a trinity of poets who revolutionised Irish language poetry in the 1940s and 50s. (Source: Wiki)

Ceathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin’ and ‘A fhir dar fhulaingeas’ by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Siobhán Campbell’s latest collection is Heat Signature - ‘poems that give us an insight into alternative ways of being … a poet invested in words as a powerful social currency.’ (Compass Magazine). Previous books include Cross-Talk (Seren), The Permanent Wave and The Cold that Burns (Blackstaff Press) and chapbooks That water speaks in tongues (Templar) and Darwin Among the Machines (Rack Press). She is co-editor of Eavan Boland: Inside History, (Arlen House/SUP) and critical work appears in Making Integral: the poetry of Richard Murphy (CUP) and in The Portable Poetry Workshop (Palgrave). In 2016 she was awarded the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize which follows awards in the Templar Poetry Prize and the National and Troubadour International competitions. Siobhan is on faculty at The Open University, UK. Anthologised widely including in the Forward Book of Poetry, Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets writing in English, Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets and The Golden Shovel Anthology: Honouring Gwendolyn Brooks, she publishes in magazines including Poetry, The Southern Review, Magma and Agenda.

Siobhan's website

Emily S. Cooper is a graduate of Goldsmiths and the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s. She has been published in Stinging Fly, Banshee, the Irish Times and Hotel among others. She has been awarded residencies by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Greywood Arts and the Irish Writers Centre. In 2019 she took part in Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series and was a recipient of the Next Generation Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. She has been shortlisted for the Mairtin Crawford Award, North West Word Poetry Prize and was highly commended for the Patrick Kavanagh Award. She is currently writing a monograph on solitude, a collaborative collection with Jo Burns on the muses of Picasso, and her first poetry pamphlet will be published by Makina Books in 2020. She lives in Donegal and is represented by Harriet Moore at David Higham Associates.

Cherry Smyth is an Irish writer, living in London. Her first two poetry collections, When the Lights Go Up, 2001 and One Wanted Thing, 2006 were published by Lagan Press. The Irish Times wrote of this collection: ‘Here is clarity and realism, couched in language that is accessible and inventive. The title poem carries all Smyth’s hallmarks: precision, linguistic inventiveness and joy.’ Cherry’s work was selected for Best of Irish Poetry, 2008, Southword Editions and The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets, Salmon Press, 2009. Her third collection Test, Orange, 2012, was published by Pindrop Press and her debut novel, Hold Still, Holland Park Press, appeared in 2013. She also writes for visual art magazines including Art Monthly. She is currently a Royal Literary Fellow.

Evensong and other poems by Cherry Smyth

Audrey Molloy was born in Dublin and grew up in a coastal village in Wexford. She now lives in Sydney, where she works as an optometrist and medical writer. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Moth, Crannog, The Irish Times, Orbis, Meanjin, Cordite, Banshee, Popshot, and The Tangerine. Audrey’s work has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2018) and she is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2018. She was runner up for the 2017 Moth Poetry Prize and has been shortlisted for several other international poetry awards.

Jane Clarke’s first collection, The River, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015 to public and critical acclaim. Her second book-length collection, When the Tree Falls was published by Bloodaxe in September 2019 and her illustrated book of poems, All the Way Home, was published by Smith/Doorstop in April 2019. 

The River was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, given for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place. In 2016 Jane won the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry and the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. She was awarded an Arts Council of Ireland Literary Bursary in 2017.

Jane holds a BA in English & Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin, an MPhil in Writing from the University of South Wales, and has a background in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She grew up on a farm in Roscommon and now lives with her partner in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow, where she combines writing with her work as a creative writing tutor and group facilitator. 

Maureen Boyle lives in Belfast. She began writing as a child in Sion Mills, County Tyrone, winning a UNESCO medal for a book of poems in 1979 at eighteen. She studied English and History in Trinity in Dublin and did postgraduate work in UEA and UU. In 2005 she was awarded the Master’s in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast. She has won various awards including the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize in 2007; the Strokestown International Poetry Prize in the same year and in 2013 she won the Fish Short Memoir Prize. She has received support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in the form of Individual Arts, Aces and Travel Awards. In 2008 she was commissioned to write a poem on the Crown Bar in Belfast for a BBC documentary and some of her work has been translated into German. In 2017 she was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry’s Inaugural Travel Bursary for work on Anne More, the wife of John Donne. In November 2018 her poem, The Nunwell Letter, was runner-up in the Coast-to-Coast Single Poet Competition for a stitched limited edition, by artist Maria Izakova-Bennett in Liverpool. In January 2019 a long poem on Strabane will be broadcast on Radio 4 in Conversations on a Bench. Her debut collection, The Work of a Winter was published by Arlen House Press, Dublin and has just come out as a second edition. She taught Creative Writing with the Open University for ten years and teaches English in St Dominic’s Grammar School in Belfast.

Lilacs From the Field Of Mars and other poems by Maureen Boyle

Afric McGlinchey is a multi-award winning West Cork poet, freelance book editor, reviewer and workshop facilitator. She has published two collections, The lucky star of hidden things (Salmon, 2012) and Ghost of the Fisher Cat (Salmon, 2016), the former of which was also translated into Italian by Lorenzo Mari and published by L’Arcolaio. McGlinchey’s work has been widely anthologized and translated, and recent poems have been published in The Stinging Fly, Otra Iglesia Es Imposible, The Same, New Contrast, Numéro Cinq, Poetry Ireland Review, Incroci, The Rochford Street Journal and Prelude. In 2016 McGlinchey was commissioned to write a poem for the Breast Check Clinic in Cork and also for the Irish Composers Collective, whose interpretations were performed at the Architectural Archive in Dublin. Her work has been broadcast on RTE’s Poetry Programme, Arena, Live FM and on The Poetry Jukebox in Belfast. McGlinchey has been awarded an Arts Council bursary to research her next project, a prose-poetry auto-fictional account of a peripatetic upbringing.

Invisible Insane and other poems by Afric McGlinchey

Rachel Lauren Storm is an Irish-American poet and artist from Urbana, Illinois. She works in arts and cultural development. Her writing has appeared in Montage Literary Arts Journal, Rust and Moth, and Buzz Magazine. She has taught creative writing in workshops and university classrooms, in the community, and to incarcerated writers.

Jade Riordan is an Irish-Canadian poet, an undergraduate student at the University of Ottawa, and a selection committee member (poetry reader) with Bywords. Her poetry has appeared in The Blue Nib, Cordite Poetry Review, Corvid Queen, Eunoia Review, Noble / Gas Qtrly, Room, and elsewhere.

Robyn Rowland is an Irish-Australian citizen living in both countries. She regularly works in Turkey. She has written 13 books, 10 of poetry. Her latest books are Mosaics from the Map (Doire, 2018) and her bi-lingual This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 – İçli Dışlı Bir Savaş: Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (Five Islands, 2015; repub. Spinifex Press, Australia, 2018), Turkish translations, Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Robyn’s poetry appears in national and international journals and in over 40 anthologies, including 8 editions of Best Australian Poems. She has read and taught in Ireland for 35 years and has been invited to read in India, Portugal, Ireland, the UK, the USA, Greece, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Italy, where, along with Canada, Spain and Japan, she has also been published, sometimes in translation. An extended interview with her appeared in Agenda Poetry, UK, December 2018. She has two CDs of poetry, Off the Tongue and Silver Leaving – Poems & Harp with Lynn Saoirse. She has been filmed reading for the National Irish Poetry Reading Archive, James Joyce Library, University College Dublin, available on youtube.

