Poetry Ireland Introductions Series

Wednesday 28 October, 7.00pm

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Now in its thirty-first year, the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series offers exciting opportunities for talented, emerging poets to showcase their work as part of ILFD.

Established in 1989 by poet Theo Dorgan, Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series offers exciting opportunities for talented, emerging poets to showcase their work. Many acclaimed poets have come through the series including Enda Wyley, Kerry Hardie, John McAuliffe, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Pat Boran, Caoilinn Hughes, Stephen Sexton and Kerrie O’Brien. This year, Poetry Ireland is teaming up once again with ILFDublin to present a digital showcase of the promising new voices of the Introductions Series 2020. The showcase will be accompanied by an ebook of the poets’ work, which will be free to download the week of the festival.

This year’s featured poets are Lani O’Hanlon, Nidhi Zak / Aria Eipe, Mark Ward, Lianne O’Hara, Jake Hawkey, Tory Campbell, Mícheál McCann, Charis McRoberts, Eoin Hegarty, Eva Griffin, Nancy Graham, Kate Quigley, and Sinéad Nolan.

Lani O’ Hanlon has an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University, her poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies including Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Mslexia, Southword, Orbis, broadcast on RTE’s Sunday Miscellany and up-coming in the new Bloodaxe Anthology- Staying Human in Unreal Times-2020

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist, and fabulist. Poems have been published in Banshee, Poetry Ireland Review, Rattle, The Irish Times, Writing Home: The New Irish Poets Anthology, broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1’s Poetry Programme, and featured in the Poetry Jukebox and Irish Poetry Reading Archive. She is the recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Student Prize. 

Mark Ward is the author of the chapbooks Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) and the full-length collection, Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). His poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review and many more, both at home and abroad. In 2019, his poem ‘Vegas Epithalamion’ was broadcast on RTÉ Radio One’s show Arena and he was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Awards. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its fourth year.

Lianne O’Hara was born in Amsterdam. She writes poetry, prose, and drama. Her work is published or forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry, Crossways, Amsterdam Quarterly, Dedalus Press’ Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets anthology, B O D Y, Splonk, Channel, and The Ogham Stone.

Jake Charles Hawkey was born in London, studied Fine Art at the University of Westminster and is currently studying MA Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. His poems have been published by Lumpen, the Honest Ulsterman and recently anthologised in Eyewear’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2019. Jake was recently the inaugural intern at The River Mill Writers’ Retreat, Downpatrick. 

Tory Campbell lives in Belfast. Her poems have appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Irish Independent, and The Honest Ulsterman. She has been shortlisted for the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry 2012, highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2014, and awarded ‘Most Promising Writer’ at the Mairtin Crawford Awards 2018.

Mícheál McCann is from Derry. His poems appear in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee Lit and The Tangerine. He was a grateful recipient of an Arts Council of Northern Ireland ACES Award, and his first pamphlet of poems Safe Home (2020) was recently published by Green Bottle Press.

Charis McRoberts is a poet and actor from Belfast. She is currently a BBC New Creative and just finished developing her poetic audio drama ‘Four’ which will broadcast later this year. Her poetry has been aired on various local and national radio stations and during lockdown she wrote and directed her first poetic dance film ‘Submerged’ in collaboration with dancer Courtney Phillips and Flexus Dance Collective, for their festival ‘A Captured Moment.’ She recently received the Artist Support Fund from In Good Company for her poetic one woman show ‘Little Fish’ about Irish identity, diaspora and homesickness, which she hopes to tour next year. 

In 2018 Eoin Hegarty won the Cúirt New Writing Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Collection Award at the Listowel Writers’ Week Festival. He has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The North and Southword. He lives and teaches in Cork. 

Eva Griffin is a poet living in Dublin. She is a co-founder of Not4U Collective. She was chosen as a Dublin Book Festival Young Writer Delegate by the Irish Writers Centre in 2019. Her debut pamphlet Fake Hands / Real Flowers is available from Broken Sleep Books.

Nancy Graham’s poems have appeared in journals such as Crannóg and Northwords Now. She’s taking the MA in Creative Writing and working towards her first collection. She works in a women’s centre. A blow-in from Scotland, she’s lived in County Down and now Belfast for nearly 20 years.

Kate Quigley is a graduate of NUI Galway’s BA Connect with Creative Writing. Kate’s work has been published in a number of Irish & UK journals including The Stinging Fly, Orbis, Banshee & The Shop. Their debut poetry pamphlet If You Love Something was published by Rack Press in October 2019. Kate was also selected for the Stinging Fly Poetry Summer School 2019.

Sinéad Nolan’s work has been published in The Honest Ulsterman, Abridged: Persephone, Headline Poetry & Press, Foiseach magazine and Kathy D’Arcy’s Autonomy. In 2019, she studied under renowned poet Martina Evans at the Stinging Fly summer school for emerging poets. Sinéad also tells stories and is a previous winner of the Dublin Story Slam. She works on human rights in Dublin and has written about enforced disappearances in Ireland and Mexico for the Irish Examiner.