Vona Groarke

Biography

Vona Groarke joined the Creative Writing team in September 2007. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and University College, Cork, she has previously worked in the UK, the United States and Norway. In 2004, she co-held the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University, and from 2005-2007, she was poet-in-residence at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She has published ten titles with Gallery Press over the past twenty two years. 

Her poetry collections include Shale (1994), Other People''s Houses (1999), Flight (2002), - shortlisted for the Forward Prize (UK) in 2002 and winner of the Michael Hartnett Award in 2003, Juniper Street (2006), Spindrift (2009) - a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, X (2014) - a PBS Recommendation, Selected Poems (2016) and a book-length essay about art frames, Four Sides Full (2016). 

In 2003, she edited a new edition of Oliver Goldsmith''s_The Deserted Village ,_ _ illustrated by Blaise Drummond, and in April 2008, her version of the classic eighteenth century Irish poem, Lament for Art O''Leary_, was published, with an extensive Introductory Essay.

Her poems have been translated into seven languages, including French, Spanish, Chinese, Portugese and Japanese. A Czech translation and a Romanian translation of Flight were published by Edice Opus and by Ars Longa Press, respectively.  A Czech translation of Spindrift came out in 2012.

Recent magazine publications include the Antioch Review, Arete, The Irish Times, P.N. Review, Poetry, Poetry Review, The Guardian, TLS, New Yorker, _and _Yale Review. She has also published a number of prose essays in The Dublin Review on issues as varied as the three film versions of King Kong, the war in Iraq, life in the American South and Irish tenor, John McCormack.

Her poetry has been anthologised in An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry (Belknap, Harvard University Press, 2010) and in Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, 2010). In 2010, she was elected to Aosdana, Ireland''s Academy of the Arts, established to hounour ''outstanding contributions to the arts in Ireland''.

In 2010, she was judge of the Manchester Cathedral International Poetry Prize. In 2017, she will be a Juror of the International Montreal Poetry Prize. 

Since 2014, she has been Editor of Poetry Ireland Review, and since 2015, a Selector for the Poetry Book Society.

External positions

Selector, The Poetry Book Society

1 Sep 2015 → 31 Dec 2017

Editor, Poetry Ireland Review

1 Jan 2014 → 1 Jan 2017