Jess Mc Kinney is a queer feminist poet, essayist and English Studies graduate of UCD. Originally from Inishowen, Co. Donegal, she is now living and working in Dublin city, Ireland. Her writing is informed by themes such as sexuality, memory, nature, relationships, gender, mental health and independence. Often visually inspired, she seeks to marry pictorial elements alongside written word. Her work has been previously published in A New Ulster, Impossible Archetype, HeadStuff, In Place, Hunt & Gather, Three fates, and several other local zines.

From a theatrical family, Lani O' Hanlon is an experienced group facilitator, dance and movement artist/therapist, author of Dancing the Rainbow, Holistic Well-Being through Movement (Mercier Press 2007) She has an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University, studied fiction with The Stinging Fly and received a travel and training award in 2017 from the National Arts Council to complete a first novel set in Ireland and Greece. Her first poetry chapbook, The Little Theatre was funded by Artlinks and she has been awarded literary mentoring and bursaries from Waterford City and County Arts Office. Her writing has been published; in POETRY, Poetry Ireland Review, Mslexia, The Irish Times, Southword, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Skylight Poets, Solas Nua, the Anthologies; Small Lives (Poddle) Halleluiah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe) and is regularly broadcast on national radio - RTE's Sunday Miscellany - her fiction has been shortlisted or won award including The Hennessey New Irish Writing, The William Allingham Award and Over the Edge. Her poetry has won, been highly commended and/or shortlisted for FISH, Mslexia, DiBiase, Poetry on the Lake, Dromineer, Brewery Lane and the Bridport Poetry Prize.

Clodagh Mooney Duggan is an emerging poet. She originally trained as an actor, graduating from The Gaiety School of Acting in 2013. Since then, she has begun writing for the stage and is currently writing Made from Paper, which will be premiere in Dublin 2020 in The Scene and Heard Festival. The Women Who Loved Me & The Women Who Couldn’t will be her first published collection.

Alicia Byrne Keane is a spoken word artist and poet from Dublin, Ireland. She has performed at festivals such as Body & Soul, Electric Picnic, Castlepalooza andF Festival. Her poetry has been published in magazines such as Bare Hands, Headstuff, and Impossible Archetype, among others. She is a long-time performer at poetry events around Dublin such as Lemme Talk and Come Rhyme With Me, and was more recently involved in the Science Gallery’s INTIMACY exhibition. She is currently a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin researching translated literature and placelessness, more specifically in the case of authors who self-translate. Her work explores the absurdity that arises from losses in translation, even when interacting in one’s native language. She is interested in the effect of unexpected sincerity afforded by short, snapshot-like poems.

sunday DARTS and my Phone's dead

Aine McAllister is a poet from the Glens of Antrim, who works as a Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL IOE. She is currently completing an MA Poetry at Queens University. Her work is published in journals and she is working towards her first collection. She is interested in exploring how poetry gives voice and using dialogue as a tool for writing and for facilitating writing.

Angela Patten is author of three poetry collections, In Praise of Usefulness (Wind Ridge Books), Reliquaries and Still Listening, both from Salmon Poetry, Ireland, and a prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table (Wind Ridge Books). She was winner of the 2016 National Poetry Prize from the Cape Cod Cultural Center and her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she now lives in Burlington, Vermont, where she is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Vermont English Department.

Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet and writer from Donegal, Ireland. She has been awarded literary fellowships from Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), Jack Kerouac House (Orlando) and Hawthornden Castle (Scotland). In 2016, Annemarie was the recipient of with a Next Generation Artist Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. In Autumn 2017, Annemarie's debut collection 'BLOODROOT' is being launched by Doire Press, Galway. For more information, click here.

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Breda Spaight is a poet and novelist from Ireland. Her poems are published widely in Ireland and abroad, including The SHOp, Burning Bush 2, Banshee, Orbis, Envoi, Atticus Review (US), Communion (AUS),The Ofi Press, and others. She is the 2016 winner of the Boyle Arts Festival Poetry Competition, and runner up in the iYeats International Poetry Prize.

'The Suitcase' and other poems by Breda Spaight

Linda Ibbotson was born in Sheffield, England, lived in Switzerland and Germany and travelled extensively before finally settling in County Cork, S. Ireland in 1995. A poet, artist and photographer her work has been published in various international journals including Levure Litteraire, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Iodine, Irish Examiner, Asian Signature, Live Encounters, Fekt and California Quarterly. Linda was also invited to read at the Abroad Writers Conference, Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, Butlers Townhouse, Dublin, and Kinsale, Ireland. One of her poems ‘A Celtic Legacy’ was performed in France at Theatre des Marronniers, Lyon, the village of Saint Pierre de Chartreuse and 59 Rivoli, Paris by Irish actor and musician Davog Rynne. Her painting Cascade has been featured as a CD cover.

Laura Daly is a poet, writer and teacher born and raised in Dublin, now living in Amsterdam with her husband and daughter. She holds a BA in English Literature, an MA in Gender and Writing and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from University College Dublin. She also received her MEd in Leadership and Management in Education from Trinity College Dublin. Her passion is feminism and exploring and making visible the female experience through her writing. She is working towards her first collection of poetry as well as a feminist non-fiction book for teenage girls titled Welcome to the Desert of the Real.

Dorothy Molloy (1942-2004) was born in Ballina, Co. Mayo in 1942. She studied languages at University College Dublin, after which she went to live in Madrid and Barcelona. During her time in Spain, she worked as a researcher, as a journalist, and as an arts administrator. She also had considerable success as a painter, winning several prizes and exhibiting widely. After her return to Ireland in 1979, she continued painting but also began writing poetry. her first book of poems Hare Soup was published in 2004 (Faber and Faber). The Poems of Dorothy Molloy will be launched in November 2019. More information at Faber. 

Looking For Mother by Dorothy Molloy

Eithne Lannon is a native of Dublin. Her poems have been included in various publications such as The North, Skylight 47, The Ogham Stone, The Lea-Green Down Anthology and Boyne Berries. On-line in Ireland, the UK, US and Canada, she has work published on Headstuff, Artis Natura, Sheila-na-Gig, Barehands and Punch Drunk Press among others. Her work has been listed in various competitions such as the Bray Literary Festival, the Dermot Healy competition and Galway University Hospital Poems for Patience. She was winner in 2018 of the Ballyroan Poetry Day Competition and Runner-up in Against the Grain this year. Her work was also Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Winter/Spring Chapbook 2018 and commended in the Jonathan Swift Awards.

Eithne’s first poetry collection Earth Music was published by Turas Press in April 2019.

⊗ Gillian’s Website

Peggie Gallagher's collection, Tilth was published by Arlen House in 2013. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Poetry Ireland, Force 10, THE SHOp, Cyphers, Southword, Atlanta Review, and Envoi. In 2011 she was shortlisted for the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition. In 2012 she won the Listowel Writers' Week Poetry Collection. In 2018 she is the only Irish poet on the Strokestown International poetry competition shortlist.

Image: Southword / Arlen House 

Attracta Fahy’s background is Nursing and Social Care. She works in private practice as an Integrative/Humanistic Psychotherapist and Supervisor. She is living in Co.Galway, and has three children attending college. She completed her MA in Writing NUIG in 2017 and participates in 'over the edge' poetry workshops with Kevin Higgins. Her poems have been published in Banshee, The Blue Nib, The Lake, Burning House Press, and Galway Review.

