Irish poets 2023

poets from Ireland

Paddy Bushe lives in Waterville, Co. Kerry. He has published thirteen collections of poetry, of which three are in Irish, as well as seven collections of translations from Irish and Scottish Gaelic. He was presented with the Oireachtas Award and the Michael Harnett Award for Gile na Gile (Coiscéim 2005) and the and the Irish Times Poetry Now Award for On a Turning Wing (Dedalus, 2016). Peripheral Vision, a collection in English, and Second Sight, a selection of his poems in Irish with his own translations, appeared from Dedalus in 2020. The Amergin Step, a long prose work which is a personal, imaginative exploration of both the landscape of Iveragh and the literature, mythology, folklore and history associated with it, is forthcoming. He is a member of Aosdána.

Vona Groarke was born in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford. Her thirteenth book, Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara – a poetic account of the lives of Irish women domestic servants in 1890s New York (which arose out of her time as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library 2018-19) – was published in Nov 2022 by New York University Press. Of her eight poetry collections, the most recent is Link: Poet and World (Gallery Press, 2121). Her Selected Poems won the 2017 Pigott Prize for Best Irish Poetry Collection. Poet, essayist, reviewer and editor, her work has recently appeared in New York Review of Books, L.A. Review of Books, P.N. Review and Poetry Review. She is the current Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge. Woman of Winter, a contemporary re-telling of the ninth century Irish poem, ‘The Lament of the Hag of Beare’ was published, with drawings by Isobel Nolan, by Gallery Press in August 2023.