Alice Kinsella was born in Dublin and raised in the west of Ireland. She holds a BA(hons) in English Literature and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin. Her poetry has been widely published at home and abroad, most recently in Banshee Lit, Boyne Berries, The Lonely Crowd and The Irish Times. Her work has been listed for competitions such as Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Competition 2016, Jonathan Swift Awards 2016, and Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition 2017. She was SICCDA Liberties Festival writer in residence for 2017 and received a John Hewitt bursary in the same year. Her debut book of poems, Flower Press, will be published in 2018 by The Onslaught Press.

For more information visit aliceekinsella.com or Facebook.com/AliceEKinsella

Felicia McCarthy practices the arts of poetry and healing in the West of Ireland. Her poetry has been published in Boyneberries, Skylight 47, as well as in The Sea, An Anthology by Rebel Poetry. She was a featured reader for December 2015's Over the Edge. She has also read her work at Belmullet's Festival of Words and Letterkenny's Northwest Words. In 2015, her work was shortlisted for the Bailieborough Prize. In summer 2017 her poetry was shortlisted for the Dermot Healy Award, The Red Line Book Festival Poetry Prize and the Over the Edge Writer of the Year award. Her poetry was published online in September 2016 in Jenny, while four poems were published in the UK ezine, The Blue Nib, issue 14. Felicia is also an Energy Medicine teacher, speaker and therapist with a specialty in cancer support. Her articles on Energy Medicine have appeared in Perspectives in Healing, The Living Link and Positive Life.

Trish Bennett hails from County Leitrim. She’s got the breeze of Thur (the mountain, not the God) in her blood. She crossed the border to study over twenty years ago and was charmed into staying by a Belfast biker. They have settled themselves into a small cabin near the lakeshore in Fermanagh, and try to keep the noise down in their bee-loud glade. Bennett writes about the shenanigans of her family and other creatures. Sometimes she rants. She was a finalist in seven poetry competitions in the past two years, including North West Words, The Percy French, Bailieborough, and The Bangor Literary Journal, and has won The Leitrim Guardian Literary Award for poetry twice. Bennett is a Professional Member of the Irish Writers Centre.

Marian Kilcoyne is an Irish writer based on the west coast of Ireland. She has, in the past, been a teacher at senior level, worked professionally in education and management for an Aids Organization, and reviewed fiction and non-fiction for the Sunday Business Post, Ireland. She attended the Seamus Heaney Centre summer school at Queens University Belfast in 2013. She has been published or is forthcoming at Prelude (US), The Louisville Review (US), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Crannog (IRL), Ofi Press (Mexico), Frogmore Papers (UK), Cyphers( IRL), Apalachee Review (US), Foliate Oak Literary Magazine (US,) New Contrast (Cape Town), Quiddity (US),Right Hand Pointing (US), Grey Sparrow Journal (US), Off The Coast (US), The Galway Review (IRL), The Liner (US), Into The Void (IRL), Roanoke Literary Journal (US), The Rockhurst Review (US), Banshee Literature (IRL), The Catamaran Literary Reader (US), The Worcester Review (US), The Stonecoast review (US), The Main St Rag, (US), Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, (US), and others. She was short listed for the 2017 Dermot Healy International prize for poetry.

Marian Kilcoyne’s website

Bernadette Gallagher, one of eight children, was born by the seaside in Donegal in 1959 and now lives on a hillside in County Cork. At 22 years of age she accepted an offer of a job in Baghdad where she lived and worked for two years. Ever since she has had a special affinity with the people of the Middle East. While working full-time Bernadette studied for a B.Sc. in Information Technology and an M.Sc. in Internet Systems and continues to work full time now as a project manager.She has been writing a personal journal for many years and her poetry has been published in print in Boyne Berries, Ropes 2016 and Stanzas, and online at HeadStuff.org, Picaroon Poetry and The Incubator Journal. On most Monday evenings Bernadette reads at the Open Mic during the Ó Bhéal Weekly Poetry event in Cork.

Bernadette Gallagher's blog.

Emma Gleeson lives in Dublin. Her writing adventures include poems, cultural reviews, and essays. She has worked in the theatre industry as a costume designer and events coordinator, and lectures on sustainability. She has a BA in Drama & Theatre and an MA in Fashion History.

Instagram: @emmajgleeson
Website: www.droppingslow.com

Gaynor Kane lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She came to writing late in life, after finishing her Open University BA(Hons) degree with a creative writing module in 2015. Mainly a writer of poetry, she has had work published in journals and anthologies in the UK, Ireland and America. In 2018, Hedgehog Poetry Press launched their Stickleback series with her micro-collection Circling the Sun, which is about some of the early women pilots. Gaynor has just released her chapbook Memory Forest, also from Hedgehog Press. That is a thematically tight collection about burial rituals and last wishes. She is currently putting the finishing touches to her debut full collection, after receiving an Arts Council NI grant in 2019, which allowed her writing time and mentoring and editing services.

Gaynor is a member of Holywood Writers’ Group, The Irish Writers Centre and Women Aloud NI. She also volunteers for EastSide Arts during their summer festival and the CS Lewis festival in November. Gaynor is a keen amateur photographer and has had some of her photography published in journals and anthologies, also.

Jean O’Brien’s New & Selected, Fish on a Bicycle is her fifth collection and was published by Salmon Poetry in 2016. She is an award-winning poet, having won, amongst others, The Arvon International Poetry Award and the Fish International, most recently she was Highly Commended for the Forward Prize. She is one of the 2018 recipients of the Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowships. Her work is widely published and anthologised. She holds an M.Phil for Trinity College, Dublin and tutors in Creative Writing.

Emma McKervey is a poet based in Holywood, County Down. Over the last few years her writing has been published in a number of journals and anthologies including Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, The Compass Magazine, and The Emma Press Anthology of Urban Mythsand Legends. She has work forthcoming in the next editions of Southword and Coast to Coast to Coast. Her debut collection The Rag Tree Speaks was published in Autumn 2017 by the Doire Press, and she was a featured poet on the recent Intersections tour of the island of Ireland sponsored by the Arts Councils of the North and South. In 2016 she was shortlisted of the Listowel Writers Week Irish Poem of the Year in the Bord Gais Irish Book Awards, and in 2017 two of her poems were highly commended in the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. Damian Smyth recently described her writing as 'tiny, ordinary miracles' and Carolyn Jess-Cooke has said Emma is a 'dazzling new voice in Northern Irish poetry.'

'Aleph to Taf' and other poems are © Emma McKervey

Christine Murray is a poet and web developer. She developed Poethead; a poetry blog in 2008. She graduated in Art History and English Literature at UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy. She qualified and has worked as a city and guilds conservation stone cutter with the Office of Public Works/Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland. Her restoration stone work is largely architectural, she worked in Counties Limerick and Kerry, and was based at Ross Castle at Loch Lein (Killarney, Co. Kerry) and in Ardfert Cathedral among other places. She is primarily a page poet but has written poetry for vocal performance. Her ‘Lament for Three Women’s Voices‘ was performed at The Béal Festival of New Music and Poetry  (Smock Alley Theatre, 2012). She is currently archiving materials related to Fired! Irish Women poets at RASCAL (QUB) 

Her chapbook Three Red Things was published by Smithereens Press (2013). A small collection of interrelated poems in series and sequence Cycles was published by Lapwing Press (2013).

§  Recours au Poème: Poésies & Mondes Poétiques

Órla Fay is the editor of Boyne Berries Magazine. Recently her work has appeared in Amaryllis, A New Ulster, Boyne Berries, The Honest Ulsterman, The Rose Magazine, Stepaway Magazine, Clear Poetry, Sixteen Magazine, Lagan Online, The Ogham Stone and is forthcoming in Cyphers Magazine. Her poetry was long listed in The Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Award 2017, The Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award 2017, The Fish Poetry Prize 2017 and short listed in The Rush Poetry Competition, The Dermot Healy International Poetry Award 2017 and The Red Line Book Festival Poetry Award 2017. She is currently studying the MA in Digital Arts and Humanities at UCC.

Orla's website

Ingrid Casey is a poet, parent, artist and activist. She has been writing poetry since 2015, and some prose, with publications in literary journals from Brooklyn to Kentucky, Dublin to Cardiff. She is a John Hewitt bursary recipient, amongst other accolades. Her debut collection, Mandible (the Onslaught Press, 2018) has been described by poet Jessica Traynor as a ‘vital addition to Irish poetry.’ In 2018 she also produced a groundbreaking short documentary on families living in homeless accommodation www.throughthecracks.ie

Ingrid Casey’s blog
Looking at the stars

Lynda Tavakoli facilitates an adult creative writing class in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. Her poetry and prose have been broadcast on both BBC Radio Ulster and RTE Sunday Miscellany. Literary successes include poetry and short story prizes at Listowel, the Mencap short story competition and the Mail on Sunday novel competition. Lynda’s poems have been included in a variety of publications including Templar Poets’ Anthology Skein, Abridged, The Incubator Journal, Panning for Poems, Live Encounters, Circle and Square, North West Words, Four X Four (Poetry NI), The Honest Ulsterman, A New Ulster and Corncrake magazine. She has been selected as The Irish Times Hennessy poet of the month for her poems about dementia, a recurring theme in much of her poetry. Most recently her poems have been translated into Farsi (PDF by Lynda Tavakoli (1)) while others have seen publication in Bahrain.

Anne Casey’s poetry has appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, broadcasts, podcasts, recordings and a major art exhibition. Salmon Poetry published her debut collection, where the lost things go in 2017. She won the Glen Phillips Novice Writer Award 2017 and has been shortlisted for prizes including Cuirt International Poetry Prize, Eyewear Books Poetry Prize and Bedford International Writing Competition, among others. Originally from west Clare, now living in Sydney, Anne is Co-Editor of Other Terrain and Backstory literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne)

Rachel Coventry’s poetry has appeared in many journals including Poetry Ireland Review, The SHop, Cyphers, The Honest Ulsterman and The Stony Thursday Book. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series in 2014. In 2016 she won the Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust Annual Poetry Competition and was short-listed for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. She is currently writing a Ph.D. on Heidegger’s poetics at NUIG. Her debut collection is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry.

Marie Hanna Curran holds an Honours Degree in Equine Science and is qualified as an Accounting Technician. However, her time is now spent farming words as she refuses to allow illness – Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – impact her quest to fill the world with words. Her articles have appeared in the Galway Independent, Connacht Tribune and Irish Independent and her regular column sits between the pages of the magazine Athenry News and Views. Along with freelance writing, her poems and short stories have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies across the globe and her solo collection of poetry Observant Observings were published by Tayen Lane Publishing in 2014.

www.mariehcurran.com.

Jezebel
Taipei
modern art and other poems by Anamaría Crowe Serrano

Lorraine Carey from Donegal, now lives in Co. Kerry. Her work has been published in the following journals; The Honest Ulsterman, A New Ulster, Proletarian, Stanzas Limerick, Quail Bell, The Galway Review, Vine Leaves, Poetry Breakfast, Olentangy Review and Live Encounters. Her first collection of poetry will be published this summer.

Denise Ryan is a writer of contemporary poetry from Dublin, Ireland. Denise has been published in THE SHOP, Crannóg Magazine, and also several online journals including Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts. Between 2010 and 2013, Denise was selected to write a series of poems for the National Famine Commemoration. In 2010 Flowers of Humility was read at the Dublin Commemoration and at the overseas twinning event in New York in Battery Park when President Mary McAleese officiated at the ceremony. Denise has been internationally received and has been highly recommended, shortlisted and runner-up in several poetry competitions. These include The Francis Ledwidge, and the Jonathan Swift awards. She is a member of the Rathmines Writers Workshop, which is the longest-running writers workshop in Ireland. Denise’s poetry has been published as part of an anthology by the workshop’s Swan Press, entitled Prose on a Bed of Rhyme (2012).Her debut collection, Of Silken Waters, was published in Autumn 2017, through Ara Pacis Publishers (Chicago, USA). Denise is currently writing her second collection for publication.

Enda Wyley is a poet and children’s author. She was born in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin 1966 and currently lives in Dublin. She has published five collections of poetry: Eating Baby Jesus (1993), Socrates in the Garden (1998), Poems for Breakfast ( 2004), To Wake to This (2009), and Borrowed Space, New and Selected Poems (2014).

Her poetry has been widely broadcast, translated and anthologised including in, The Harvard Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, USA (2010), The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women Poets, USA (2011), Femmes d'Irlande en Poésie, 1973-2013, ed Clíona Ní Ríordáin, Lines of Vision, The National Gallery of Ireland, 2014.

She holds a B.Ed with a distinction in English Literature, was the recipient of an M.A in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, was the inaugural winner of the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize and has received many Arts Council Literature Bursaries for her writing. In 2014 she was the recipient of a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship for her poetry. In recent years she has been Poet- at -Work in the Coombe Maternity Hospital, Dublin and Writer in Residence at The Marino Institute of Education, Dublin.

Enda Wyley’s books for children from O'Brien Press are Boo and Bear and The Silver Notebook. Her book I Won’t Go to China ! was awarded a Reading Association of Ireland Special Merit Award 2011. Enda Wyley was elected to Aosdána in March 2015.

Enda Wyley Reviews

‘New and Selected’ seems the perfectly suited appellation for the work on offer here. Ms. Wyley’s poems are perpetually fresh, utterly scrutinized, marked by vigor and virtuosity, arriving on the page as accomplished things, like settled law, fit for the long haul language calls us to.’ Thomas Lynch, Poet, 2014.

‘Enda Wyley’s poems are remarkable for the way they communicate warm feeling through their lightness of touch and clarity of colour.’
The trustees of the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, 2014.

'Enda Wyley is a true poet. To Wake To This articulates a subtle, dreamy apprehension through diction and imagery all the writer’s own.'
Fiona Sampson, The Irish Times.

‘Her imagery, honesty and insight make this a first-rate work.’
Poetry Ireland Review.

• http://aosdana.artscouncil.ie/Members/Literature/Wyley.aspx
• http://dedaluspress.com/authors/wyley-enda/

Jennifer Matthews writes poetry and is editor of the Long Story, Short Journal. Originally from Missouri, USA she has been living in Ireland for over a decade, and is a citizen of both countries. Her poetry has been published in, or is forthcoming from Banshee, Poetry International — Ireland, The Stinging Fly, Mslexia, The Pickled Body, Burning Bush 2, Abridged, Revival, Necessary Fiction, Poetry Salzburg, Foma & Fontanelles, and Cork Literary Review, and anthologised in Dedalus’s collection of immigrant poetry in Ireland, Landing Places (2010). In 2015 she was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. A chapbook of her poetry, Rootless, is available to read free online at Smithereens Press.

Rootless by Jennifer Matthews (Smithereens Press 2015)
Jennifer’s blog
Follow her on Twitter @JenMarieMa

Seanín Hughes is an emerging poet and writer from Cookstown, Northern Ireland, where she lives with her partner and four children. Despite writing for most of her life, Seanín only began to share her work in late 2016 after penning a number of poems for her children. Prior to this, she hadn’t written in a number of years following the diagnosis of her daughter Aoife with a rare disease in 2010. Early 2017 brought a return to writing in Seanín’s spare time and since then, she has completed an ever-increasing volume of new poetry. Drawing from her varied life experiences, Seanín is attracted to challenging themes and seeks to explore issues including mental health, trauma, death and the sense of feeling at odds with oneself and the world.

Nebulae & Salt at Dodging The Rain

Lindsey Bellosa lives in Syracuse, NY.  She has an MA in Writing from the National University of Ireland, Galway and has poems published in both Irish and American journals: most recently The Comstock Review, The Galway Review, IthacaLit, Crannog, Emerge Literary Journal and The Cortland Review.  Her first chapbook, The Hunger, was published with Willet Press in 2014.

New Poetry by Lindsey Bellosa

Mary Madec was born and raised in Mayo. She studied at NUI, Galway (B.A., M.A., H.Dip Ed.) and at the University of Pennsylvania from which she received a doctorate in Linguistics in 2002. She has published widely (Crannóg, West 47, The Cuirt Annual, Poetry Ireland Review, the SHOp, The Sunday Tribune, Southword, Iota, Nth Position, Natural Bridge and The Stand, Orbis, The Fox Chase Review, The Recorder among others. Her first collection, In Other Words, appeared with Salmon Poetry in 2010; her second collection, Demeter Does Not Remember also with Salmon Poetry at the end of 2014. She has received several awards and prizes most notably the Hennessy XO Prize for Emerging Poetry in 2008. She co-founded a community writing project and she teaches a residential course at Kylemore Abbey every summer. She works for Villanova University in Ireland.

Demeter Does Not Remember and Other Poems by Mary Madec 

Geraldine Plunkett Dillon (1891 – 1986) was born in Dublin. She published a single pamphlet of poems, Magnificat, from The Candle Press in Rathgar in 1917, which sold for sixpence. Her brother Joseph Mary was executed for his part in the 1916 rising. She was the mother of Eilís Dillon and grandmother of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. All In The Blood, memoirs of Geraldine Plunkett Dillon, edited by Honor Ó Brolcháin,

100 Irish Women Poets at Elliptical Movements 

Órfhlaith Foyle’s first novel Belios was published by The Lilliput Press. Her first full poetry collection Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma (Arlen House) was short-listed for the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award in 2011.  Arlen House published Foyle’s debut short fiction, Somewhere in Minnesota, in 2011;  its title story first appeared in Faber and Faber’s New Irish Short Stories (2011), edited by Joseph O’Connor. Foyle’s second short fiction collection Clemency Browne Dreams of Gin (Arlen House 2014) was chosen as one the Irish Times books of the year. Her work has been published in The Dublin Review, The Wales Arts Review, The Manchester Review, and The Stinging Fly. Órfhlaith Foyle was born in Africa to Irish parents and now lives in Galway, Ireland.

Maggie Breen’s debut collection of poetry, Other Things I Didn’t Tell was published in 2013. She was long-listed for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2015. Her poems have been published in The Stony Thursday Book, The Stinging Fly, Crannóg and Southword, among other publications. She was guest editor for The Scaldy Detail 2013. She has performed readings at the White House, Cáca Milis Cabaret, Kildare Readers’ Festival and Ó Bhéal, among others. Her short radio documentary Murt’s Eggs was broadcast on RTE Radio One in September 2014. She is currently working on a second collection of poetry, as well as other projects. Born in Wexford, Maggie lives in Dingle, Co. Kerry.

Maggie Breen’s website

Csilla Toldy was born in Budapest. After a long odyssey in Europe she entered the UK with a writer’s visa to work on films and ended up living in Northern Ireland in 1998. Her prose appeared in Southword, Black Mountain Review and anthology, Fortnight, The Incubator Journal, Strictly Writing and Cutalongstory. Her poetry was published online and in print literary magazines, such as Snakeskin and Poetry24, Savitri, Lagan Online, Headstuff, Visible Verse, A New Ulster and in two chapbooks published by Lapwing Belfast: Red Roots – Orange Sky and The Emigrant Woman’s Tale.

Csilla makes videopoems, available on her website: www.csillatoldy.co.uk & https://soundcloud.com/ctoldy

Rebecca O’Connor edits The Moth Magazine and organises the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize. She worked as a commissioning editor of literary fiction at Telegram Books in London before returning to Ireland with her family in 2008. She won a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2004 and her chapbook Poems was published by the Wordsworth Trust, where she was a writer in residence in 2005. Her poetry has been published in, among other places, The Guardian, Poetry Review and The Spectator.

Poetry by Rebecca O'Connor

Katherine Noone’s first poetry collection Keeping Watch was published by Lapwing Press (2017). Her poems have appeared in Orbis, Crannog, Boyne Berries, Linnets Wings, Her Heart Anthology, Skylight 47, Proost Poetry, Vallum digital edition, A New Ulster and Ropes Journal.

Shortlisted Vallum Poetry Award (Montreal) 2012. Poem for Patience 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Rita Ann Higgins was born in Galway. She has published ten collections of poetry, her most recent being Ireland is Changing Mother, (Bloodaxe 2011), a memoir in prose and poetry Hurting God (Salmon 2010). She is the author of six stage plays and one screenplay. She has been awarded numerous prizes and awards, among others an honorary professorship. She is a member of Aosdána.

Rita Ann Higgins’s readings are legendary. Raucous, anarchic, witty and sympathetic, her poems chronicle the lives of the Irish dispossessed in ways that are both provocative and heart-warming. Her next collection Tongulish was published in April 2016 by Bloodaxe.

The Mission by Rita Ann Higgins

Susan Connolly’s first collection of poetry For the Stranger was published by the Dedalus Press in 1993. She was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry in 2001. Her second collection Forest Music was published by Shearsman Books in 2009. Shearsman published her chapbook The Sun-Artist: a book of pattern poems in 2013. She lives in Drogheda, Co. Louth.

'The Dream Clock' and other visual poetry by Susan Connolly

Both a page and performance poet, Anne Tannam’s work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in Ireland and abroad. Her first book of poetry Take This Life was published by WordOnTheStreet in 2011 and her second collection Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor will be published by Salmon Poetry in Spring 2017. She has performed her work at Lingo, Electric Picnic, Blackwater & Cúirt Literary Festival. Anne is co-founder of the Dublin Writers’ Forum.

 Anne Tannam on Poethead

Caroline Johnstone is originally from Northern Ireland, now living in Ayrshire. Since 2014, she has been telling stories through her poetry, writing mainly on philosophical, political and life experience themes. She has been published in The Galway Review, Positively Scottish, The Scottish Book Trust, Belfast Life, the Burningwood Literary Journal, HCE Review,The Snapdragon Journal, The Dove Tales Anthology, The Bangor Literary Journal and the latest Federation of Writers (Scotland) anthology Landfall. She was also shortlisted for Tales in the Forest, the Imprint Festival, and by People Not Borders.

She’s taken part in The Big Renga, a month-long collaborative poem, and was interviewed by Sara Cox on BBC Radio 2 about this. She is a Scottish Poetry Library Ambassador, a member of the Federation of Writers (Scotland), has been interviewed by children and parents in Dubai at a poetry workshop there, helps with the social media for the cross-community group Women Aloud NI, is part of the FreshAyr initiative and their poetry events, and she runs The Moving On Poetry Group weekly in Kilmarnock.

Catherine Conlon lives in Celbridge, Co. Kildare. She has been shortlisted for the RTE P.J. O’Connor Radio Drama Awards and has had two stage plays performed. Her short stories have been published in Stories for the Ear and Boyne Berries. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, Books Ireland, The Cuirt Journal, Ropes, Skylight 47 and in various anthologies and newspapers.

Barbara Smith lives in County Louth, Ireland. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast. Her achievements include being shortlisted for the UK Smith/Doorstop Poetry Pamphlet competition 2009, a prize-winner at Scotland’s 2009 Wigtown Poetry Competition, and recipient of the Annie Deeny 2009/10 bursary awarded by the Tyrone Guthrie Centre for Artists and Writers, Ireland. Her first collection, Kairos, was published by Doghouse Books in 2007 and a second followed in 2012, The Angels’ Share. She is a frequent reader with The Poetry Divas, a collective that read at festivals such as Electric Picnic.

Jessica Traynor is from Dublin. Her first collection, Liffey Swim, was published by Dedalus Press in 2014. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Ireland Review, The Raving Beauties Anthology (Bloodaxe), Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, If Ever You Go (2014 Dublin One City One Book), The Irish Times, Peloton (Templar Poetry), New Planet Cabaret (New Island Books), The Pickled Body, Burning Bush II, Southword, The SHOp, Wordlegs, The Moth, Poetry 24, The Stinging Fly, and New Irish Writing among others.

She is the 2014 recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary. She was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year in 2013 and was highly commended at the 2013 Patrick Kavanagh Award. She won the 2011 Single Poem Competition at Listowel Writer’s Week. She received a Literature Bursary from Dublin City Council in 2010 and in was part of the 2009 Poetry Ireland Introduction Series.

Jessica works as Literary Reader for the Abbey Theatre and teaches creative writing courses through Big Smoke Writing Factory and the Irish Writers Centre. She also works as a freelance dramaturg.

Sin-Eater and Other Poems By Jessica Traynor

Nicki Griffin grew up in Cheshire but has lived in East Clare since 1997. Her debut collection of poetry, Unbelonging, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award 2014 for best debut collection. The Skipper and Her Mate (non-fiction) was published by New Island in 2013. She won the 2010 Over the Edge New Poet of the Year prize, was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2012 and has an MA in Writing from National University of Ireland, Galway. She is co-editor of poetry newspaper Skylight 47.

"Whistleblower" and other poems by Nicki Griffin

Elaine Cosgrove was born in Sligo, Ireland in 1985. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly Magazine, The Penny Dreadful, The Bohemyth, and New Binary Press. Elaine was selected for the 2017 Fifty Best New British & Irish Poets Anthology (Eyewear Publishing), and longlisted for the 2016 London Magazine Poetry Prize. Transmissions, her debut collection of poetry was published by Dedalus Press (2017)

A.M. Cousins' poetry has been published in The Stinging Fly, The SHoP, The Honest Ulsterman, The Irish Literary Review and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear Publishing). Her work was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Competition 2015 and 2016, and she featured in Poetry Ireland's Introduction Series, 2016. She also writes a memoir and local history essays and is a regular reader on "Sunday Miscellany."

Jo Burns comes originally from Maghera, County Derry. After studying Biomedical Science and spells in Chile, Scotland, England, she now lives with her family in Germany. Her poems have been published by or are forthcoming in: A New Ulster, Poetry Breakfast, The Galway Review, The Incubator, The Honest Ulsterman, Headstuff, The Irish Literary Times, Poetry NI P.O.E.T Anthology, The Literateur, Lakeview International Journal of Arts and Literature, Four x Four, Ink Sweat and Tears, Forage, Shot Glass Journal, Orbis, Picaroon and Poetry Pacific among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and she is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2017.

She occasionally retweets other peoples’ interesting posts at @joburnspoems

Jessamine O Connor lives in south Sligo, and comes from Dublin. Her chapbooks are Hellsteeth and A Skyful of Kites. Facilitator of the weekly Wrong Side of the Tracks Writers, she is also director of performance poetry/art/music ensemble The Hermit Collective. She was this year’s judge for the New Roscommon Writing Award, and has given readings, poetry and ‘zine workshops, and a beginners creative writing course for the Roscommon Women’s Network. Winner of the iYeats and Francis Ledwidge awards; Short-listed: Hennessy Literary; Over The Edge New Writer; Red Line Book Festival; Dead Good Poetry; and Bradshaw Books Manuscript competitions; Long-listed: Dermot Healy; Desmond O Grady competitions and more. A recipient of an artist’s bursary from Roscommon County Council in 2013 to publish her first chapbook, her second was printed on the proceeds. Both are favourably reviewed in Sabotage Reviews.

Publications: Agenda; Tridae (in translation to Spanish); Poetry NZ; Skylight47, Crannog, Ropes, The Stinging Fly, Abridged, New Irish Writing, North West Words; Stony Thursday Book, anthology Balancing Act, The First Cut, Shot Glass Journal, The Galway Review; and book Yeats150.

Snowbird and other poems by Jessamine O'Connor

Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. She won the IHS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. In 2013 she won The British Tanka Award. She also judged the British Haiku Award 2011 and 2012. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Belfast born Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Boyne Berries, The Cannon’s Mouth, Crannóg, Cyphers, Decanto, Envoi, The Galway Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Iota, Irish Feminist Review, The Leaf Book Anthology 2008, The Linnet’s Wings, The Moth Magazine, A New Ulster, The Poetry Bus (forthcoming), Poetry24, Reflexion, Revival, The SHOp, The Stony Thursday Book and The Stinging Fly. Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, was published in 2012. Home is Kilrea, County Derry.

Elaine Feeney is considered a leading part of political contemporary Irish writers. She was educated in University College Galway, University College Cork and University of Limerick. Feeney has published three collections of poetry Indiscipline (2007), Where’s Katie? (2010, Salmon) and The Radio was Gospel (2013, Salmon) Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies. She is currently working on a novel.

“Elaine Feeney is the freshest, most engaging and certainly the most provocative female poet to come out of Ireland in the last decade. Her poem ” Mass”, is both gloriously funny, bitter-sweet in the astuteness of its observations and a brilliant, sly window into the Irish female Catholic experience. Her use of irony is delicious. Her comments on the human condition, which run throughout her lines, are in the tradition of Dean Swift and she rightfully takes her place alongside Eavan Boland and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill as a very, very important Irish voice.” Fionnuala Flanagan, California 2013 (Praise for The Radio was Gospel, 2013, Salmon)

 “A choice collection of poetry, one not to be overlooked, 5 Stars” Midwest Book Review, USA, (Praise for Where’s Katie? 2010, Salmon Poetry).

'Mass' and other poems by Elaine Feeney

Sarah O’Connor is originally from Tipperary. She studied in UCC and Boston College, and she now lives in Dublin. She previously worked in publishing and now works in politics. She is working on her first novel and on a collection of poetry. She has been published by Wordlegs and The Weary Blues. Sarah O’Connor blogs at The Ghost Station & tweets at @theghoststation

 Poemín and other poems by Sarah O'Connor

Helen Harrison was raised on the Wirral, seven miles from Liverpool, by Irish parents, and has lived most of her adult life in the border countryside of Co Monaghan, Ireland where she is married with a grown-up daughter. During 2014 she was awarded a bursary from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to study poetry for a week at The Poets House, Donegal. Her poems have been published in A New Ulster, North West Words and The Bray Journal. Her first collection of poetry The Last Fire was published during 2015 by Lapwing.

Some of her poetry can be found at  poetry4on.blogspot.com

Anna Walsh is from Mullingar, and holds an MA in Creative Writing. She has been published in the Bohemyth, Belleville Park Pages, and Headstuff. She co-runs The Gremlin.

Anna Walsh at The HU
The Gremlin homepage

Gráinne Tobin grew up in Armagh and lives in Newcastle, Co Down with her husband. She taught for many years, in further and adult education and in Shimna Integrated College. She is interested in keeping poetry open to its audience, including people without long years of schooling. Her books are Banjaxed and The Nervous Flyer’s Companion (Summer Palace Press) and a third collection is due soon from Arlen House. She was a founder-member of the Word of Mouth Poetry Collective, which met monthly for 25 years in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, and she contributed to Word of Mouth (Blackstaff Press) which was translated into Russian, and to the Russian-English parallel text anthology of members’ translations from five St Petersburg women poets, When the Neva Rushes Backwards (Lagan Press).

Some of her poems are available in online archives, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Troubles Archive and the Poetry Ireland archive. Some have been exhibited in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, the Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast and Derry’s Central Library. One was made into a sculpture and is on permanent display in Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick.

She has had poems in anthologies – The Stony Thursday Book, Aesthetica Creative Writing, Washing Windows, On the Grass When I Arrive, Something About Home – in magazines such as Abridged, Poetry Ireland, The Dickens, Mslexia, Irish Feminist Review, Boyne Berries, Skylight 47, Crannog, Banshee, Acumen, North West Words, Ulla’s Nib, Fortnight, the South Bank Magazine, and also online, in Four X Four and on a website for psychotherapists. She has won the Down Arts, Mourne Observer and Segora poetry prizes and has been listed in competitions.

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill was born in 1952 and grew up in the Irish-speaking areas of West Kerry and in Tipperary. She studied English and Irish at University College, Cork in 1969 and became part of a group of Irish language poets who were published in the literary magazine Innti. She now lives in Dublin.

She has published four collections of poems in Irish, An Dealg Droighin (1981), Féar Suaithinseach (1984), Feis(1991) and Cead Aighnis (1998). From The Gallery Press.

The Bond by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

Anora Mansour is a graduate of the University of Oxford. She lives between Oxford and Dublin. She has been published in a collection of Jazz Poems, various online sites, and has her own published collection of poetry and blog. She is African-American and Irish.

Eleanor Hooker is an Irish poet. Her second collection, A Tug of Blue (Dedalus Press) was published October 2016. In 2013 her debut, A Shadow Owner’s Companion was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Irish collection from 2012.Her poems have been published in literary journals internationally including Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, PN Review, Agenda and The Dark Mountain Project (forthcoming). Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart and Forward Prize.

She is a featured poet in the winter 2017 New Hibernia Review, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. She won the 2016 UK Bare Fiction Flash Fiction competition. Eleanor holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin, an MA in Cultural History (Hons) University of Northumbria, a BA (Hons 1^st), Open University. She is Programme Curator for Dromineer Literary Festival. She is helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She began her career as a nurse and midwife.

Poetry by Eleanor Hooker

Emily Cullen is an Irish writer, scholar, harpist, and arts manager. Her first poetry collection, entitled No Vague Utopia was published by Ainnir in 2003. In 2004 she was the national Programme Director of the Patrick Kavanagh Centenary celebrations and was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series. Emily was awarded an IRCHSS Government of Ireland fellowship for her doctoral study on the Irish harp. She is a qualified teacher of the harp who has performed throughout Europe, Australia and the United States. A former member of the Belfast Harp Orchestra, she has recorded on a number of albums and also as a solo artist. In addition to writing poetry, short stories and feature articles, she publishes widely on aspects of Irish cultural history and music.

 Poems from In Between Angels and Animals

Kerrie O’ Brien has been published in various Irish and UK literary journals. In February 2012 she was the first poet to read as part of the New Writers Series in Shakespeare & Co. Paris. Her poem Blossoms was chosen as the winning entry in the Emerging Talent category of the 2011 iYeats Poetry Competition and her work was highly commended for the Over the Edge New Writer of The Year Competition 2011 She was the winner of the RTE Arena Flash Fiction Competition 2012 and Culture Ireland sponsored her to read in Los Angeles in June 2012. She has received an Arts Council Literature Bursary for her first official collection and two of her poems have appeared in New Irish Writing in the Irish Independent. She was one of the emerging writers chosen to read at the Cork Spring Poetry Festival 2013 as well as the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2013, Listowel Writers’ Week 2013, Cuisle International Poetry Festival 2013 and The Bram Stoker Festival 2013. She will have work forthcoming in The Bohemyth and The Irish Times. Her poetry chapbook Out of the Blueness was published in 2011 and she is currently working on her first official collection Illuminate

www.kerrieobrien.com 
Blurring and other poems by Kerrie O'Brien

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954. She attended University College Dublin (UCD), where she studied Pure English, then Folklore. She was awarded the UCD Entrance scholarship for English, and two post graduate scholarships in Folklore. In 1978-9 she studied at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1982 was awarded a PhD from the National University of Ireland (NUI). She has worked in the Department of Irish Folklore in UCD, and for many years as a curator in the National Library of Ireland. Also a teacher of Creative Writing, she has been Writer Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin and is currently Writer Fellow at UCD. She is a member of Aosdána. (Source: Wiki)

The Hare Arch by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is the daughter of Eilís Dillon and Professor Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. She was educated at University College Cork and The University of Oxford. She lives in Dublin with her husband Macdara Woods, and they have one son, Niall. She is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and an emeritus professor of the School of English which she joined in 1966. Her broad academic interests (notably her specialism in Renaissance literature and her interest in translation) are reflected in her poetry. She retired from full-time teaching in 2011. Ní Chuilleanáin is a founder of the literary magazine Cyphers. Her first collection won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 1973. In 2010 The Sun-fish was the winner of the Canadian-based International Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award.

      Poetry By Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Kathy D’Arcy is a poet, workshop facilitator and youth worker based in Cork city. Originally trained as a doctor, she is currently writer in residence with Tigh Fili Cultural Centre. Her second collection, The Wild Pupil, was recently launched in Dublin by Jean O’ Brien and in Cork by Thomas McCarthy. She has just been awarded an Arts Council Artists’ Bursary to support the future development of her work.

The Wild Pupil by Kathy D'Arcy

Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth (22 May 1870 – 30 June 1926) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist. She was born at Lissadell House, County Sligo, the younger sister of Constance Gore-Booth, later known as the Countess Markievicz. Both she and Constance, who later became a prominent Irish revolutionary, reacted against their privileged background and devoted themselves to helping the poor and disadvantaged.In 1916 Eva and Esther established a radical journal entitled 'Urania,' which expressed their pioneering views of gender and sexuality.In the aftermath of the 1916 Rising she was instrumental in the campaign to secure the reprieve of her sister who had been sentenced to death for her involvement Along with Alice Stopford Green she also took part in the unsuccessful campaign for the reprieve of Roger Casement.^[3]Eva was also an accomplished poet. Her first published volume was highly praised by Yeats. After World War I, Eva and Esther became members of the Committee for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and worked for prison reform.As she grew older, Eva was forced to give up active work but continued writing poetry. Esther took care of her throughout her long illness and they were together at the end. Eva died in 1926 at her home in Hampstead, London.
(wiki) 

Form by Eva Gore-Booth

Maria Wallace (Maria Teresa Mir Ros) was born in Catalonia, but lived her teenage years in Chile. She later came to Ireland where she has now settled. She has a BA in English and Spanish Literature, 2004, an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature, 2005. She won the Hennessy Literary Awards, Poetry Section, 2006. Her work has been published widely in Ireland, England, Italy, Australia and Catalonia. Winner of The Scottish International Poetry Competition, The Oliver Goldsmith Competition, Cecil Day Lewis Awards, Moore Literary Convention, Cavan Crystal Awards, William Allingham Festival. She participated in the ISLA Festival (Ireland, Spain and Latin America), 2015, and has published Second Shadow, 2010, and The blue of distance, 2014, two bilingual collections (English - Catalan), a third one to come out within the year. She has taught Spanish, French, Art and Creative Writing. She facilitates Virginia House Creative Writers a group she founded in 1996, and has edited three volumes of their work.

Lorna Shaughnessy was born in Belfast and lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. She has published three poetry collections, Torching the Brown River, Witness Trees, and Anchored (Salmon Poetry, 2008 and 2011 and 2015), and her work was selected for the Forward Book of Poetry, 2009. Her poems have been published in The Recorder, The North, La Jornada (Mexico) and Prometeo (Colombia), as well as Irish journals such as Poetry Ireland, The SHop and The Stinging Fly. She is also a translator of Spanish and South American Poetry. Her most recent translation was of poetry by Galician writer Manuel Rivas, The Disappearance of Snow(Shearsman Press, 2012), which was shortlisted for the UK Poetry Society’s 2013 Popescu Prize for translation.

Moving Like Anemones and Other Poems by Lorna Shaughnessy

Breda Wall Ryan grew up on a farm in Co Waterford and now lives in Co. Wicklow. She has a B.A. in English and Spanish from UCC; a Post-graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and an M.Phil. in Creative Writing (Distinction) from Trinity College, Dublin. Her awarded fiction has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories 2006-7 and The New Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction. Her poems have been published widely in journals in Ireland and internationally, including Skylight 47, Ink Sweat and Tears, Deep Water Literary Journal, And Other Poems, Fish Anthology, Mslexia, The Ofi Press, Orbis, Magma and The Rialto. Her first collection, In a Hare’s Eye, was published by Doire Press in 2015. A Pushcart and Forward nominee, she has won several prizes, most recently the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, 2015. Her new book Raven Mothers was published in October 2018 (Doire Press)

Self Portrait as a She Wolf and other poems by Breda Wall Ryan

Geraldine O’Kane is originally from County Tyrone. She has been writing poetry since her teens, and has had numerous poems published in journals, e-zines and anthologies such as BareBack Lit, FourXFour, Illuminated Poetry Ireland, Poetry Super Highway and more. Geraldine is a regular reader at the Purely Poetry open mic nights in Belfast. She has previously been part of a local writing group at the Craic Theatre, and has performed some of her work in local theatres and at the Dungannon Borough Council Arts Festival. Her poetry is mostly inspired by observation and the human condition. She specialises in micropoetry. She held her first solo exhibition in the 2013 Belfast Book Festival, using art, dance and music to interpret micro poetry centred around the theme of relationships and decay.

The Poet O’Kane
Geraldine O’Kane on Poethead

Angela T. Carr is the author of How To Lose Your Home & Save Your Life (Bradshaw Books, 2014). Her writing is widely published in literary journals and anthologies — Mslexia, Abridged, Bare Fiction, The Pickled Body, Crannóg, Boyne Berries, Wordlegs — and has been broadcast on RTE Radio One. Three times short-listed for the Patrick Kavanagh Award, her debut collection won the Cork Literary Review Poetry Manuscript Competition 2013, judged by Joseph Woods. In 2014, she was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series, short-listed for the Listowel Writers’ Week Single Poem Award and the Cúirt New Writing Showcase, a finalist in the Mslexia Poetry Competition, judged by Wendy Cope, a runner up in the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year, and winner of the Allingham Poetry Prize. Angela has read at numerous literary events and festivals around the country. Born in Glasgow, she lives in Dublin.

Website: A Dreaming Skin
Twitter: @adreamingskin
Angela Carr on Poethead

Maria McManus is a poet and playwright. Maria’s most recent work is We are Bone (Lagan Press 2013). A screenplay adaptation of the sequence Aill na Searrach; The Leap of the Foals, was developed in 2013 with NI Screen as part of the Short Steps development process. Previous poetry includes The Cello Suites (Lagan Press 2009), which has been recorded with an original score composed and played by the cellist Tom Hughes. She is a contributing artist to Corners of Europe. Reading the Dog (Lagan Press 2006) her first collection of poetry, was runner up in the 2007 Strong Awards at the Poetry Now International Festival and was also short-listed for the 2007 Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. In 2008 & 2012 she was awarded an Arts Council individual artist award. In 2005 she was awarded the inaugural Bedell Scholarship for Literature and World Citizenship, by the Aspen Writers’ Foundation, Colorado USA. She was awarded an MA with Distinction in English (Creative Writing) from Queen’s University Belfast in addition to a professional qualification in Occupational Therapy and an MBA from the University of Ulster. In 2008 she co-wrote Bruised for Tinderbox Theatre Company. In 2006/07 she was playwright on attachment to Tinderbox. Previous theatre credits include His n Her’s and Nowhere Harder (2006) for Replay Theatre Company, and The Black-Out Show (2006) for Red Lead Arts. Something For Sunday Morning by Maria McManus

Katie Donovan Image is © Mark Granier Katie Donovan has published four books of poetry, all with Bloodaxe Books, UK. Her first, Watermelon Man appeared in 1993. Her second, Entering the Mare, was published in 1997; and her third, Day of the Dead, in 2002. Her most recent book, Rootling: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2010. She is currently working on a novel for children. She is co-editor, with Brendan Kennelly and A. Norman Jeffares, of the anthology, Ireland’s Women: Writings Past and Present (Gill and Macmillan, Ireland; Kyle Cathie, UK, 1994; Norton & Norton, US, 1996). She is the author of Irish Women Writers: Marginalised by Whom? (Raven Arts Press, 1988, 1991). With Brendan Kennelly she is the co-editor of Dublines (Bloodaxe, 1996), an anthology of writings about Dublin. Her poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies in Ireland, the UK and the US. She has given readings of her work in many venues in Ireland, England, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, the US and Canada. She has read her work on RTE Radio One and on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3. Her short fiction has appeared in “The Sunday Tribune” and “The Cork Literary Review”. Katie Donovan’s fifth collection of poetry, Off Duty was published by Bloodaxe Books in September 2016. Entering The Mare and Other Poems by Katie Donovan

Mary Noonan lives in Cork. Her poems have been published in The Dark Horse, The North, Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Threepenny Review, Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Wasafiri and Best of Irish Poetry 2010. She won the Listowel Poetry Collection Prize in 2010. Her first collection – The Fado House (Dedalus Press, 2012) – was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for a First Collection (2013) and the Strong/Shine Award (2013).

Sarah Clancy has been shortlisted for several poetry prizes including the Listowel Collection of Poetry Competition and the Patrick Kavanagh Award. Her first book of poetry, Stacey and the Mechanical Bull, was published by Lapwing Press Belfast in December 2010 and a further selection of her work was published in June 2011 by Doire Press. Her poems have been published in Revival Poetry Journal, The Stony Thursday Book, The Poetry Bus, Irish Left Review and in translation in Cuadrivio Magazine (Mexico). She was the runner up in the North Beach Nights Grand Slam Series 2010 and was the winner of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature Grand Slam 2011. She has read her work widely at events such as Cúirt and as a featured reader at the Over the Edge reading series in Galway, the Temple House Festival, Testify, Electric Picnic, O Bheal and at the Irish Writers’ Centre, she was an invited guest at the 2011 Vilenica Festival of Literature in Slovenia and in Spring 2012 her poem "I Crept Out" received second prize in the Ballymaloe International Poetry Competition.

Sarah Clancy on Poethead